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I've been itching to go camping ever since the weather hit above seventy degrees but despite all of my best efforts no camping trips easily materialized, so I took things into my own hands and on this day I threw some clothing and blankets into the van, picked Miguel up from work, and headed out to the KOA in Manchester Beach that we had stumbled upon on our last adventure. My main goal was to put as little stress and planning into the trip, and it actually worked out beautifully.

 I am a creature of planning and organizing, but I wanted to recreate the sort of trips my dad and I used to take during the summers of my childhood. We would pack up some clothes, grab the ice chest, and more often than not head up or down Highway 1. As a kid I found some of it a little boring, and I remember my dad's exasperation when we would pull up to somewhere beautiful and I would want to stay in the van reading a book, but as an adult those trips have become one of my fondest summer memories. (Admittedly it still doesn't hold a candle to the weekly August trip I took with my mom's extended family every year until Z was a baby. But that is a trip I cannot as easily try to replicate.)

 For a trip that I could throw together for just my little family, this one was a success. By the time we stopped at the bank, grabbed a pizza, (we thought it would be fun to bring a pizza camping, but then ate most of it during the drive anyhow) hit the grocery store, and then drove a couple hours on the winding country roads it was about 8 o'clock but the kids got in all of the running and exploring that they could before it was time to build a campfire.

 

 And, in Miguel's case, it was time to bring out the Jiffy Pop.

I was a little worried about getting Az to sleep with our usual bedtime routine interrupted but she was completely enamored with the tent. Just like clockwork, around 10PM she took my hand so I would follow her to the tent and told me she was ready for bed. She nursed for a little bit before drifting off to sleep next to her brother and Miguel and I were left to our own devices, me wishing we had brought more firewood and Miguel wishing he had his Xbox.

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Moments before yelling, "Boo!"

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Killing time while Z was in his tae kwon do class. She grabbed the backpack just before we were heading out the front door, and stocked it with the two most important things; a doll and a sippie cup full of water.

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Helping his sister use the outdoor showers at Memorial Beach.

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Sharing her dim sum with her brother. Dinner always tastes a little better when eaten gathered around the coffee table, sitting on the floor.

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Today we went to a child's birthday party but stayed less than half an hour because it didn't feel completely safe. I'm learning to listen to my inner voice; some things are out of my comfort zone for a reason.

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I forgot to take a picture today until Az was already passed out. Az has been putting herself to bed lately, sort of. A little before 9 each night she will announce that she is ready for bed and tells me to come on. She says her good-nights to her dad and brother and then waits for me in bed. I'll ask her if she wants a book or not, it can really go either way depending on how tired she is. We nurse for a while and when she is asleep I leave her in bed, where she usually sleeps at least a couple hours before needing me to join her. Ideally she would be falling asleep on her own, without needing the nursing or for me to stay with her but it's a step in the right direction. I like that Az realizes when she is ready for bed (she will announce when she is ready for a nap in the afternoon if I haven't already started the process.) Z still doesn't realize when he is over-tired. For that matter, neither do I sometimes.

Az putting herself down means that she has been going to bed before Z. Up until now I've had to keep her up until her brother's bedtime so that he wouldn't wake her up, but it seems like now she's learning to sleep through Z noises (though I do remind him often that his sister is sleeping.) In the past this has meant that Az sometimes stays up later than I would prefer, but now I should be able to start putting her to bed long before Z's bedtime. At least someone in the family is taking charge of getting Az on a good sleep schedule, even if it is Az herself.

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After Z was done with school today we picked up some sandwiches and headed to Memorial Beach in Healdsburg. It was another extraordinarily hot day. Miguel had opted to wear long pants to the beach and was dismayed to see there was no shade by the water so we sat on the lawn under the trees until it cooled down enough to go down by the river. The kids didn't mind as much as they might have, as they had the shower to cool off in. They were both very happy to get down to the river though; both of them continue to test just how far they can go in the water. Swim lessons are definitely going to be on the docket next summer. Z says he doesn't want them still, but since he does want to swim beyond where he can stand he's going to have to accept them. He did three years of them when he was younger but never took them very seriously. Maybe next summer when his baby sister is swimming around he'll feel more motivated to learn.

 

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I thought we would go for a walk around Spring Lake after dropping Z off at school today but Az had other plans. As soon as she saw the swimming hole, and the people doing laps in it, she was in the water herself. By 9AM it was already approaching 90 degrees so I just ran with it. The only bummer was that her change of clothes was not 100 degree temp friendly, and we didn't head home until later in the evening so after her nice cool down she was stuck in long jeans the rest of the day. I have a feeling she still felt like it was worth it.

