... Happy New Year!!!

Yes, this is Happy New Year wishes in two parts because it means that I'll have written exactly 100 posts on this blog in 2009. It doesn't make up for not seeing friends and family as much as we'd like, but at least you all get to see and read about Darcy's ever-changing world.

She is just now going to bed after watching the ball drop in Times Square. We set our one analog clock ahead three hours so she could see the hands reach midnight and blew noise makers.

May we all have a more peaceful new year in 2010.

Wishing You All...

A very...

Beach And Lighthouse

Christmas Day dawned sun-shiney! We walked on a pedestrian/bike path downtown and ended up on this stretch of beach at low tide. Darcy had to be carried part way on the trail, but once we got to the beach, she miraculously found more energy and ran around like a maniac.

We wrote and drew pictures in the sand with sticks and Darcy enjoyed playing with them.

While our stretch of beach was still sunny, there was a fog bank working its way toward us. It caught up with us before we got back to the car and it was chilly-brrrrrr.

Since we got here, we've been meaning to go out to the lighthouse. It is still operational and lives on an island that is accessible by causeway at low tide. The problem has been getting the perfect combination of a day with decent weather with a low tide that is not at five in the morning or during Darcy's nap, etc. But there it was! Low tide. We were within sight of the lighthouse. The weather was deteriorating, but manageable. So off we went.

It's a very nice island and a very nice lighthouse. During the summer, they give tours, but we just enjoyed the outside and all the decorations that the keepers had put up. All in all, a very nice way to spend Christmas morning.

In Search Of The Wonder Stump

When we drive north to Oregon, we cross over a road called Wonder Stump Road and ever since the first time we noticed it, we of course wondered just what the Wonder Stump(s) is (are).

Our local paper has a column once a week that consists of short reprinted articles from past papers. Shortly after we got here, it included a story about the origin of the Wonder Stumps. I told Michael about it, because we'd discussed this question already, but he had heard something different at work. We kept meaning to go in search of the Wonder Stump/s, but hadn't.

Christmas Eve day was sunny and pretty nice, so we decided to begin our search. Michael found an article from the Daily Triplicate's sister paper, the Curry Pilot, about a reporter, new to the area, who went searching for the Wonder Stump without success. It contained more information and seemed to clear up the question of whether there is more than one. It also included an old photo and vague location, so we thought we'd be able to find it.

As it turns out, we couldn't. It didn't matter, though, because we had a beautiful drive through second growth forest on Wonder Stump Road and saw gorgeous old-growth stumps left from logging a hundred or more years ago. In particular, we found this cluster of burned (very tall) stumps. I spied them from the road and they are unbelievably massive and beautiful.

Michael in front of the fire cave at the base of one stump, in the "front".

Michael and Darcy in another fire cave in the "back".

Michael and Darcy, again for scale, because it's hard to appreciate how massive these things are even when you're standing in front of them.

Looking up from the base of one of the stumps. It's hard to tell if these were logged or burned as living trees (as described in the first article), but redwoods don't burn easily. They just seem like very tall "stumps" for logging.

We're hoping to find the Wonder Stump one day. In the meantime, there are some historic and modern photographs of it here (you'll have to scroll down to the part about the "Del Norte Wonder Stump) and here.

Darcy's Version Of Christmas

This morning, we let Darcy open one present. In part, this is because we don't want sensory overload to set in any earlier than it needs to. We gave her the package that included her new stocking. Her previous stocking, made by her Auntie Best, was injured beyond my capability to repair. The new one is sort of elf-shoe shaped, with the curved-up toe and is mostly red and white. She pulled it out, assessed it, and announced, "A Tiny hat! I have a Tiny hat!"

Tiny is a pteranodon child from the PBS show Dinosaur Train. Tiny is also what Darcy has been calling Santa Claus for the past few days. Why? I don't know, but she's very insistent. She keeps talking about how we'll leave a fish treat for Tiny when we hang up our stockings. Her face fell when we said it was a stocking, so I quickly said, "It's probably both...try it on as a hat." So she did, and it fit. She very proudly wore it when she walked over to take care of our neighbor's cat. Or rather, their triceratops. Cats and dogs have been triceratops(es) for a few weeks now.

Before she left, however, she explained that the real Tiny is very busy this morning: "Tiny has to go to all the nests and ask the all the dinosaurs what they want for Christmas."



