My Etsy shop!

My Etsy shop is FINALLY back up!  Right now I just have my prints up because everything else needs to be photographed.  It's a start.  Check it out!  I also added Etsy Mini to the right sidebar.

Getting Out

Tuesday of last week I declared to Josh that I didn't want to look back on this summer and realize we spent every evening in front of the television.  It's easy to do.  We both get home from work, I make dinner and by the time everything is said and done, all we want to do is zone out.  The nights that Josh works late or I plan a more elaborate dinner make this worse.  Toby doesn't typically allow me to disappear into the kitchen to cook dinner and our kitchen isn't really set up to handle him.  The more elaborate the dinner, the longer it takes and the messier the aftermath is.  SO, my new goal for the remainder of the summer is to plan simple quick meals for dinner so we can have some time in the evenings for some outdoor time.  We have a really nice walking trail about 5 minutes away from us, a couple of small parks with play structures for Toby, and we could at least spend the evening in the backyard if nothing else.  Tuesday night we had a quick dinner of chicken sausages from Costco (yum) and several different fresh veggies from the garden.  After the nice easy cleanup we went down to the walking trail and walked for about an hour.  Toby spent most of the time in the stroller.  We tried to let him walk a bit but the sidewalk was pretty rough so he fell and scraped his knee pretty bad.  All and all, the walk was lovely and successful.  The trip to the park afterwards was NOT a success.  Toby, who usually loves to swing, had a meltdown on the swing.  Sadly, the park was not very well maintained so there was broken glass and trash everywhere so we couldn't really let him run around.  We finally left with Toby in tears.  Perhaps a different playground next time.

Since then, we've been doing great.  We've going down to the walking trail almost every evening since.  On a work retreat last week I discovered a really great hiking area that is quite close.

 view from the bridge

 waterfall created by a dam

 ducks on the water

We went there on Sunday and had a lovely hike around the lake.  Toby rode in the Ergo.  Not the most hiking friendly carrier, especially on some of the steeper hill that were on this hike but it worked.  We may start looking for a frame carrier for him and we are hoping to let him do some himself as he gets older.

I hope we continue to do this.  Toby is an active kiddo and I want to make sure we can keep up with him.  We love hiking and got out of the habit of it a few years ago so I would really like to make this a part of our lives again. 

Fearless

This weekend we took a day trip to the beach.  I really love the coast.  It's one of my favorite places to be.  Considering how close we live we really don't go often enough.  We piled Toby and the 2 dogs into the car and headed out.  I was pretty apprehensive about handling a very active toddler and two dogs but I took a deep breath and we hit the road.  The car ride started out pretty rough.  Toby wasn't happy about being in the back seat by himself and Pooka was grumpy about being banished to the back of the vehicle in his crate.  We stopped  at our favorite breakfast spot on the way to Long Beach, all little place called The Berry Patch in Westport, OR and then loaded back into the car, this time me in back with Toby to keep him company.

When we got to Long Beach we headed straight to the beach.  Toby's to the age where we have to decide if we should load him into the stroller or let him walk.  Since we would have had to carry the stroller until we got to the hard sand we let him walk. He was very interested in the sand and walking in it.  He walked until he was tired and then I carried him to the harder sand.  That's where the fun began!

Toby was loving it!  I took him up to the edge of the ocean to see how he liked the water and he was totally into it.  He would have walked right in and kept on going if I'd let him.  This brought up some uncomfortable thoughts for me to be honest.  I love how fearless he is and I don't want to squash that but I also don't want him trying to fly off the roof one day.  How do I simultaneously encourage his freedom and bravery while teaching him boundaries?  One of the many parenting conundrums I have to sort out.

Wanting to give him a little more freedom, we went up to where the higher tide had left puddles and I let him play around for a while and then we went and played in the sand.  He had a great time pushing the sand around.

I was still feeling a little overwhelmed with having both Toby and the dogs there but Josh talked me down.  He took care of the dogs while I watched the baby.  Maybe not the most relaxing trip to the beach ever but we all had a pretty good time.

We planned on walking around town for a while.  They were having cake for Jake the Alligator Man's birthday but we felt it was too warm of a day to leave the dogs in the car.  After a change of clothes for Toby, we loaded back into the car, stopped for some french fries and headed back towards home. Baby and dogs were all tuckered so slept blissfully all the way home.