Gareth One-Eye

It all started with our insatiable desire for raspberries, of which there are plenty in the backyard here. Gareth gets excited whenever I ask if he wants to go pick some berries. Partly because he likes to go talk to the chickens as well and tell them that they don't get to eat berries and to stop yelling. But that's beside the point.

On my birthday we all headed out to the raspberry bushes. It seems that no one else has been picking them, so there were plenty around for us to enjoy. Ryan was willing to join us since there were (amazingly) no bees around. We all had a marvelous time and went back inside to enjoy the fruits of our (not very difficult) labor.

Walking in the door I noticed a small welt under Gareth's eye. I assumed it was just another mosquito bite and thought nothing more of it. Until we ate dinner with our neighbors and they commented that his eye was a bit puffy. "Oh, yes, I suppose it is! He got a mosquito bite." And I proceeded to not make a big deal about it. Until he woke up the next morning:

And these were taken later that afternoon, after a couple of doses of Benadryl. He opened our door in the morning, said, "Mommy, I need..." and burst into tears. It took me several minutes to get his head out of my shoulder and realize what was wrong. Thankfully our neighbors lent me their car so that I could get the Benadryl quickly. After I arrived home, we spent the morning with Gareth holding his hand over his eye, laying with his head in my lap, and sucking his thumb while holding his orange blanket. We watched a lot of Gareth's favorite shows on the computer. And I didn't get much of anything done at all.

I was getting a bit worried by the afternoon when the swelling didn't seem to be getting any better and even more so the next morning when it definitely wasn't any better. I had to run to the store Wednesday morning and got plenty of strange looks from people as well as several people asking about it, especially as it started to take on a slight purple-ish hue. Needless to say, both Ryan and I were grateful when Gareth was suddenly able to open his eye fully Wednesday afternoon. It's mostly better now, though slightly swollen still, and has a more bruised look about it. And Gareth's desire for raspberries has not diminished in the least. (Though he has also developed a taste for Benadryl, which he calls "tasty medicine".)

Kubota Garden

About a week ago Gareth and I ventured to Kubota Garden, another nearby attraction/park/garden thing. I guess there are several types of gardens there and I'm pretty sure we never made it to the Japanese garden as well as a couple others. Mostly we wandered around in the same area, exploring all the paths we came across, until we hit where we started again.

The first thing we came across was this cool "cave" in the trees:

Gareth once again enjoyed playing with rocks and water. He thought the bridge over the water was fun.

The garden has a peaceful, quiet atmosphere. A few people were there just to walk. Several people were there to take pictures. We did some of both. We played around the bridge for a while and then explored various waterfalls and pathways:

I loved this tree:

And Gareth enjoyed playing with the water wherever he found it.


Definitely a successful outing. I'm excited to head out there again and see the rest of the gardens.

Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival

On Saturday we checked out a wooden boat festival in the area. Unfortunately, we got there a little too late to do much. The model boat races were over for the day and all the seats on the boat rides were taken already. Gareth still enjoyed it, though he was pretty upset that we didn't go on a boat ride.

We were able to see a couple of war ships fire their cannons at each other and there were boats there that people were allowed to board and check out (kind of like the old cars out on Main Street in Somerville every Friday). Thankfully we had Gareth wearing his monkey, because he was extremely excited about seeing the water, meaning he spent a large amount of time leaning precariously over the edges of the dock. It's a two-day festival, so it was a bit tempting to take Gareth back on Sunday so he could see some boat races. They have two teams make a boat in 24 hours and then race them Sunday afternoon. But, in the end, we decided not to go back.

Gareth loves taking trips into downtown or pretty much anywhere if it involves riding the bus or the train, so he was still in a good mood on the way home. He particularly enjoyed drumming in the station.

Memorial Day Weekend "Exploring"

If exploring means shopping, then we did some on Memorial Day. It'd been rainy every day since we'd arrived. Every single day. Ryan didn't bring a jacket or a sweater with him since his jacket at home is fairly useless and old and ugly (the sweater we just forgot). So we headed out in search of a jacket. We came home with three. It was almost four, because there was a fake leather one that looked really nice and was on sale for a really, really good price. But Ryan decided four jackets was a bit ridiculous for now (though we will eventually purchase him a real leather jacket, because they can look great, and a trench coat a la Bogart, and the list goes on and on). But one of the three is super-casual (more athletic) and the other two we absolutely fell in love with.

So, here's Ryan modeling his awesome new jackets:

The first jacket we found. Awesome, but we needed something else for everyday wear.

The second jacket. Great for casual wear. But we still wanted something in between jacket one and jacket two.

The third jacket. This is the one I totally fell in love with and would have mourned if we had left it behind. Especially since it was the last one of its kind in the store.

