A Getaway

We took a trip to Maine over the weekend. It was not my favorite trip. There were several unfortunate elements to the trip, such as

 -all our kids were sick

-we hit a bear on the drive down  (After we hit the bear, Steve asked me if I wanted to go back and check on it and The Bairn got upset and told him, "We have to get to our cabinet.  We don't have time to visit bears."  I don't know if he was worried about bears coming out of the woods or if he was really eager to go to the cabin.)

-our cabin looked a bit like this (we were staying at a Quaker camp that allows the teens who usually stay there to write on the walls/ceilings/bunks):

-because E was sick and I was nursing N, I was sleeping on the floor with an open sleeping bag and couldn't figure out how to keep warm at night until the last night

On the bright side,

-our cabin accommodation included a hot breakfast and dinner buffet in the dining hall every night

-we discovered an amazing children's museum

-we love the Common Ground fair and I got the fiddlehead ravioli this time, which I've been waiting to eat again for the last three years

Here's E chasing pigeons in Portland.  She also ran pigeons into the street in Bangor, in a super creepy city square where she took no note whatsoever of the slightly menacing human loiterers, because of her overwhelming love of birds.  

At lunch on this day, lots of elderly admirers came over to talk to E and compliment her on her curly hair and each time, she scowled at them and corrected them that it's not her hair, it's her "magic horn" (when she has a little ponytail on top of her head).

The Bairn sliding on cardboard at the Common Ground Fair

The Bairn hammering nails at the Common Ground Fair

The Bairn trying on masks at the fair

Little E

The Bairn assisting in the recreation of a moose skeleton

E looking sick and sad at the fair (a common look for her the entire weekend)

The Bairn in the park across the street from the capitol building in Augusta.  He insisted on taking a picture of it, because he claimed it was a temple.  He could tell because of the gold "angel" on top.

N hates going on trips.

E also looked like this a lot.

But she did enjoy bits of her vacation.

Baby's First Camping Trip

Last weekend we went camping with Steve's family at Fundy National Park in New Brunswick.  At one point, I mentioned to Steve that it's a good thing we're not vain.  He didn't know what I was talking about, but of course I was talking about the fact that he was very happily wearing black business socks with shorts and flip-up sunglasses with his Piggly Wiggly t-shirt and I was wandering around in a giant floppy hat with 25 more pounds of baby weight to lose, as you will see.

Baby's first camping trip.  The nice thing about taking a 2-month-old camping is that you rarely have to wash dishes, because you're always breastfeeding.

We stayed in oTENTiks, which are more or less cabins.  The Bairn insisted on bringing his favorite library book with him, and Grammie very obligingly sat on the top bunk (The Bairn claimed it was 3 stories high) and read with him.

We took a little hike and Papa thrilled The Bairn by letting him carry the binoculars the whole way.

Grammie, Cousin Lexi, The Bairn (with binoculars!), and Ellen resting on the hike.

Steve took our two older kids canoeing while I stayed on shore with the wee one, chatting with the man renting out the canoes and watching his grandson remove dead mice from the back of a kayak.  Apparently, The Bairn spent quite a bit of time crying because he was worried about capsizing and "didn't have swimming lessons yet" and also didn't want to get his "adventure shoes" wet.

This one spent a lot of time admonishing the squirrels to do her bidding.  They did not.

What We're Doing

Note: I think we'll call this new baby Nate on the blog.

So this is what's been going on with three kids.

Steve got his ham radio license.  He's absolutely evangelical about ham radio.  He and the kids listen to the wake-up net every morning.  To me, it sounds like eavesdropping on an old folks home, but Steve likes it.

Nate turned one month old.  He's usually very content.  Except when he's not.

He likes to make his lips really small.  He's also, surprisingly, good at standing on our laps and taking a pacifier.  He's getting adorable fat rolls already.  He hates baths and I mostly forget to give them to him, so he smells a bit like cheese.

We've been getting out of the house more the last two weeks, which makes everyone happier, but doesn't stop Ellen's truly impressive screaming and whining.

