"For Firstborns, Secondhand Fits the Bill"

A few months ago, my cousin sent me a link to the following article:

For Firstborn's Secondhand Fit's the Bill"

It's all about how hip it is to utilize hand-me-downs. One of the beauties of waiting until your are of "late maternal(and paternal) age" to have children is that you reap the bounty of hand-me-downs from all your friends and family members that have already had children. The generosity of all of those around us has been amazing! We couldn't even begin to thank all the people that have given us clothes, gear, and toys for Cally. It has been such a gift for us. So here is a tribute to all who have made our life easier and made our daughter cuter. We think about you all every time that Cally plays with particular toys, wears particular outfits, or is carried in various stollers.

Below is a picture of Anna and Josephine Gilman. They live in Hailey, ID. Cally wears their shoes, an adorable bathing suit, uses an adorable bunny towel every time she takes a bath and wears a very cute Hannah Anderson jacket they gave her daily. Their mom, Sara, was one of my roommates in college for two years:


Then there is Mae, who also lives in Hailey, ID. The day that her mom, Brady, found out I was pregnant, she packed up a box of maternity clothes and sent it to Vermont. Since then, she's sent a box almost every couple of months filled with adorable clothes. Including our favorite sweatshirt which says, "Highchair today, chairlift tomorrow".
And Kesley and Jameson, Cally's cousins. There is rarely a day that goes by that Cally isn't wearing one of Kesley's hand-me-downs. Paula, her mom, gives me a storage container full of Kelsey's clothes every few months. She's been amazing about having them organized by size and it's like X-mas every time we get a new container. And then there are all the toys, backpacks, strollers, swings, a glider, and more. As you can see, Cal thinks her cousin's are pretty cool:


More recently, we got some great shoes and outfits from my cousin Gregg's daughter, Zoe. She lives in London and has a particular flare for fashion. The picture at the beginning of the blog is of Cally wearing a recent outfit of Zoe's. Here she is wearing a hip Paul Smith hat:


About a month ago, my friend, Mary called. Her husband had just built shelves in her five year old twin's closet. She was ready to get rid of the boxes of toys, boots, and clothes that had been taking up space. So, I left her house with a carload of wooden toys, a wagon, musical instruments, and boots of every size for the next five years. Oh, and then her seven year old daughter, Claire, decided to throw in all the costumes that she had in her closet that didn't fit anymore-- tutu's, leotards, princess dresses, and all.


And then there are my dear friends Medora & Jen. About five years ago, they called me in a panic. They were having a yard sale to offload a bunch of the baby stuff that had taken over their houses. However, they wanted to set aside "stuff" for me. So, Jen called me , needing to to know if I wanted this REALLY nice co-sleeper that Medora had. They needed to know right away, because if I didn't want it, they wanted to sell it the next day.

I was a bit dumbfounded. At the time, I was renting a small room (maybe 8ft by 10ft) and I didn't even have a boyfriend. I could hardly find room for more than my own bed and a dresser in the apartment, let alone a piece of baby equipment I wasn't sure I'd ever need.

I lost out on the co-sleeper, but fortunately, Jen and Medora saved A LOT of other baby stuff for me--- clothes, a crib, a changing table, books, toys, etc.


I know I've forgotten other folks who have been incredibly generous in the hand-me-down department. Cally sure is one very well dressed, accessorized, and entertained gal thanks to all the friends and family who have been so generous. We've already done our best to continue the trend by passing what we are done with onto other babies.

Halloween in Montreal

Cally had an extra special first Halloween-- in Montreal. John was attending the International Association for Experiential Education (AEE) Conference, so Cally and I met up with him on Friday evening. First, I had to get her across the border. With new immigration requirements between the U.S. and Canada, I couldn't figure out if Cally needed a passport. A quick "google" search just got me more confused. The other issue was that I was traveling without Cally's dad, so John had to fax "permission" for me to take her across the border. Fortunately, the crossing was rather uneventful!

We spent Saturday exploring the city...... First stop was the Museum of Contemporary Art (Cally pretty much napped her way through that):

Next stop was our favorite Crepe Restaurant in the Old Town:


The weather got pretty hectic by the end of the afternoon-- high winds, rain, broken borrowed umbrellas...... but we motored our way around, stopping for coffee and browsing the shops.

Along with it being Cally's first international adventure, she was plagued by her first fever. It showed up Friday night and kept her pretty flat for most of our visit. At first we thought it was a reaction from her second seasonal flu shot, but Dr. Parker doesn't think that's the case. The good news is that she doesn't seem to have any associated symptoms. But, as you can see, even when she's down, she's still pretty chipper. Especially after seeing herself in her costume:


She even crawled like a lion:


One of the best parts about our visit to Montreal, was that John's great buddy, Joc, was also at this conference. He lives in Paradise, CA and we don't get to see him or his family enough. He's been an amazing friend to John (going back to the Bates days) and is just a great spirit. We dined on some fantastic Korean food.