(And hey! Darcy just helped with her first crossword puzzle! Michael is half-heartedly doing today's Triplicate puzzle and one of the clues was "Elmo's street", so he asked Darcy and she said, "Sesame!")

Drinks, Fungus, And Actual News

The pictures don't have much to do with the post, but I know everyone likes pictures! So here's a series of Darcy trying to drink from an outside water fountain. She had seen some other kids playing at it earlier and I think that and the big puddle of water at its base (from the playing) made her view this differently than every other water fountain she's used in the past. Michael first had to demonstrate the technique.

Then there was a serious attempt.

And then there were just giggles.

And about twenty minutes later, there were teeny-tiny mushrooms growing in the debris on a downed redwood log. The range of fungus types up here (and mosses and lichens, too) is incredible.

In actual news, Darcy has moved on from her obsession (my mom says I should call them "enthusiasms", but I've already got an obsessions label for this blog) with the Wright Brothers! Other than a very occasional slip-up, I am no longer Will. And Michael is no longer Orv. We are infrequently mommy and daddy, much to Michael's delight. (His delight is that it happens at all, not that it happens infrequently.) More often, we are reflections of her new obsession.

After six months of living and breathing the Wright Brothers, we now live in a dinosaur nest. When we've been running errands (a lot) this week, Darcy has asked several times, "Is it time to go back to our nest?" In keeping with the new theme, Michael and I are Mr. and Mrs. Pteranodon. In case you're not up with your Cretaceous Era critters, here's a tutorial on pteranodons. Pteranodons were fish-eaters, so all treats (candy, Christmas presents, cakes) are fish now. Darcy is a T. rex. Buddy the T. rex, to be exact, the orange beastie seen in the birthday summary post.

My small T. rex is waking up now. I expect to hear, "Good morning, Mrs. Pteranodon!!!" at any moment, so I'd better wrap this up.

For those of you who haven't already heard, I got a job offer on Friday and will start working full-time in February. The hunt for day care prospects has begun in earnest and at some point when I don't have a dinosaur waking up from her nap, I'll even provide more details.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas to you all and for those of you who sent the packages under our tree, thanks for all the fish!

Bootcorn

We had another movie night last weekend. It was very successful and Darcy got a little slap-happy at the end. She loves to wear my rain boots, which look just great on her. After wearing them for a while, she took them off and tried to stack them in a tower. When one of them almost fell into the remnants in the popcorn bowl, she then made it her mission to stack them in just the right place so the top one would land in the bowl. She succeeded after a few tries and christened the resulting product "bootcorn" while giggling uncontrollably.

She didn't do much giggling when we went to meet Santa yesterday afternoon. She was perfectly willing to get on his lap, but completely unwilling to look in his direction. I had talked to her about meeting Santa Claus a week or so ago and said that he'd ask her what she wanted for Christmas. She told me she'd ask for candy. Sure enough, Santa asked her and she said, "I'd like candy." He pointed out that he was going to give her a candy cane right then and there, and wasn't there a toy she'd like? Nope. Candy. If we were willing to indulge such a wish, this would be the easiest Christmas ever.

Just How Big Are These Trees?

Darcy loves the redwoods. She also loves and misses the Joshua trees, so frequently tells me that Crescent City has redwood trees, but Cima house had Joshua trees. And it's all true -- both places have some very special trees. She likes to pretend to be a redwood by standing on her tip toes and reaching her hands really high over her head. She doesn't quite reach their heights. All the pictures in this post were taken on the same day in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park (hope I got that right; all this jurisdictional stuff has me confused). As soon as we got out of the car, Darcy ran over to hug this redwood.

We had lunch on this bench. I know that it looks like a small bench. It isn't. We all three sat on it with our lunches spread out, too. It's a goodly-sized bench.

Even as you get further away, a big redwood is still really, really big. Notice that it's instant darkness behind it as you get into more redwoods. On a sunny day, in the middle of the day, if we're driving through old-growth redwoods, our car will automatically turn on the full headlights. Because it's confused and thinks it is suddenly night. Not much light gets through the canopy.

It's hard to get a whole tree into the picture, but this is the rest of the tree from the other pictures. I did my best. Unless I had crossed into the (STAY OUT!!) elk meadow, I couldn't get any further back.