Today we had a picnic at this park.

I promised the kids we'd come back with Steve so they could spend way more time chucking rocks into the water and running back and forth across the bridge.  Welcome, welcome, summertime.

Steve and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary on Saturday.  This fall when I was sick and Steve was working all the time, we discovered that if we don't have some sort of family vacation every few months, every single one of us start to lose it a little bit.  So, in the spirit of just embracing the fact that we live in Canada, we decided to take a family trip to the Jack Frost Festival on Prince Edward Island over our anniversary.  It rained and stayed above freezing for two days before we left.  There was almost no snow in Nova Scotia.  No terrible winter to embrace.  They had to manufacture some of the snow for the festival this year.

It was a good trip but there were a couple of complications that we did not consider when we were booking the trip, such as:

• I'm 31 weeks pregnant and all of the outdoor activities at the festival, other than ice carving demonstrations and wagon rides, were unsuitable for me.  There were all kinds of ice slides and tobogganing.  Steve assured me that the hill he liked best would have caused instant labor to occur, as it sent him sailing into the air.

• Ellen has been ill frequently in the last six months.  She started slowing down Friday morning before we left, so I knew to pack her inhalers, but she only went down one ice slide before vomiting and spending the rest of her time outside asking to be held and stoically looking at snow dinosaurs until the shuttle bus could take the two of us back to the hotel.

This was The Bairn's favorite slide.

Ellen looking sick and sad next to a snow dinosaur.

We still had a great time.  By Saturday afternoon Ellen was feeling fine again and thoroughly enjoyed the bouncy castle and balloon animals and other indoor attractions.  She was also deeply in love with the giant banana, a grocery store mascot, she got to high five and it led her to tell her first joke, "Knock knock.  Who's there?  I didn't said manna."  Her very favorite parts of the trip, though, were the shuttle buses, especially the old blue school bus we rode, and watching TV in the hotel.  She keeps asking me when we're going back to the "festibal" and pretending that her fingers are in a hotel watching "Bubble Gummies."

Eight Year Old Girls Are Perfection

On Friday we went camping with the same family we camped with last year and two other families.  There were twelve children in our group, including two 8-year-old girls.  I really love girls that age.  They're sweet and sincere and extra nice to my babies.  They walk to the lake with me barefoot and roast potato chips over the camp fire for Ellen (I don't know why) and explore the forest (again and again and again) with The Bairn.  They're the best.

The Bairn munching on a snack in the forest.

Stopping for a rest on the way to the beach in the evening.

They broke out the nail polish at one point and invited Ellen to their painting party. She had never seen nail polish before in her life, but she really took to it.  She loves her neon-colored nails.

Family Camp Vacation

We went camping.

The kids, Steve's parents, Steve's sister and her kids, and I drove up to Fundy National Park in New Brunswick on Wednesday and Steve joined us the next day.

Things we enjoyed:

• playing with cousins
• the zip lines at the camp playground
• roasting marshmallows
• the beautiful views
• sleeping in a tent (when I asked The Bairn about camping at Fundy, he said this was his favorite part)

Things we did NOT enjoy:

• bugs
• the loudsters in the tent behind us

The Bairn playing with his baby cousin

Lexi took good care of Ellen and The Bairn.

Like, really good care.

This is what Ellen does when we ask her to smile.

On Friday, Steve and the kids and I drove down to Peaks Kenny State Park in Maine and camped for two more nights.  Our real reason for visiting Maine was attending the Whoopie Pie Festival, but there is always the secondary reason for visiting, which is buying stuff in America that we cannot get in Canada.

