Another day in the mountains

After the success of our first hike the obvious question was where to go next? The Snoqualmie Pass area has lots of nice hikes, but the Mountain Loop highway is only a slightly longer drive. The trail up to the meadows on Forgotten Peak only slightly longer than Melakwa Lake. And maybe her auntie, Auntie D, would be able to carry her for part of the hike? A little more of a push, but Cara Hsiu-Wen keeps proving herself up to new challenges.

The drive up gave Cara the opportunity for a nice nap, again ending just as we turned off the highway for the trail head. A diaper change, some sunscreen and general optimism at the lack of bugs and we were off. When we reached the falls and the creek crossing we discovered that our appraisal of the bug situation was incorrect. A planned stop for Cara to have a bottle and crawl around a bit was cut short by the swarm of deer flies that immediately descended whenever we stopped. Cara was somewhat less than thrilled with the program, but let Auntie D carry her and after some fussing fell asleep for the remainder of the hike up.

The endless switchbacks finally gave way to the open meadows of Forgotten Peak. We saw few people on the trail and almost no one on the meadows, so we hunted around for a prime location, part shade and part sun to stop for lunch, savor the views, and Cara stretch her legs while us sherpas rested ours. There were no bugs and a light breeze made conditions perfect for a leisurely lounge and some photo taking.

But the long trail down awaited us. Reluctantly we packed up our bags and Cara and headed down the buggy trail. We paused only briefly on our descent for some food, swarmed at each stop by biting flies. The lack of crawling time left Cara a little irritable on the drive home, but with the radio to distract her she eventually fell asleep and we enjoyed the satisfaction of having completed a fun day out in the mountains. Somehow Cara remained bite free, although her mother was less fortunate and required liberal amounts of calamine lotion to soothe her itching legs. A worthwhile trade-off as we continue to train our mountain girl.

Food, glorious food

Luckily Cara's diet doesn't consist entirely of wood chips. Dried leaves are another favorite, and proven choking hazard. Wouldn't want Mom to get bored while exploring the great outdoors! But when she is inside, Cara Hsiu-Wen is quite happy to be fed a growing list of yummy foods. She's even happier when she can stuff the foods into her mouth herself. Needless to say, this can get a little messy, as the above photo shows. But who cares when she is having so much fun! More rice and peas, please!

In The Park

Cara is definitely an active baby, and loves getting out and about. Luckily there are several parks within walking distance of our house, and she has explored them all by now. Not that she can do much independently (except eat wood chips), but walking around with someone holding her hands, swinging and going down the slide are all favorite activties. Or just hanging out with Dad, who is always fun!

Bath Time

Okay, I've fallen behind again. No huge changes over the last three weeks, but Cara is definitely growing in all directions. She's crawling just fine and getting faster every day, especially if there is a cat in sight. She has become a pro at pulling herself up to a stand on almost everything, including Mom's legs (doesn't even require long pants to hang on to any more). She has also become very skilled at sitting down from a stand, so we've had very few bonked heads recently. Ironically enough, most of the recent bonks have come from Cara falling backwards while sitting down. She starts waving her arms around and boom, over she goes. Luckily it isn't too far to the ground yet...

Cara is also turning out to be a water girl and loves her baths. The above photo is after a bath, luxuriating in a lovely new towel that a friend gave her. Life isn't so bad!

First Hike

When our friend Ema emailed to suggest we go on a hike with Cara, after a brief hesitation I jumped at the idea. Perhaps we should start with a shorter hike, say Discovery Park or someplace like that, but Cara had already spent upwards of 3 hours in the Ergo (with breaks), so a real hike didn't seem that far off. We settled on a 9-mile hike up to Melakwa Lake, ignoring the many possible problems such as a longer drive than Cara had been on since leaving Taiwan, a long stint in the front carrier, possible bugs and the fact that she was fussing from having her second tooth come in. Cara doesn't do things by halves after all - something she shares with her parents!

The punchline is, she did great. Minor fuss in the car as we left Seattle but she soon settled down to a nice nap that lasted all the way to Snoqualmie Pass. We packed up and were soon on the trail, with Cara enjoying all the new sights around her. She started to get a little antsy after about 30 minutes, just in time for a stop near the Denny Creek water slide where we found a quiet flat spot off the to side for Cara to crawl around a little and sample the local pine needles.