Even when they're lying down, redwoods are still big. This one's a little taller than Michael, which wouldn't be that impressive at the base of the trunk, but this cut is probably twenty or thirty feet from the roots. We were admiring mushrooms. I needed the flash. On that bright, sunny afternoon you see in the previous pictures.

In other news, the rain has returned to Crescent City after two weeks of sunshine. The clear skies brought very cold temperatures and we learned that our pellet stove doesn't really do much when it's in the thirties unless we keep it on all day long. And our central heat doesn't like to come downstairs, apparently. So we can have the stove on and be warm in the living room and almost-warm in the kitchen. Or we can have the central heat on and be warm upstairs. Not both.

And in book news, I am still on my quest, but I got stuck on Swallows and Amazons (or is it Amazons and Swallows?). I thought this was one I was going to really enjoy. I first heard about it in a NY Times poll asking people for the Harry Potter of their childhood. People raved about this series of books and I couldn't find it in my library at the time. I found a used copy on our drive here from Cima, but I haven't gotten past the second chapter yet. I don't really know why. I think I've read a couple more since I last updated my quest, but I'll have to look at my master list to see what they were. I've got Bleak House on deck because someone gave me the BBC production to watch on DVD and I don't want to see it before I read it.

Ah! Christmas And Nostalgia!

So Darcy has been all about Christmas recently. Not because of all the Christmas decorations popping up, but because we borrowed Olivia Helps With Christmas from the library again and this time, she recognized that Christmas is coming (she saw the fat goose). I had to create a countdown on our calendar so she could visualize how many days until Christmas and I could stop explaining that Santa was not coming tonight.

Whenever we see Christmas decorations or Christmas stuff in stores now, she says, "I see Olivia things!" At the Family Resource Center last week, one of the employees was doing some decorating and had an extra string of lights lying on the floor. Darcy picked them up, wrapped them around herself, and said, "Look! I'm helping with Christmas! Mooommmmmyyyy!" Because that's what Olivia does. You know.

I've recently been trying to record the classic Christmas specials along with the Christmas versions of her favorite shows (I missed a Sesame Street Christmas today -- too bad). So tonight, we recreated one of my childhood memories. We watched two Christmas specials while eating popcorn, hot cocoa, peanut butter toast, and sliced apples. The fire (well, pellet stove) was roaring, we laid down a quilt, and we all had fun.

In my childhood version, my sister and I were watching The Wonderful World of Disney and we were required to be in PJs before the watching and eating started. In Darcy's version, she was naked from the time she got up from her nap until the time she got ready for bed. Why? I have no idea, but she was very, very insistent. It turns out that Darcy is also the world's biggest popcorn fan and on the second pot I popped, Michael and I were done with it and she sat on the quilt on the couch, naked, with a big mixing bowl of popcorn resting on her lap. That child had a distended belly by the end of Rudolph.

But she had a great time and so did we, so it's all good.

Cake Baking

We're heading over to our neighbors for another pizza night tonight and they again waved off our offers to bring something. We couldn't quite do that again, so Darcy and I made a very light dessert, an unfrosted pecan/cranberry cake that I had made for Thanksgiving. Darcy helped by adding the flour in batches while I added the milk and stirred.

She was very proud.

Klamath River Overlook

A couple weekends ago, we had a gorgeous sunny day and we headed south out of Crescent City for a variety of activities. The first was a hike down to the Klamath River overlook. This picture was taken from the overlook looking back up to the parking lot, at the very tippy-top of this hill. It was a steep trail, but not too long and surrounded by lupine. Not in bloom, but with the promise of quite the show when it is.

Here's Michael and Darcy hiking down to the overlook. The ocean was pretty calm and our drive out of Crescent City featured many, many whale spouts.

Darcy and I check out the rocks and surf to the north of the overlook.

The main event: the Klamath River meet the ocean.

Darcy danced around the overlook for a while before we headed back up to our car. Our wildlife spottings here included several woolly bear caterpillars and a snake. Yes, a snake. I never encountered a snake on any hike in the Mojave. Which, as you may know, is full of snakes of all different kinds. But two of our hikes have included snakes. This one was a decent size snake. On our first hike down to a beach to look for tide pools, we encountered two very small snakes. Not just two different snakes, but two different kinds of snakes. Prior to meeting these small beasts, I had been thinking that this is very un-snake-like habitat, being all wet and cold and all. How wrong I was!

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.