Happy Birthday, Darcy Jo!

In honor of the end of Darcy's eighth trip around the sun, here are some pictures of Darcy for you to enjoy. Vaguely chronological, but fairly otherwise fairly random.

Ok. Now the computer made me do non-chronological, so you'll have to deal with it. Sorry. I've apparently broken it because it's being weird about letting me add even more photos of Darcy's first eight years. You might have to be satisfied with her first 3.5 years for tonight.

Hmmmm...What Was I Doing Eight Years Ago?

For those in the know, the answer might come quickly. At about this time eight years ago, I was being moved from the birthing center at our midwives' office to the hospital because our girl was being stubborn about coming into this world.

Can't blame her -- it was twenty or thirty below zero! Who would want to leave a private heated swimming pool for that kind of weather?

Darcy Jo is turning EIGHT tomorrow! Our girl is getting so big! Stay tuned for some pictures through the years.

Oh, But She'll Be SEVEN!

Three years ago, almost exactly, we went with Darcy for a hike around Mill Creek Campground. It's closed in the winter, and so empty, and we shared pictures of Darcy playing a leaf-tossing game and the amazing world of moss and fungus.

Yesterday, we took Darcy and a friend to the same spot for some scootering. It was sunny and they had a great time, and once again, there were mushrooms everywhere:

For one of the first times around here, we also saw lots of puffballs, long past their prime. The first batch were on this stump:

But then we were on the lookout for them and found them on the ground in several different places. There was some puffball-stomping; the cloud at Darcy's feet is the spore cloud:

But our girl isn't four anymore, like in the first picture. Tomorrow morning, she will wake up and be SEVEN. How did that happen? Our little girl is disappearing into a grown-up body, but at least she still thrills over seeing banana slugs and stomping on puffballs and riding her scooter through dry leaves. She's moving on to other things, too, like helping our friend Michelle-the-baker make the chocolate cupcakes with chocolate mousse filling, chocolate buttercream frosting, and chocolate shavings that are going to school tomorrow. (Sorry, KRECR!!) But here she is, two days from her seventh birthday:

The Cake

Several months ago, Darcy mentioned that she wanted her birthday cake to look like a sea star. I figured that should be doable. I had thought about farming out the task to our local fabulous cake-maker, but she was unavailable, so I went in search of a star-shaped pan. That didn't work out. Nobody wanted to sell me one and I couldn't find anyone who owned one to lend out. I did find a silicon pan that makes six small star-shaped cakes. So I decided that the plan had to become a tide pool seascape.

Let me digress for a moment. There is a blog called Cake Wrecks that pokes fun at professionally-made cakes for various crimes. Like terrible mis-spellings or bizarre themes ("Sorry I peed in your bed" anyone?). Some of the cakes are very seriously disturbing, so if you like cake and don't want to have to bleach your eyeballs in order to enjoy your next piece, just take my word for it and skip the blog.

In between having all the elements for my cake complete, but before starting to put them together, a friend happened to post a link to a Cake Wrecks post. Suddenly, I had some fear that I was about to create a Cake Wreck. While the cake didn't turn out exactly how I'd pictured it, it was not a wreck.

Here's the main cake. It's a brownie cake with blue water frosting and an ochre sea star gracing the top. I should have taken a picture once the candles went in. About five or six months ago, we saw some really cool shark candles at a toy store. Hoping that Darcy's obsession with the sea would last this long, we slid some onto the counter while she wasn't watching. Surprisingly enough, the small ones mostly asked for pieces from the other cake:

Again, the cakes are brownies frosted with cream cheese frosting and the "sand" was three kinds of crushed cookies to get the mix of colors and textures just right. One of the party guests came back for seconds of sand, so I think it was a hit.

Dinner (And Early Birthday Party Planning)

Tonight, as a belated anniversary celebration, Michael and I went to the Historic Requa Inn for dinner. We enjoyed a four course meal of mostly-local delights that included a little wild rice dumpling to start and an almond/brown butter cake with blackberry juice to finish. In between there were some beautiful beets with flash-fried fennel tops, potatoes mashed with olive oil, roasted mushrooms, and other deliciousness. Thanks to chefs Paul and Thomas for a wonderful meal!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Darcy was with a once-in-a-blue moon babysitter, Beth. We're just two days away from an early birthday party for Darcy and she is starting to fixate on it. Before we went to dinner, Darcy insisted that we put together the goodie bags. Then she made a guest list complete with symbolic codes for how likely she thought it was that each of those people would come to the party. When we got home from dinner, Beth said that Darcy had expressed some serious concerns about how her cake would get made. Perhaps I am running out of time, she worried. She also made an excellent list of how she views the party events:

Be warned, children, there are apparently two outdoor lectures as part of this party! 