Back on the trail Cara quickly dozed off, missing the beautiful waterfall along the trail. I'm sure we'll be back that way with her again. The trail seemed much longer with the extra weight of a sleeping child on my front, but since Ema was carrying all our other gear, I couldn't complain. And eventually we reached Hemlock pass, soon after arriving at scenic Melakwa Lake.

Cara had woken by then, but seemed quite content to hang out with her mommy. We found a clear spot to put down a groundcloth, change her diaper and give her a bottle, while chowing down hungrily ourselves. We didn't spend too long exploring since it was getting late and I wasn't certain how she was going to react to the long hike back to the car. Cara did have time to explore the texture of a pine cone and complained only when I didn't let her eat it. She also checked out her first big tree, and seemed appropriately impressed (probably by the bark more than anything).

She started fussing soon after we began hiking away from the lake and I was beginning to worry I'd end up carrying a tantruming baby four and a half miles down the trail. But not our sweet girl. The fusses soon abated and Cara conked out for another 50-minute nap. Brief playtime by the water slide, another bottle at the car, and we were soon headed home, feeling very satisfied with our day. As icing on the cake, Cara slept the whole way home.

I'm hoping we get many more hikes in this summer!

Big Week

Our little girl just isn't going to do things by halves and its been an eventful week. Monday saw Cara crawling. Not just creeping, but genuine, knees and hands crawling. She isn't going too far too fast, only because she gets distracted by all the new things she passes on the way. So we haven't had to corral her away from the stairs yet. But the fascination with the floor, walls and chair legs will probably only last another couple of days and we have to get into some serious childproofing.

A bigger risk is that Cara seems to view crawling primarily as a means of getting to objects she can pull herself up on to stand. The set of things that are sufficiently stable with hand-holds at the correct height is still pretty small, but that doesn't stop her from trying! And of course the further up she manages to pull herself, the bigger the thunk when she falls down. We're doing our best to protect her from sharp corners and be there to catch at least many of the falls, but we have a feeling that she's going to be falling down a lot in the next few months.

She also cut her first tooth early in the week, resulting in a relatively sleepless night on Sunday after a slightly fussy day. The second lower incisor is on its way. Needless to say she is chewing on everything in reach and drooling. But otherwise seems mostly to be her usual sweet-natured self.

Which was a good thing since she got to meet Grandma and Grandpa this week! After initial shyness they both started to get lots of big Cara Hsiu-Wen smiles, giggles and babbles. She's a very talkative little girl at times, we all just wish we had a better understanding of what she was trying to say. Both grandparents enjoyed holding and playing with their granddaughter and were suitably impressed by her easy-going temperament. She did at least prove herself a proper baby by spitting up on Grandpa. They are looking forward to another visit and we are too, since between playing with Cara and helping out we finally made some significant progress on a few house projects!

Settling in

At long last, a post! We have a hard time believing that an entire month has gone by since we came home. But when we see how much more comfortable Cara Hsiu-Wen is now, clearly time has passed.

The first week wasn't exactly easy, especially regarding sleep. Which remains as issue, but mostly because our expectations keep increasing! She now sleeps mostly through the night in her crib, going to bed around 6:30 pm and usually requiring some pats and gentle sh's to go back to sleep when she wakes around 4 am. Some mornings we're lucky and she sleeps until 6 am, other mornings she is cooing in her crib by about 5:30 am. In either case she is okay hanging out in her crib babbling for about 30 minutes, so we never get her up until 6 am. Maybe as the sunrise gets later she'll start sleeping later?

Cara's early promise of crawling hasn't fully materialized into the full arms and knees version, but she can definitely move herself around just fine. At least on carpeting. Luckily she is still slow on the hardwoods (which is most of our house), although this morning when she really wanted to get to the cat she moved several feet in just a few minutes. The house isn't childproofed yet, but we have gates and cabinet locks so we're ready when she makes that next developmental jump.

And we are discovering that we've been blessed with a baby with generally a pretty easy temperament. Cara's on the high activity end, but in general hardly fusses and genuinely seems happy most of the time. Not extremely outgoing, but warms to new people fairly quickly. Her smile will melt steel, and possibly cameras since it is very hard to capture in a photo! We're still working on getting the full effect to post.

We saw the pediatrician two weeks ago and he gave Cara a clean bill of health. Since that time she's grown out of some onesies and pants, so all that formula she's chugging down isn't just passing through. Still working on getting her used to solid food.

Hopefully now that things have calmed down a bit and we're all a little more used to eachother we'll be able to post more often.

Addendum: I take that back. As of today (7/2) Cara is definitely crawling! We're not sure if we're delighted or terrified.