Camping

This weekend, we escaped the heat in Boston (103 on Friday) and headed up to New Hampshire for a weekend of camping.  We headed to the opposite side of the Whites from where we usually go.  Kristen found a nice campground in Waterville Valley.  We took our new car and headed up after work on Friday.

Davis had a fantastic time camping.  He really loves camping and has been very excited all week. Some of the highlights:

1. Throwing rocks in the creek, for a couple of hours
2. Davis "making waffles" with two spoons and a lot of dirt, for a couple of hours
3. Roasting marshmallows
4. A super cuddle bug at bedtime
5. Davis loving watching the stars
6. Hammock time
7. Enjoying our new car
8. A couple of hours at the beach
9. Getting away with a warning for 41 in a 30. Oops.
10. Watching boats and dancing to music in Waterville Valley town square

Here are some pictures:

It wasn't quite this hot.  It maxed out at 103 on Friday.

Down at the creek

Throwing rocks

Throwing rocks

Throwing rocks

Throwing rocks

Throwing rocks

Campground with a running toddler

I can't remember what he was asking about or telling a story about

Davis likes the new car

Davis likes the new car

Exploring Polar Caves, a little bit disappointing, but Davis was cute.

Kissing mom on the kissing bridge

We headed back a little early on Sunday to make it to a birthday part for one of Davis' daycare buddies.  More pictures from that soon hopefully.

Camping

This weekend, we headed up to White Lake State Park in New Hampshire for our second camping trip of the summer.  This is the same place we went before, and it is a great campground for kids.  There is a very shallow, sandy lake, a great playground and it is a much closer drive than many other areas near the white mountains.   We went up mid-morning on Saturday and came back around noon on Sunday.

A few of the highlights:

• All three of us went swimming in the lake.  Davis had a fantastic time walking out in the water then being held by mom while dad dove in the water near by.  I learned an important lesson (again): don't do something unless you want to do it 20 times.  I ran and dove next to Davis and by the time I came out of the water, he was saying "more" and making the sign.  I had to then repeat this about 20 times, but my reward was fantastic toddler giggles.
• It was a little cooler this time, so Davis got dressed up in his camping flannel.  Pictures are below.
• We spent about an hour and a half at the playground while we cooked over the coals on the grills at the beach.
• We aborted our hike when it started to rain, but the path was easy enough that Davis got to walk part of the way back.  We did have to guide him around the bear scat.
• Putting the little guy to sleep was both a challenge and immensely enjoyable.  When we were in there with him to try and calm him and put him to sleep, it just turned into a very cute and lovable play and cuddle time with Davis.  the tent with the sleeping bags spread out was too much like playtime and apparently, when we lie down on the ground, we get sat on.  Eventually we had to leave him in the tent for him to go to sleep by himself.  
• On the way back, we stopped to pick blue berries.  Davis quickly got the hang of it and had very blue hands and lips by the end.  We paid for an extra half pint to cover his "contribution" to our haul.
• While picking blue berries, I caught and rescued a dragon fly.  It was trapped in the netting covering the berries and I managed to catch it and release it outside the nets.

A few of the pictures:

In the flannel in the campground

Dirt, dirt and more dirt were the story of the trip.

Taking a snack break in the car.  He would sit still here for a few minutes, which was a nice change.

Hiking

Hiking

More hiking.  Checking out the camera.

One of the highlights of the hike was banging on this rock with a stick.

Toes are awesome

It's been a long time since I have blogged..since May in fact.  Luckily, John has been keeping up with posts recently, but I would like to get better at it since it's proving to be important for documenting Davis' development and sheer awesomeness.  So here's a small warmup to get me back in the swing of blogging. 


I don't think I've mentioned it here, but after I defended in May (and officially graduated in June), I began work as a postdoc, joint with my Ph.D. lab and a new lab.  I'm still working out what it all means with regards to where I am and when, but it's awfully comfy to stick around my old stomping grounds and work with the same people I have been working with for years.  The biggest change in my postdoc is that I am now doing biological experiments and very little computation.  It's been quite the change and an eye-opening experience.  I've been completely overwhelmed and it's been pretty hard to go from feeling like you know something to feeling like you know nothing.  I'm blessed with great colleagues who are happy to help me through the learning curve of experiments (and enough of them I can spread out the wealth of my ignorance among them all, decreasing the burden on any one of them, although some still get a pretty heavy dose of me).  I think I enjoy it.  In contrast to when I was doing fabrication, the experiments I'm doing go fast enough to keep me excited about them.  Fabrication work left me pretty unexcited about getting back into the lab, but it's proving to be a completely different mode and timescale (for reference, it was typically 6 months to a year of fabrication before you ever even got to sit down with a device to see if it did what you hoped it would).  One of the hardest transitions to this new way of life is scheduling my day.  I'm eating lunch at 2:30 in the afternoon, missing the gym, and coming home exhausted after a full day of standing and running between labs.  I think as time goes on and I get the hang of things, it will get better.


Davis is growing and changing by the day.  It's cliched, but.. It sure is amazing to see the world through the eyes of a newborn/baby/toddler.  For example, Davis loves the toe song.  You know the one that goes "This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy stayed home..."  When we take off his shoes and socks he looks at his feet and points and I sing the song.  He laughs in delight when the last little piggy runs home.  He usually points again and we sing again..then one more time usually, perhaps a few more times.


John and I are amazed by his capacity to pick new things up and even extend them.  For example, when we went to the water park, he picked up a stick.  When he saw other kids putting things like buckets in the water stream to catch water, he put his stick in it.  Then when a little girl showed him how to catch water with a bucket, he tried it.  The first time we went to the water park he splashed in the puddles on the perimeter.  The second time, he was running through the center where the water was pouring down.  Who knows what he will do next time.


Davis is certainly like his dad was, a "me do it meself" kind of guy.  He gets upset at mealtimes if we try and give him finger food a little at a time.  This morning breakfast went much better when we handed him the entire plate of eggs and toast along with a fork.  He's doing wonderful at feeding himself with a spoon and fork.  We just have to be on the watch for when he finishes in order to catch the plate before it hits the ground.   


We hoped to go camping this weekend, Davis even has his own sleeping bag!  (Davis fell asleep on my sleeping bag on the last trip and I was freezing all night long).  Unfortunately, it looks like thunderstorms will prevent our trip from happening this weekend. 

First "Camping" Trip

We took our first "camping" trip since expanding our family by one last April.   Camping is in quotes because:

• We only went for Saturday night
• We were able to drive out the campground gates and goto Dunkin Donuts at 5:15 in the morning
• We ate all our meals out
• There was a playground in the campground

However, we were in the woods, sleeping in a tent and had a camp fire.  Davis had a blast, he loved the playground, beach, sand and running around in the woods.  We stayed at White Lake State Park in New Hampshire near Conway and the White Mountains.  The shallow beach and great playground and shorter drive than many other campgrounds made it a great place to stay with Davis. 

Saturday we went for a short hike:

Davis is in charge of course:

As with many New Hampshire mountains, the top is bare granite.  It was a little challenging for Davis to run around on, but he had fun scrambling and climbing around:

On the way home, we stopped at the New Hampshire State Liquor Store / Rest Area.  After getting stuck in traffic and using everything else in the car to entertain a cranky boy, I finally failed as a parent:

There are a few more pictures on picasa web albums, but are variations of the above.

ps. We stayed in site 80a, next time I would pick site 32a.  It was well back from the campground road and had a lot of distance between the adjoining sites.