Apropos of nothing, I'll end with a picture of Darcy at the Chocolate Exhibit we caught at Turtle Bay Museum in Redding a few weeks ago:

Apparently, I Need To Get Cranky More Often

That's the lesson I'm taking from my previous post. I threatened crankiness and I got comments! Keep 'em coming, because otherwise I'm left to seek out pageview stats for positive reinforcement -- in other words, more comments = more frequent posts after NaBloPoMo is done. There aren't enough comments in the world that will make November posts more frequent than they already are. Just so you know.

I actually had to go look at the date stamp on my last post because I had a sudden panic that I'd skipped a day. This is a way of saying that today has been a Very Long Day. Tomorrow is our girl's birthday. She will be five. She has told this to everyone she has seen today. Some of them have heard it multiple times. There might be a little excitement over this event.

 The Before Picture

Just about exactly five years ago right now (adjusting for the time difference) we were packing up our stuff at the birthing center after my midwife decided that we needed to move to the hospital. My job was to stay in labor indoors until Michael and my M-I-L Betty had moved everything to the car and gotten it warmed up. It was Anchorage in mid-November and it was below zero heading to 30 below for Darcy's birth.


I had recently gotten my diploma for my PhD completed several months earlier, and on the way out to the car, Betty asked Michael, "When we get to the hospital, will they call her doctor?" He stared at her blankly. He asked her why on earth they would do that. People were tired. There was some misunderstanding. It was cold. And I had been having regular contractions for about 15 hours at this point. Michael got very frustrated trying to figure out why his mother thought the hospital knew or cared that I had just finished my doctorate and why they would be that formal anyway. And Betty, although she has never said so in the many recollections of this story, probably thought her son was being kinda bone-headed for not realizing that she was inquired about an OB. As it happens, my midwives all had full privileges at the hospital, so there was no doctor involved. It's one of their favorite stories about the day before Darcy was born.


Mine might be that my midwife spent quite a lot of time teaching Betty the joys of sodoku after learning that she had never tried them. After checking in with me at our temporary housing, she went home to feed her family breakfast and returned with several books of sodoku. I wasn't all that important after that.


Check in tomorrow for The After Picture.

Swimmy And Waggly and Fin And...

Pets in the house! Pets in the house!

For Darcy's birthday, Michael bought all the components of a small aquarium. We're not going back to the craziness of the marine tank (I only wish! I miss my live rock dancing worms!), just to some tropical freshwater cuties. Of course, the tank had to sit around "cycling" all week long before fish were allowed to enter, but today, we headed to Oregon to a couple of small fish shops to buy the livestock. Really. That's what the creatures that live in fish tanks are called in the biz.

Michael didn't want to overload the tank all at once, so we brought home five cardinal tetras. And a piece of driftwood. And three fake plants. And some fish flakes. The fish seem to have made it home in one piece, although they're not looking too lively right now. We're letting them have a relatively stress-free night and we'll hope that they're all very happy and schooling around in the morning.

Darcy has started to name them. I voted for the same name for all five, being that they're basically identical, but Darcy has other ideas. That one is Swimmy. That other one is Waggly. There's Fin. And I think the other two are waiting for inspiration.

Consider us petted.

Birthday Party!

Waiting for guests. Not entirely patiently.

Dolls! Big dolls! There is excitement!

Goody Bags? Check!

Oh my. It's been rainy all day and in the low 40s, which is just a preview of our winter. Just no fun. Michael's flight home was delayed by a couple hours which threw off my game plan in terms of shopping and prepping for tomorrow's big party.

But the shopping happened eventually and a some of the prepping, too. We have 8 beautiful goody bags, a plan for a pretty tea table, fillings for two of the adult tea sandwiches (kids are getting PB&J on cinnamon bread, nutella, and butter and cucumber; adults get more interesting varieties), and LISTS for tomorrow. With any luck at all, the rain won't be quite as bad as it was today. Darcy's birthday tea party is at the historic Requa Inn, which is owned by friends of ours. I was there for work on our very sunny Monday and the views from the dining room were lovely. I'm afraid we might just get clouds and fog tomorrow, but I hope not.

Wish us luck -- this is the first real kids' birthday party we've thrown!

A Fairy House For A Tired Birthday Fairy

Well, it's about 9:30 on a Saturday night and I am surrounded by fake fall leaves and flowers as I prepare to make a fairy house for Darcy. Luckily, we have a great fairy to live in it -- thanks, Auntie Ev and Liana!

Darcy and I spent the day having a birthday adventure that (mostly) went very well. She danced to a great band at the Arcata farmers' market, visited a fish store AND a toy store, went to the craft store to get fairy-house-making stuff, went out for ice cream at the most-excellent organic Arcata Scoop, and then went to a playground. Unfortunately, some other kid was having a birthday party at the playground, which made Darcy very aware that her party is NOT happening on her birthday. There were tears, quite a few of them. But then she fell asleep in the car and everything was better.