On our way home from the restaurant, we got to do some amazing people watching on the streets of Montreal. Plus, we got to see some real Canadian craziness in front of the Bell Center (where the Montreal Canadians beat the Toronto Maple Leafs in a shoot out)

The weather decided to take a turn for the better on Sunday. We started the morning with an extra hour of sleep and then dined at the best breakfast place I've found in a while: Reuben's (it's on St. Catherine at the corner of Peel St.)-- delicious and cheap!

Next stop was the Bodies Exhibit-- it's a scientific exhibition which displays whole and partial body specimens that have been meticulously dissected and preserved. It was absolutely fascinating (for a biology dork and her husband)! I think Cally was sort of baffled when she woke up in the middle of it all, but seemed intrigued herself.


While only 100 miles from our home, we felt so far away. Kind of crazy that a city of a million where a different language is spoken, is right around the corner. The food, the culture, the scene is all so worth it. So, if you haven't been, I highly recommend making your way up to Montreal when you get the chance!

Beach Baby

Lobster, our cat, came from Hilton Head Island, SC. She was delivered to us by my Aunt Sherry and Uncle George in July. Last fall, John and I went down there during the VTNEA teacher convention and had a great time. So, when my cousin Gregg, who lives with his family in London, proposed to the extended family that we get together there this October, we promptly signed on.

Ten adults and five children stayed on North Forest Beach, in a house that Uncle George started going to in the 1950's. For the decade that my grandparents lived in Hilton Head, my extended family convened at this particular house for many holidays. It's a "no frills" house in a very "big frills" neighborhood. It's an absolutely perfect place and we had an absolutely perfect vacation........

Some of the highlights:


Being sung to by Grandma-- she's got a lovely voice and knows a lot more songs than Cally's lame tone deaf parents can remember.

Seeing an armadillo, a young spike horn buck, butterfly gardens, and an alligator at Pinckney Island.



Hanging out with Bumpa.....


Doing tons of cruising up and down the beach.


Having a first frozen yogurt cone.


Being forced to be a "tourist".


Meeting second cousin's Zoe (2) and Campbell (4) who live in London.

and their little brother Damon (6 months)-- he's one happy guy!


And seeing Cousin Will, a whole lot more robust than when we last saw him (he's now about 3 1/2 months old).


And mostly, just hanging out at the beach........


The weather was 80 degrees F every day.


The water was 70 degrees F.



And at low tide there were shallow pools to swim in, without the exciting, but rough waves.


Oh, and meeting Lobster's Mom, BD.

and brother, Bubba!




This was an attempt at getting all the youngest generation in a picture together..... From left to right, Campbell, Zoe, Damon, Cally, and Will. It turns out, it's rather difficult to get five kids under the age of 4 to cooperate for a picture without any parents......

Thank you Sherry and George for making sure everything was set up for this rowdy crew. Even though you still had to work and carry on with your obligations, you made sure that we were all well equiped with pack-n-plays, food, garbage disposal, and plumbers.

The Abbott family had an amazing vacation...... it was exactly what we needed.

Leaf Peeping with Nana & Grandpa

Last weekend, John's parents came up for their "Cally Fix". It had been a few months and they needed to see how their youngest grandchild was changing.

So, she strutted her stuff..........

And showed them her good buddy, Lobster.


She loves her grandparents and we love having them to visit.


They motivate us to do fun things with Cally, like go apple picking-- a classic Vermont activity that we thought Cally should do.

First we had to visit with the chickens and sheep. Cally still shows no fear with farm critters.....





Cally had her first apple.


She loved it.




She actually wouldn't put the apple down for the rest of our visit:




Even when we got in the car, she had to have the apple.......



And when I tried to reposition it in her mouth, she got pretty upset (yes, even this little smiling one can't always hold it together).


So, what does one do with all the apples?


Tonight we had a Forced Family Pie Making event....... John and I made three different pies: apple custard, crunchy top, and traditional. John is quite proud of his pie fluting abilities

Comps & Folliage

Fall is in the air. Apparently, this weekend is "peak foliage" up here in Vermont. Cally got to play in her first pile of leaves.

