Hope This Isn't A Jinx!

With any luck, the house pictured here will soon be our new house! We're waiting for the bidding to close and the official word, but we believe that we will be moving here in the near future. Why, you ask, do we want to move seven months after getting here? Moving isn't fun, it's true, but neither is life in Baker. It looks like a town, it really does, but it doesn't feel much like one. We're not losing much by being away from town and we're gaining a lot: peace and quiet; beautiful views, pleasant places to walk; 3000 feet in elevation (and therefore, much, much lower temperatures); affordable rent; neighbors with cows as pets; greater proximity to all parts of the park; shorter commute for Michael; and the list goes on!

We'll let you all know as soon as we hear definitive word and set a moving date!

In other news, Darcy Jo is trying to learn everything all at once. Her vocabulary grows at leaps and bounds, and she now points to letters she recognizes on all sorts of things (like her cup at lunch yesterday; it took me a while to figure out why she kept saying "emm" because I couldn't see the writing). She can pick out maybe a third of the alphabet and grins like a maniac when we confirm that it really is the letter she said it was. Likewise, she is extremely proud that she has (how? I have no idea!) learned the concept of "two". It started with her saying "two" if she was holding two of the same object, but now extends to just having two things, alike or different, and fingers! If you hold up two fingers and ask how many there are, she'll tell you -- and she did it the very first time we tried it.

Her other new trick is crawling! Finally! We took her to a mall when we were visiting in Simi Valley last week and it was crawling (forgive the pun) with kids. There were a lot of tunnels, which Darcy loves, but they weren't tall enough for her to stand in, so she couldn't take advantage of them. It's a little heartbreaking to watch her in those situations because it's clear that if she had had a crawling phase, she would now have a much better grasp of climbing on, under, and over things. She has to just watch the other kids a lot. She loves that, but I want her to be able to DO, not just watch.

She's been doing what she calls crawling every once in a while for a month or two. It's sort of like swimming on the carpet, as her belly is still flat on the floor. But after spending quite a lot of time watching so many other kids crawling around and seeing that she was missing out, this week, she crawls! True, hands-and-knees, belly-off-the-floor crawling! She mostly just uses this to crawl to something that will help her stand up if she's plopped down on her tush, but we also set up the couch cushions as an obstacle course and she's almost able to crawl up and over a stack of two. It will only take another visit or two to a play area for her to get up to speed.

Darcy Wears Boxers!

I know that I've recently promised some photographic and possibly video evidence of Darcy's love for (maybe even obsession with) water, but those are on the other computer, so you'll have to wait a little bit longer. Instead, for your viewing pleasure, I offer these treats:

Michael was folding laundry in the living room and Darcy absconded with his Christmas-themed boxers and asked me to put them on her. So I did. The clothespin was an essential part of the ensemble. She spent about ten minutes dancing around in the boxers before deciding that they were just annoying.


It took much less time for her to decide that finger paint on her hands was annoying. She did smear this paint around a little bit more, but then refused to touch any color of paint again. I tried to teach her a one-finger method, but she was having none of it. We'll wait a couple weeks and try again.

In other news, her 18 month checkup was on Friday and went well. She is growing well and let the doctor check her out a little more thoroughly than last time. She balked at the hearing test, so the nurse couldn't get the ear piece in far enough to test via vibrations, but said that she'd accept Darcy's "beep beep" as evidence that she heard, well...the beep.

Darcy Discovers The Bandana

Flowers, Everywhere We Look, Flowers

Ok, so there has been some prodding recently for some new photos and an update. We've been silent because we spend all our free time (well, I do, Michael sometimes thinks it's more of the stuff he does at work) looking at flowers. And hosting guests and doing some traveling, I should add, but flowers really have taken over our lives (and our hard drive).

So here are some lovely flowers. (Clicking on a picture gets you a larger image.)



Michael received an email a few weeks back saying that Devil's Playground was in a once in a lifetime state of bloom. We were lucky enough to get out there a few days later -- it was breathtaking! Dune evening primroses as far as the eye could see in all directions, with lots of prickly poppies, sunflower-family yellow flowers, hairy sand verbena, desert needles, and so many other flowers mixed in. The primroses, however, were the stars of this show, flowering in enormous mounds and double rings (top photo).


After a lot of driving (we might have bitten off a little more than we should have) we stopped for a picnic lunch at some well-known (to us) rocks. Darcy is all smiles because she's eating her very first PB and J. She also loves rocks, so was happy even before she discovered the glorious presence of jelly.

The flower season moves from lower to higher elevations here, and different flowers show up in the varied ecosystems that make up the Preserve. The following pictures are of the yucca and cactus family blooms, which are spectacular.

Joshua Trees in bloom

Up close and personal with a banana yucca

Beavertail cactus on Zyzzyx road

Claret cup cactus among the Joshua trees

Darcy will do anything for some more flower sightings...her first solo* rock climb.

And she's rewarded! With cliff roses, Palmer's penstemon, and rattlesnake weed (in that order). The rattlesnake weed fooled us -- it looks huge in the pictures in the guidebooks; we were expecting something ten times that size at least!




All that flower hunting and rock climbing and walking does wear a girl out, though. Even the coolest shades in the world can't keep this one awake...

*Solo as in, Daddy's hand is just out of the picture by an inch. Don't call child protective services just yet!

Flowers! Flowers! Flowers!

Coming into Baker on Interstate 15 now means passing through corridors of yellow flowers. What are they? Various species of sunflower and daisy relatives, mostly. But off the highway, there are more colors...
Lots of purples and whites abound in and around Mojave National Preserve. We had abundant rains over the winter, continuing into this spring, and the desert is coming to life. This is just one of many places with fields of interspersed hairy sand verbena (the lavender), dune evening primrose (the large white), and brown-eyed primrose.

The dune evening primrose merits a picture all by itself. This photo was taken just outside the Preserve boundaries.

I really love all the small flowers that are appearing. These brilliant purple ones are called, appropriately enough, purple mat. I don't know what the small succulents are. They don't appear in our flower guide; we have a list of almost a dozen now that aren't, so it's time to look for a better guide! The flowers on the purple mat are a little smaller than a dime.

These beauties are lilac sunbonnets. They are tiny, spiny, and low to the ground. They're not all that easy to spot, but it's hard to turn away once you've found them. I'll share more flower photos over the next month or so. I'm hoping that the Joshua tree bloom will be spectacular once it starts. Maybe even more than that, though, I'm excited for the cactus blossoms if and when they arrive.

The Photos Will Now Flow

A week or so ago, our camera decided to stop talking to our computer. So the photos have been building up with no way to do anything with them. But the trouble is now over, thanks to our new card reader! I'm just starting to wade through them; here's a picture of Darcy and her cousin Alfred from our last trip to Simi Valley.

Bunny Girl!

Our Bunny Girl after a bath a few weeks ago. She loves the mirrors!