If we survive the fairy house decorating tomorrow, I'll try to take and share pictures. It should be beautiful.

Just One Of Those Days

You know the ones I mean. It's raining. And very windy. And kinda cold, even in my office that is usually hot. And the work was piled up to the ceiling and will be again tomorrow. It just wasn't my day.

Darcy, on the other hand, got to ride little belly-scooters across the big room at preschool as part of their "we're stuck inside" play plan. And we opened up a big box that came for her yesterday so that she could marvel at the three wrapped (and staying that way!) presents inside. I think she got as much enjoyment over petting the wrapping paper and talking about what might be inside them as many people get from the actual presents. She also (I'm putting on my proud-mama hat now) told me that the envelope said, "Darcy! D-A-R-C-Y -- Darcy!! That's for me!"

The Belated Birthday Post

Oh life...it gets in the way of blogging sometimes. In this case, I've been neglecting putting up some birthday and weekend photos in favor of creating an index for a dendrochronology textbook a friend of mine wrote. But that deadline has recently become flexible due to some potential page changes, so I'm on hold. Before I recount the splendors of Darcy's birthday, I will warn you that I forgot to take pictures of her tea party and cake. Sorry!

The great day started with Darcy coming downstairs to find this lovely pink tricycle waiting for her in the living room. It was a very rainy day, so good think trikes will roll nicely on laminate floors, huh? She still has a little trouble reaching the pedals, but she likes riding it around the neighborhood. Her steering is getting better, too! Thanks, Granny Mimi and Pop-pop!

The (amazing, wonderful, almost unbelievable) Family Resource Center happened to have a special event on Darcy's birthday: a visit by Buddy, the T-rex from PBS's Dinosaur Train. Buddy requires a human helper measuring no more than 5' 2", and it took a little while to find such a person, so the anxious kids listened to a story about dinosaurs and, here, pretended to be triceratops(es?). Sitting behind Darcy is one of her favored play mates at the play sessions here. She and M sit on top of a tunnel outside and take the train to the Motorcycle Zoo and the Crocodile Zoo, among many other zoos.

After Buddy finally came out to visit, Darcy would not get anywhere close by herself. You can see the doors to the kitchen behind the crowd in the photo below and she kept running in there, then out to the hall, and back into the conference room. Michael left work for an hour to join us and he tried to get her to touch Buddy, but had no luck. Buddy and ALL of the kids, however, sang Happy Birthday to Darcy. We had brought a birthday card for Buddy to give to her, so the staff knew it was her birthday. She was tickled.

Just as we were leaving, Buddy came back out for another visit and Darcy finally got up the courage to touch the very tip of his tail before we went back out into the rain.

The next day was Saturday and we had a small tea party for Darcy. Those of you who were at our wedding will perhaps remember the multiple cake trays and stands. We had tea sandwiches on one of the triple-decker ones, so it felt very proper. We had several neighbors/NPS coworkers join us. The cake was three layers of almond cake filled and frosted with a chocolate/cream cheese frosting. We were worried that the lack of kids would disappoint Darcy, but she proclaimed that "this is a good birthday".

The fun continues, of course, as she rides her trike and plays with her new doll house (thanks, Grandma and Granddad!) and enjoys all her gifts from near and far. We set up our two-foot-tall Christmas tree yesterday and she insisted that it go right next to her doll house so her newly-arrived dolls can enjoy and even climb it. (And hey! Two Feet Tall is also the name of Dan Bern's new KIDS' album!! It will start shipping in about a week, but you can pre-order it on his web site now, as we did a few days ago. This is an unpaid and unsolicited promotion.)

Thanks to all to who helped make Darcy's birthday special through calls, cards, videos, gifts, and just generally being part of her life.

Surf's Up!

Darcy's birthday celebrations are over (other than gifts that are still coming) and she had a good time. I'll post some pictures and more information over the next couple days, but right now, here are some pictures from last weekend. It was a busy one, with lots of errands, short hikes, and a trip to the interior of our neighboring Oregon.

The surf was high all last weekend and we had a lot of company taking pictures of it at one of the overlooks. This is taken from one that is just a few hundred yards down the road from where Darcy and I watched whales the week before.

On Sunday, we went further north up the coast (by about a mile and a half). There are beautiful paths along the bluffs. This rock is almost a natural arch, so the waves were coming through the center of the rock as well as smashing against the sides.

The cliff sides were covered in small plants, and I tried to get a close enough look to figure out what they were, but wasn't having luck at first. Then I got over to the edge and realized it was a cute little succulent, which I didn't expect at all. All of the light green/gray in this picture is colony after colony of these:

The plants are different and there's not quite as much variety, but the ecosystem on top of these bluffs remind me a little of the tundra. When you look from a distance, it all looks the same, but when you get right up close, there are dozens of different tiny plants.

