From Cradle to Crawling

(Esther relaxing cross-legged in her morning bath)

Summer is quickly dwindling to fall but with its advent come some good things. Namely, baseball playoffs, the return of college football (much to Sausha's dismay), and apparently babies start crawling at the beginning of fall. At least that is what ours has done. Esther, defying Dr. Spock and his incorrect and falsified research, has started crawling at 6 months rather than the prescribed age of 8 months. She has also started standing up with the support of either her crib or our coffee table which has resulted in some stellar tumbles. Today she head-butted the edge of the table and the other day she seemingly leaped from the bars on her crib and crashed into the bars on the opposite side. Both resulted in inconsolable tears; or at least tears that mom rather than dad had to brush away for her to calm down.

School has also started. Sausha is finishing up her last semester of her undergrad and I am just starting my grad program. Neither of us are excited to be in school, but we're happy that she, at least, is almost done. In an effort to save on gas and time at work I have started riding a bike to work. However, I don't have my own bike so I borrowed my dad's. When he was in law school his Fuji bike was stolen and being too poor to purchase another Fuji, he bought a Peugeot bicycle from a garage sale. The Peugeot has been along as long as I can remember and now I proudly ride it to work and to campus. I feel a little like the Miss Gulch from the Wizard of Oz riding it, but you have to make do with what you got.

Esther occasionally loves her father, as evidenced in this photo.

I'm a firm believer that, as a family, we only go swimming so Sausha can put Esther in her sun hat and cute orange slice bathing suit.

A side note from the author's wife, Jack always despairingly tells me how no one ever comments on his posts. So, comment please. Even if it is only out of pity.

By the way, Esther had her 6 month appointment last week. 15 lbs. 1 oz, 27 and 1/2 inches long.

Royal

This little munchkin isn't going to be around much longer. His dad recently accepted a job in Guangzhou China and their little family will be leaving in a matter of months. So this is a brief picture ode to Royal.

Oh yeah, so cool with the sunglasses.

I know you aren't gone yet, but you will definitely be missed when you are (and that goes for Meredith and Zach too).

Yellowstone

A few weekends ago we joined Jack's family in Yellowstone to celebrate Karrie's (Jack's mom) 50th birthday. Team Prius (which included Cass, Daniel, Esther, Jack and myself) left a day after Team Tacoma (which included Bill, Karrie and Little Will) and arrived Friday afternoon (the 23rd of July) ready to enjoy as many geysers and waterfalls as we could squeeze into one afternoon. The parents in the expedition stayed at the Old Faithful Inn, while the childless were banished to the campground to play with the bears. That evening we got together at the Old Faithful Inn's restaurant to enjoy buffalo burgers (true) and grizzly bear tenderloin (false). It was just how Karrie had hoped to spend her birthday.

Esther and Grandpa Bill at Old Faithful. Neither of them look very excited.

Bill, Will, Cassie and Daniel tromping around the geysers English style.

Dinner at the Lodge

After a night at the inn our little family and Bill and Karrie decided to join the others in the campground. It was Esther's first camping adventure and she did extremely well. I had her in about 4 layers complete with mittens and a stocking cap.
In the short amount of time that we were there we managed to drive around a good portion of the park. Yellowstone Lake was beautiful and we have decided that when Jack makes it big and is paid to write short stories and poetry we will spend the majority of our summer's at the inn at the lake. However, just to be prepared with a backup plan, if he doesn't make it big we will move our family to the island in the middle of the lake and live as hermits.
Unfortunately I didn't get the majority of the scenery pictures from Bill's camera, but I did steal a few pictures from Karrie's.

Karrie, Me, Jack, Daniel, Cass, Will & Esther at Yellowstone Lake

Please notice the slobber spot on my arm courtesy of Esther

Esther sporting her sun hat. She was such an angel the entire trip.

All in all, it was a fabulous trip. Great company, beautiful scenery and nice weather. Who could ask for more?