Unfortunately, her dad has been hiding out in his office all weekend. He's taking his Comps this weekend-- another hoop to jump through for his Doctoral degree in Education Policy and leadership. At noon on Friday, he was given the his assignment-- something about writing an original paper that identifies a problem within his organization that he'd like to address and solve. He's supposed to draw on all he knows about research strategies, leadership, diversity, organizational theory, and policy analysis. The good news is that the response shoudl be no longer than 15 pages.

As he says, "piece of cake". John's a great writer, so he's been cruising right along. He has until Monday at noon to turn it in. Yesterday, Cally and I visited him. His previous three years of notebooks were spread throughout his office and he was typing away with coffee on hand.

In other news, Cally is taking her first steps with the aid of a Radio Flyer wagon. It won't be long before she's ready for skis.

Passing of Traits

After John and I found out that I was pregnant, we did a lot of wondering about what the little critter in my belly would be like when he/she grew up. We would often refer to our strengths and weaknesses and hoped that the child would get the best of each of us (John's literary mind combined with my math/science prowess), but feared she might get the worst of both of us (poor ability to pick up a foreign language and lack of musical ability for both of us, my poor spelling, and John's disinterest in math).

Now that Cally is here and her personality is just forming, the jury is still out as to her academic and athletic abilities. However, I can only hope that she gets a lot of her dad's enthusiasm and attitude that he showed this past weekend at the Vermont 50 Miler-- a mountain bike race that he partook in on Sunday.

John signed up for this event last May, on a lark. We'd both talked about doing it a few years ago, but always missed the registration (it fills up in about 15 minutes). I have never been a fan of sitting on a bike seat for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time and knew it would be difficult for both of us to get much time on the bike this summer, so I resisted the temptation. Needless to say, the weather, for much of the summer, didn't cooperate with John's "training" for this race. And then, when the weather finally did cooperate, he was so busy with his job, that he couldn't get out much.

And so, with the weather forecast looking grim for yesterday's ride, I tried to convince John not to do the ride. Why would anyone want to spin through, ingest, hike-a-bike- and wallow in mud all day? But John is not one to quit. He's also not one to get caught up with the competitiveness of anything. He knew he could finish. He'd spent long days in the mountains. Another day with adverse conditions was nothing new to him.

Cally and I headed down to Ascutney yesterday, to watch the finish. It started to rain at 2am in the morning and never let up. As more and more bikers came through the finish, the description of the trail conditions went from bad to much, much worse. Our friend, Tyler, had been among the top five riders and then had a tire blow out. Once he changed his tire and got back on his bike, he was in about 20th position (he ended up finishing up in the top ten). He said that the difference in trail conditions, with an additional 15 people having ridden in front of him, was tremendous.......... much slicker, much thicker, much more difficult to ride. So, with 500 bikers and hundreds of runners on the trail, it got to the point where the uphills weren't rideable and the downhills were more akin to skiing or fishtailing in your car.


When John came through the finish line, nearly 10 hours after starting the race, he was filthy, smiling, and ever the optimist. He had probably hiked his bike 20 of the 50 miles (because the trail simply wasn't rideable). He wasn't beaten and hungry like the rest of the riders. He told us he felt like he could ride another 20 miles. And he said it was "fun" and beautiful.

While we can't be certain about Cally's personality and demeanor at this point, I can only hope that she has her father's optimism, sense of fun, noncompetitiveness, and ability to see the glass "half full". I sense she already does have at least a few of these traits.

9 Month Update

Little Miss Sunshine had a visit with her pediatrician yesterday. After nine months on this planet:

• she's just about 29 inches tall (putting her between the 75th and 90th percentile)
• weighing in at an ounce under 17 pounds (putting her between the 15th and 25th percentile)
• and measuring almost 18 inches around her noggin' (putting her between the 75th and 90th percentile in that department).
  

Fall, Friends, and a Fantastic Fair

This weekend, Cally's buddy Boden and his parents, Carlota and Matt, came up to play from the Boston area. We love when the Dormer's come up for a visit. They are super easy going and always up for adventures. This time around, I preceded their visit with a list of possible fun for the weekend...... a 10km trail run (with an 800 ft verticle gain), a birthday party at our friend's Jeff and Jules House, a bike ride with the kids, a visit to the Tunbridge World's Fair, and some good meals. They, of course, said yes to it all. Matt joined me for the run at the Trapp Family Lodge on Saturday morning, then joined John for an hour and a half Mountain bike ride (in a pair of kahkis on my size small womens mountain bike with no bike shorts), then both families went for a ride on the bike path, the we came home, whipped up a tasty dinner, and left the kids with Arielle, a super babysitter, so we could go to the birthday party. Today, John treated us to one of his enormous breakfasts and we capped it all off with a visit to the Tunbridge World's Fair. And did I mention that the weather was absolutely amazing!