Things we enjoyed:

• attending the Whoopie Pie Festival  I didn't think I would actually max out on whoopie pie tastings, but I did.
• Playing at the lake.
• Daddy's yummy camp breakfasts, featuring all-American breakfast sausage (insert MBC breaking into patriotic-sausage-loving songs right here).
• Singing songs in the car.  Ellen spends a lot of her time in the car demanding, "Nudder song!"
• Sweet camping kids.  The Bairn really loves camping, especially when he gets to help Daddy cook and do jobs.  One night I was listening to him talk to Steve while I put Ellen down to bed and I heard him saying, "Daddy, you're really great.  You're so good at killing bugs and you're pretty big."  He also told me that his favorite part of camping in Maine was me.  "You're so hugful, Mom."
• Absolute silence during quiet hours.  A ranger hushed up our loud neighbor at 10:00 sharp.

Things we did not enjoy:

• Driving long distances with Ellen.  She doesn't enjoy it and she can wail for hours.
• That point when we had just crossed the border and I took both kids inside the gas station and Ellen lay on the floor, covered nose to toes in banana residue, and cried and refused to stand or be carried while the Bairn tried to steal sprinkle cupcakes from the bakery cupboard and I hissed, "That's enough.  No treats!" at them.  
• Breaking camp in the rain.

Flopsicles in the car.

Playing at the lake.

Sweetie Pie, the Whoopie Pie Festival mascot

I love little kids in wellies.

We love camping.  The Bairn drove home with a blanket over his head, a tent where he looked at books and occasionally popped his head out to tell Ellen that he loved all the colors in the world.

Tennessee 2015, Part II

Steve heard about the National Cornbread Festival early on in our marriage and spent several years lamenting the fact that we had never been there, so this year we arranged our trip to Tennessee to coincide with the festival.  It takes place in South Pittsburg, near the border of Tennessee and Alabama.  The whole town shuts down to host the event and it was really wonderful.  We listened to bluegrass, we ate cornbread in cornbread alley (try the recipe for the coconut almond cornbread bars), we spun the Martha White wheel for prizes and received free merchandise, we toured the Lodge factory, and we watched a round of the cornbread cook-off.  Steve even got a special mention at the cook-off as the person visiting from farthest away.

Steve's second southern dream has long been to visit Alabama.  Since we were so close, and since the woman standing in front of us at the Martha White booth was from Alabama and spoke to us when she could tell Steve was foreign during our Steve, drink some water.  You have to drink water here.  You will die without water here.  I'm serious go get a drink. conversation, we decided to drive across the border to the town she recommended, Scottsboro.  It's a really small town.  But it's famous for being the home of the Unclaimed Baggage Center and when we asked an employee there for a restaurant recommendation, she sent us to a hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint with the best potato salad I've ever had in my whole life.  I'm not even a huge fan of potato salad, but I would like to wake up in a vat of that stuff every day.

Then we saw an armadillo.  It was dead on the side of the road, but it was still a highlight of Steve's life and he maintains that he would like to buy a farm in Alabama.  I wasn't quite as enthralled with Alabama, but I'm willing to go along with Steve's farm plan if it means I can have some more potato salad.

Tennessee 2015

We spent two weeks in the States in April. We drove down over two nights, staying with my brother when we stopped. The Bairn is very impressed by his cousin's big city, although she had to scold him for not knowing how to walk properly on city sidewalks.  On the way back, we stayed with my sister's college roommate and her family.  Steve wants them to adopt him, I think.  They're very nice.


Most of the trip was spent with my parents and this is what we did:

Dug in the dirt with the tools Grandma got the kids.

Flew a kite with Grandpa.

It kind of got up in the air.

Played on the playground up the street.

Visited Dollywood.  This little kid water feature was Ellen's favorite part.  She got totally soaked but was a devoted fan even after she got sprayed directly in the face while peering into one of the fountain hole things.

Both kids rode the carousel. Only one of them enjoyed it.

l

Howard and Steve rode the ferris wheel and when The Bairn saw how high it was going to go, he handed Steve his imaginary birds and asked him to take care of them on the ride.

We all rode the steam train.

My mom doesn't like this picture, but I do.  I can't get enough pictures of my mom snuggling up my babies and The Bairn was a frequent resident on her lap for stories and discussions.

Tennessee Part II: The National Cornbread Festival + a dead armadillo.