Totally worth the money spent, in my opinion. I'm very excited about the steps we've been taking in revamping Ryan's wardrobe. Next up: pants. Or maybe a coat. Or shoes. Unfortunately we can't just do it all at once!

We also went and checked out the folklife festival that was going on, so our exploring wasn't solely shopping. It was fun to go just to see, but I doubt I'd go again if we ever came back this way. Basically, I'm glad it was free. We listened to a local fiddling club play some pieces. There were several vendors selling artwork, brooms, jewelry and so on. Outside of the main venues it seemed like random people would come and try to play their harmonica or guitar and get money from people. Most of the people doing this were beginners or simply not very skilled. A lot of hippie-type people were in attendance. It was fascinating for people-watching but not really worthwhile for much else.

Seward Park

Gareth and I took a bus trip today to Seward Park. It's not very far from us, but it would be a half-hour walk, so I opted for the bus. The bus schedule did not list any times for anywhere near the part of the route that we would be taking (at least that I could find), so we ended up waiting for quite a while. I probably could have got there walking before the bus came, but again, wanted to save my feet some trouble.

Gareth enjoyed looking out onto Lake Washington. The houses over in that area are very nice and I'm sure very expensive as well. The view was beautiful with a mountain poking up through the clouds in the distance (I'm assuming Mt. Rainier, but that is a fair distance away, so I'm really not sure.)

There were some ducks in the lake and people were letting their dogs swim in the water, all of which Gareth thought was pretty cool. I finally dragged him back to the stroller and we went for a bit of a walk down the biking/walking/running path. We didn't go the whole way because it's quite a long path and I was getting tired. (It's finally warmed up out here, so that didn't help either). We turned around and on the way back stopped at a tiny rocky beach so Gareth could throw rocks in the water.

The people in the background of the picture asked me if Gareth was my son or my brother. She was pretty sure he was my son, but it sounded like the man was guessing my brother. I'm assuming I just look so young that it's not un-imaginable that I could have a 3 year old brother! :)

It was a fun trip, but my legs are worn out. At least I can say I got my exercise in for the day!

Latest Adventure

Ryan's Mac broke last week. He made the trip up to the Mac store by UW to get it repaired. They called him on Saturday to tell him it was ready, at which point we decided our outing for the day would be to all head up there together after Gareth's nap and pick up the computer. As we were leaving I was thinking we'd maybe get dinner while we were up there as well, since by the time we left the apartment it was about 4 pm.

Unbeknownst to us, UW was having their commencement on Saturday. The bus hit the UW region about the same time commencement ended, which meant we got stuck in the incredibly slow traffic that comes with the end of a university graduation ceremony. I was getting rather hungry by the time the bus reached our stop. As was Gareth, so I gave him a couple slices of bread I'd brought for him. Those slices of bread are the likely cause of his tripping (I'm assuming he wasn't paying enough attention to the sidewalk and too much to eating) and cutting up his knee a couple of blocks into our walk from the bus stop to the store. We still had quite a walk ahead of us, made up almost entirely of stairs. (Think the stairs by the RB at BYU, but that amount tripled probably.) Ryan wanted me to just take Gareth home while he went on, which was probably a good idea, but I didn't have anything to clean Gareth up with and decided the fastest way to get him at least a little cleaned up would be to get to the shopping center. So we all went on.

We used a Starbucks bathroom to wipe up Gareth's knee while he screamed and then bought him a treat to try to get his mind off the pain. Somehow during the treat-purchasing process Gareth realized that his finger was hurting as well and we discovered a sliver which I would not be able to remove without a pin. Even his pink doughnut couldn't keep his mind off of the finger pain. By this point I think we'd already given up on getting dinner in the shopping center between commencement and Gareth's injuries. We gave up on making him happy and moved on to the Mac store. Gareth and I waited outside for the five minutes it took Ryan to pick up the computer and then we started the trek home. We managed to make it back up all the stairs and to the bus stop right about the time a bus was due. That bus never came. Neither did the one after it or the next one. We were starting to try to call people to look up another route we could easily get to to get home when, 45 minutes late, a bus finally showed up.

At this point Gareth was hungry, tired, still in pain, and still bleeding, so it was a rough bus ride for all of us. And probably for everyone else on the bus with us. A guy wearing a hat was able to get Gareth to play peek-a-boo with him toward the end of the trip. For some reason, we inherited the hat when the guy got off the bus:

We finally made it home around 9 pm, still needing to clean Gareth up and feed him something before sending him off to bed. We turned on a show for him and gave him his blanket to distract him while I removed the sliver. Then Ryan held him while I cleaned the blood off his knee and applied hydrogen peroxide (which Gareth really hated) to make us feel better about the dirt that I couldn't wash out. Thankfully our neighbor had just purchased some large band-aids, which we told him was a sticker, and he was good as new. I made up a peanut butter sandwich for him and finally got him to eat some of it, even though all he really wanted to do was suck his thumb and hold his blanket.