As you can see, Cally and Boden couldn't look more opposite in appearance (our fair-skinned, blue eyed red-head juxtaposed against his dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin), but they get along really well and it's so fun to let them romp around together.

And the fair..... the pictures say it all. Cally continues to be facinated by animals..... big (note her sitting on the rear end of a 3000 lb ox) and small (baby chickens, pigmy goats, and piglets).

Cally's Home Away From Home

Last winter, John and I started looking into suitable daycare options for Cally. We were already on the waiting list at the UVM Childcare Center (we'd put our name on that list as soon as we found out I was pregnant), but the odds of getting in were pretty low. We got a tip about a friend of a friend who lives nearby and loved the situation, but found out that the woman was aready maxed out with the number of infants she could watch. One of the options we looked into was in the basement of a ballet school, our conversation with the director was constantly interupted by the thumping of ballerinas upstairs and there were few windows. Another place that we visited told us that they only brought the kids outside when it is "nice" out and had the T.V. blaring in the background....... We quickly realized that this search was not going to be easy.

Upon my return to work, while John was home with Cally on his paternity leave, my principal mentioned that she had an au pair from Germany for her kids 14 years ago. Meike (pronounced Mi-cah) had met her husband while here and stuck around. She has since had three kids of her own and has had her own in-home daycare. It just so happens that she isn't doing the whole daycare thing anymore, but she does take on one child to watch along with her own. One of her daughters is in first grade, the other is four years old, and the youngest, her son is two months older than Cally. The one child she had been watching for the last five years is going to kindergarten this fall, so she was going to have one opening. Last April we toured her house and talked about the way she runs things and immediately felt like this could be an excellent fit. She gave us the names of a few of the parents whose kids had been with her in the past and it turns out that I know one of the families because the parents work in my school district. A few days later we ran into them at the grocery store and they told us we'd be crazy not to grab the opening because Meike had been absolutely wonderful with their children.

And so, a few weeks ago, Cally started visiting Meike and her family. The two of us visited for an hour one day and then she spent a few half days on her own before I started school. The next week she spent three days with the crew and since then she's doing her regular four-day week (John's working from home on Thursdays, so she'll spend some quality time with him).

So far, we couldn't ask for a better set up. Cally is so happy there-- she loves the other kids (I think Nate, the son who is 10 pounds heavier than Cal, might be her first crush), she's taking great naps, eating really well, getting outside all the time, and learning a ton (within the first week she figured out how to clap, wave, and do the speed crawl). The only real problem is she isn't taking a bottle and only seems willing to drink milk out of a shot glass, of all things (a tip given to us by "Grandma Joyce", a professional Grandmother and nurse).

Canoe Camping Weekend

Last Wednesday, John decided that that Abbott family needed to go on an adventure together. And so, he booked us a campsite on Lake Mooselookmeguntic in Western Maine. When John worked for Outward Bound, he spent some time in the area and thought it would be a fun place to explore with the family-- and the weather forecast was too good to pass up.

And so, we decided we'd pack Friday night and leave Saturday morning for a two-day adventure. Of course, the Friday night packing continued well into Saturday morning, and then we had to drive down to Starksboro to drop Zephy off at the Plimpton-Harris Dog Camp, stopped at a garage sale, grocery shop, and finally got on the road by 12:30pm. The new iphone told us it'd be a four hour drive, but it took us most of the day to get there. Such is the way when you travel with a baby!


A backcountry canoe trip is a step more "hard core" than car camping, but doesn't involve quite the complications of a multi-day backpack trip.



We hooked Cally's "Me Too" chair onto one of the gunwhales of the canoe. Even with the bulky PFD, she did all right on the half hour paddle out to our campsite-- Stoney Batter, a part of the Steven Phillips Wilderness Preserve.

Below are some shots of our site:



We still haven't "upgraded" to a family tent, so we had to figure out how to fit the family into a two-person tent (and a blow up mattress). It ended up working out perfectly. We made a little nest for Cal at the bottom of the tent and she slept like...... a baby, a sleepy little baby!


And she woke up after 7am both mornings, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Morning coffee has never tasted so good:


And canoes work well as a "play pen" for curious crawling babies who would otherwise be putting every rock and leaf into her mouth.


A few more shots I had to add:



She's definitely a "girl on the go":


And learned to wave last week:


And might even start walking soon:


One the way home, we took the scenic route through Dixville Notch in northern New Hampshire. Those cliffs are hundreds of feet high!


And finally we stopped through Walden, VT to visit our friend's Ray, Sarah, and Audrey (and their wonderful dog Buddy-- who let Cally crawl all over him).