We also drove through an old-growth redwood grove to a point with access to the Smith River. Darcy and Michael skipped rocks for quite a while, and then we walked along the river and watched the mists rise and saw perfect raccoon tracks in a mud puddle. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

A Belated Birthday Present For John

John, because you're so far away, we couldn't really send you anything but our best wishes for your birthday. But then we went to Vegas Sunday to return library books and get Darcy out among people after being cooped up for most of the week with a cold. She gets to choose the park if we go to town without too many errands and this time, she chose the "cake shop park", which is a small, but very nice playground in the middle of an outdoor mall that pretends to be a town center.

Along with a few cute buildings with kitchens, a cake shop, and other furnished rooms, it has a astroturf-walled maze, and a splash pad. The municipal parks in Las Vegas all turn their splash pads off at the end of September and I assumed this one would be off, too. It was when we first got there. And then, it wasn't. I usually have a back-up outfit for Darcy when we go to town, so we didn't fight too hard when she made a bee-line for the water. She had a lot of fun and got SOAKED. But that's not your present, John. I'm just stalling for dramatic purposes. The playground is near the (also astro-turfed) town square where they have live music and other events. Yesterday morning, the event led us to think of a new career path for you.

Whenever you've talked about yoga, the first thing that stands right out is just how darn competitive yoga is. You're always talking about trying to out-yoga all the other yoga-people you know. (Or wait ... is it that I've never heard you talk about yoga as competition?? That would really kill this whole gift-idea.)

The event taking place was the Nevada Regional competition for the USA Yoga Championships. Yes! It was competitive yoga! Yoga as an athletic sport, brought to you by the people who are petitioning for yoga to be added to the Olympics in 2016. So we figured that if the whole travel-the-world-teaching-yoga business dries up, maybe you could start competing to represent our nation at the Olympics. I guess there must not be any prize money involved if they're calling it an amateur sport, but otherwise, I was thinking that it could finance your travels for a while, too.

The people under the red tent were the judges. Each competitor had to do a set series of poses following their introduction. In between the men's and women's competition they had a yoga fashion show. It was all very commercial; again, just what I think of when you talk about your yoga experiences.

According to their rules, you apparently have to do yoga half-naked, which I've never noticed you doing in the photos of your classes. In fact, the more I think about it, maybe this isn't the perfect career for you after all. I guess I'm going to lose the "which sister-in-law got you the best birthday present" competition, huh?





(Too bad, 'cause from what I saw, you could kick their tushies. Then I could brag that my brother-in-law was the USA yoga champion!)

105 Reasons I'm Glad We Don't Live In Baker Anymore

We went away for a few days for my birthday and got home last night. Late. When we drove through Baker at 10:30 pm, it was 105F.

Enough said, I think.

Darcy Parties!

Darcy has been a very social girl recently. She went to a birthday party in Kelso for her friend Sean. Party games happened, which made her very happy because she's seen them on Sesame Street. Here are Michael and Darcy playing musical chairs.

She also tasted her first marshmallows, in the form of these frog eyes. She loves a book called Stella and Roy Go Camping and they roast marshmallows, so she's been dying to try them. It was a thrill.

Last night, Darcy hit another party in Kelso, this one a BBQ with campfire at the home of two volunteers. Darcy loved the fire, the three dogs running around, and -- yes, again -- marshmallows. She and Michael roasted two over the fire. One slid off their fork and was sacrificed to the fire. The other was enjoyed very much by Darcy.

Happy Birthday to Darcy!

Ok, so I'm a few days late, but Darcy had her Happy Birthday last Thursday and is now two years old. She's a little unclear on the age concept, but she definitely knows all about birthday parties now. Her requirements were HB hats, HB balloons, HB cake, HB candles, HB song. Presents weren't part of her birthday vocabulary, but, of course, they are now.

One of the highlights, in Darcy's words, was "all those cousins". Although Michael was unfortunately absent from the party because he was still in Portland, Darcy's Western cousins (from left to right) Henry (aka Hank), Alfred, Celaya, and Harry were all there. Granny Mimi (Betty) hosted, with a menu of pizza and birthday cake. Darcy was very impressed when everyone sang Happy Birthday to her and again when Grandma and Grandad (Kathy and Dave) called and sang it again over speaker phone.

Alfred helped open all the presents because Darcy was busy playing with a helicopter. She has since been enjoying the gifts. Cima House is suddenly a little more hazardous for walking.

Thanks to all who attended and sent birthday greetings from afar! Her first birthday was the day the movers came to pack up our house in King Salmon, so this was her first and only real birthday celebration and she really enjoyed the process.

I'll get some pictures of our trip to Vancouver, WA/Portland uploaded soon. We had a great trip in a beautiful part of the world, but we're very, very happy to be home now.