After getting Gareth to bed Ryan and I discovered that there really isn't anywhere that delivers in our neighborhood, or if they do they were already closed. So we foraged around the kitchen for a hodge-podge dinner of our own. Definitely not the most successful of our outings thus far. But we have the computer back now!

Woodland Park Zoo

Gareth and I went to the zoo today with our upstairs neighbor and her son. Aside from Gareth whining a whole lot, it was a fun trip. I like that this zoo seems to have a lot of outdoor areas for the animals that are nice and large. It's also the most active animals have been when I've been to a zoo (maybe the fact that it's not ridiculously hot helps?).

A large part of Gareth's whining was him wanting to spend the whole time watching the penguins. It's what we saw first and he seemed not all that interested in them initially, but once we tried to move on to something else that's all he wanted to go back to. The jaguars were cool, but Gareth was more interested in watching the schoolkids and other people around him. Due to his unwilling mood, I was only able to get one, slightly blurry, picture of him enjoying himself:

He did finally let himself enjoy watching the gorillas, and even took a picture of them.


Then we saw some pretty amazing birds:


Then on to the zebras, oryx, and giraffes. The giraffes were especially cool because they were moving around and eating (I hadn't remembered how long their tongues are; it was amazing to watch them twist their tongues around branches and pull the leaves off!) I think I've only seen giraffes in indoor space before, so it was fun to see them outside.




We went to see the lions last, but they were sleeping. Gareth's behavior was indicating that he needed some lunch and a nap, so we headed for home. I'm betting we'll make at least one more trip to this zoo while we're here. Hopefully the next time around Gareth will be more amenable to seeing all the animals and less interested in whining!

Settling In

We moved into the apartment we'll be in for the summer on Saturday. We were planning on using the bus to get all our stuff over there, which would have taken a few trips and five hours, but the people we're renting from offered to come pick us up. Yay for nice people! They weren't quite done moving out yet, so we just hung out for a bit. Gareth got to explore their yard, which is made up of patio and gardens. There are also rabbits and chickens. I guess we could get involved in feeding the chickens and get their eggs sometimes, which I'm sure Gareth would enjoy, but I'm not sure I want to deal with it. Gareth enjoys visiting the rabbits, but the owners will be taking them for the summer so they'll be gone in the next week or so.

We're now in the area code that is the most diverse in the nation. Lots of Vietnamese eateries around and I've been told many Somali refugees live in the area. That's mostly what we've come across in our small meanderings thus far. It's a nice neighborhood (definitely better than by the hotel), but there are some run-down looking homes mixed in with the well-kept ones. There are a lot of parks around, which Gareth lost no time in discovering. We will likely be spending a large amount of time at those throughout the summer.

I've discovered this cool thing called Amazon Fresh, which delivers groceries to your door (only in the Seattle area). It can be pricey since you don't have the option of store-brand items, but it was helpful for us to get large or bulky items such as laundry soap or boxed things. (We don't have a car here, so we have to walk to the store, and there's only so much we can carry back in one trip.) So, I made up a list and ordered the items from it that I thought I would be getting for a comparable price at the store. It saved us several trips to the store this past weekend. I'm not sure if we'll use it much more, but it was definitely helpful for that first big trip.

Our neighbors on the upper floors of the house have been incredibly nice and helpful. They've got kids, so Gareth already has some friends (who've been quite forgiving of his initial grumpiness from lack of sleep and changing routine). His new friends have also been great about sharing their toys since he's seriously lacking in that department due to my unwillingness to ship any out here. (We did bring a few small things, but they aren't keeping his interest through the whole day.)

We're still settling in a bit, figuring out where everything will go and such, but hopefully by the end of this week we'll be ready to start exploring!

Day-Long Travel

We finally made it out of Indiana on Tuesday. I didn't want to bother anyone for a ride to the airport (taking three hours out of their day), so I just tried to find a ride to the shuttle that goes from our town to the airport (only 5 minutes of their day). Good thing, since I had to call several people before finding someone who was available at the necessary time between their own schooling or their kids' end-of-school-year activities. The morning almost turned stressful when the woman I'd arranged a ride with called and said she'd forgotten her sons had dentist appointments that morning. Thankfully she'd already called and found someone else to take us.

We left our house at 10 to be on time for the 10:30 shuttle. We made it to the airport with no problems, except for the woman on the shuttle who decided to be irritated with Gareth for no reason and kept shooting daggers my way. We weren't sitting behind her, so he definitely wasn't kicking her seat and he wasn't being terribly loud or obnoxious in any other way. Maybe she just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

We used the curbside check-in, which was awesome. There was no way I was getting two bags, the carseat, Gareth in the stroller, plus our carry-ons into the indoor check-in lines by myself. And, for some reason, we didn't get charged for our checked bags, so we only paid a tip to the check-in guy! And when it came to the security we were able to use the family lane, so that went quickly and smoothly as well.

The difficulties started after that when Gareth was tired of sitting in the stroller rather than getting to push it. We got to our gate and got seat assignments and then I released him from his stroller. Bad idea. He was happy watching the planes for about two seconds before he wanted to take off running through the airport. Getting on the plane didn't improve anything. The light buttons on the plane were conspicuously large and yellow. Gareth had already figured out how to undo the seatbelt, so that was no help. He spent the whole plane ride wanting to turn on the lights and then turn them off and on and off and on and off. He refused to sit still and kept waving things in the faces of the people behind us. I was exhausted and my back was starting to hurt by the time we reached Dallas, where Gareth was even more wound up than before.

I tried to find us some dinner, but had a difficult time finding anything even remotely healthy. In the end we settled for pretzels and a berry parfait with granola and yogurt. Gareth was mostly uninterested in food and just wanted to run like a maniac. Thankfully most of the people around us were understanding. On our second plane we were on the very back row, right next to the bathrooms. One of the flight attendants was a seatbelt nazi. We went through some light turbulence so the seatbelt sign was on rather frequently. So, we had to hear a lecture anytime he managed to get out of his seatbelt (not hard for him to do). In her defense, I think they were required to remind people of the seatbelt thing, but it got old really fast. There were a couple of college-aged girls across the aisle from us and they were nice enough to lend me their portable DVD player, which kept Gareth occupied for an hour or so of the flight. (A four-hour flight with a three-year-old lasts an eternity, in case you were wondering.) The rest of the flight was spent trying to stop Gareth from turning the lights on and off over and over, taking him to the bathroom a million times, and trying (unsuccessfully) to get him to sleep. When it came time to land I forced him to keep his seat belt on, which finally got him upset enough to fall asleep 2 minutes before we touched down. The good thing about being on the back row was that Gareth got a few more minutes of sleep while we waited for everyone else to leave. Then he'd lost his toy cars under the seats, so we enlisted the help of our seat neighbor and the flight attendants to find them. The flight attendant (the seat belt one) even helped carry Gareth off the plane since, between his dead weight and our carry-on bags, I was making very slow progress.

Gareth was definitely awake by the time I strapped him into the stroller. We went and got our bags, but then I realized I should have picked up the car seat first since it was on a different belt. A family nearby watched our bags while I grabbed the car seat and then they helped me get our stuff onto an elevator so we could get up to the level where we could get a taxi. We were in the elevator with another family and they helped me get our bags off the elevator, across the walkway to the garage, and down another elevator to the taxi line. Once we were in the taxi it was easy going. It felt great to get to the hotel and have Ryan to help me with everything. After fourteen hours of travel, we had no problem going to sleep. We survived, but I don't want to ever travel alone with Gareth again - at least not on a plane and not until he's a little older.

Not The Adventure I Was Looking For

Well, we're hoping to enjoy an adventure together as a family this summer. The plan is to be in Seattle while Ryan does an internship. But, so far, every time we think we've got things set we learn something new or some other key matter falls apart.

We decided we'd look for our own housing. We asked where exactly Ryan would be working so that we could look at sublets in places that would mean a shorter rather than longer commute. We never heard back, so went ahead and assumed it would be at location A. We got lucky and found something in our price range and within a 30 minute bus commute (since we won't have our car) of location A. The day after we send a wire transfer with our deposit and first month's rent and mail the signed contract, we find out that he'll likely be working at location B, a new location which we had been given the impression would not be ready to move into by this summer. Location B turns Ryan's 30 minute commute into a 1 hour commute. The silver lining here is that we soon thereafter learn that if we'd stuck with corporate housing he would've been closer (probably), but we might have been forced to pay for a 2 bedroom apartment and would have had to pay significantly more for that than we will for the 2 bedroom place we found.

The big hurdle at the moment is that we discovered on Tuesday that the relocation people had failed to purchase plane tickets for Gareth and me. We alerted them to this problem, they said they'd get right on it. Here we are today, and still no tickets. I called the airline, just to verify that they have no reservations in our names. They don't. And, being a Saturday, it's impossible to reach any of the people who could fix the problem (and they were unresponsive to our contact yesterday). So, it looks like Ryan will be going to Seattle without us. I called the hotel and they were able to switch our reservation into Ryan's name, so at least he'll have somewhere to sleep that first week.

The most aggravating thing is that I have no idea how much longer Gareth and I will be here. And the thought of traveling alone with Gareth is daunting. We're definitely having an adventure. Just not the kind I was hoping for.