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Taking a break from the autism study Az has been part of since she was hanging out in my womb. I was contacted about taking part in a study that focuses on the causes of autism when I was pregnant. It seemed like a win-win situation, I would be helping research that would both benefit society and my family and my baby would be followed so that if there were any signs she might be on the spectrum those signs would most likely be discovered earlier. The study will continue to follow her until she turns five.

I haven't really been too worried about Az being on the spectrum. She seems like she is developing on time if not early in every category. During this day's visit Az was able to do all of the tasks I would expect a two-year-old to do. She chose not to do many of them because she wanted to play with other toys in the room rather than sit at the table talking to the doctor and performing the tasks asked of her. We were in the small room for over an hour so I didn't really blame her for growing bored of the exercises. At a certain point she seemed to decide she would just do the bare minimum to move along. When the doctor asked her to name certain facial features on a picture Az just pointed and said, "nose" each time. Az can easily name twenty facial and body parts, very easily in fact. It seems like the activities during the study aren't always the most accurate, but we're helping them get more data than if we weren't showing up at all.

Az wasn't able to do the multi-step requests, such as, "Put the teacup on the small table and then close the book," but this seemed to still be a little advanced for a just turned two-year-old. Maybe it's not, I don't spend a lot of time with other two year olds these days, but in any case it wasn't anything that concerned me too much. There were some things she did manage to do that I had assumed she wouldn't, like threading beads onto a shoe lace. One of the unexpected benefits from the study has been finding out Az has skills I wouldn't have discovered on my own until possibly much later.

It seemed like the hidden skills balanced out with the skills she hasn't quite acquired. She was feeling a little shy in addition to increasingly bored so I know she will score lower this time, because there were a lot of things she didn't attempt. What did concern me was that the doctor pointed out Az had been walking on her tiptoes almost the entire time. I'd noticed that before without really giving it much thought, but once it had been blatantly pointed out to me I had to admit to myself that this was a possible sign of autism.

The doctor told me to be aware of other possible early signs, and of course immediately they all seemed to apply to Az as she listed them off. As a matter of fact, Az doesn't really cry when she gets hurt. She does like to have a clean environment around her. It's so easy to begin seeing everything as something to be concerned about but since then I've given it some thought of course, and while Az usually doesn't cry when she gets hurt she does when it hurts enough, and she almost always comes in for a snuggle and a kiss after a fall. She prefers things to be clean around her, but I'd hope she would. She lives in a household that tends towards the messy side; if she required things to be meticulously clean she would constantly be agitated. Even when it comes to the tip-toe walking, it seems like she only does it in certain shoes. Most importantly, Az shows a lot more empathy than Z has; when someone is crying Az is concerned and wants to comfort them. Z has always been a little baffled when people show emotions around him, I'd say this is the biggest "autistic" thing about him.

I feel like I could make a strong case for both Az being on the spectrum and not being on spectrum. She's only two so it's so hard to tell. I will definitely mention the tip-toe walking when we see her pediatrician in a couple of weeks, and now that it has been brought up I probably will keep an eye for other warning signs. I know it wouldn't be the end of the world if Az were on the autism spectrum, it would probably be much easier for me this go around because I've put in so much time on the battlegrounds already. I know what services to ask for and where to try to get them. I know how to be a mom to an autistic child. But crap, life on the spectrum hasn't been easy for Z. I want life to be as easy as possible for both of my children.

But hey, if worse comes to worse we'll just buy her a bunch of toddler-sized high heels and continue on.

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Playing in the redwoods in the unincorporated land that I think is probably most closely Windsor. There's a fantastic picnic area with volley ball courts, horse shoe pits, and a giant barbeque or two, all along a peaceful lake (it's so peaceful because there's no swimming allowed.) It's just calling for a party to be thrown. I just might have to attempt to have Z's next birthday, in early March, here and hope I'm not tempting Mother Nature with my bold move. It would be a great area to release a gaggle of especially energetic pre-teen boys. It's been a great place to release a two-year-old girl at anyhow.

 

26/366 Gotta love summer. This week was all about Independence Day at the Calistoga County Fair.  Z had a very nice time. He continues to try out things that were not so long ago out of his comfort zone, which is huge for him. I tried bribing and bullying him into trying out the yo-yo (the swings that turn above the heads of passersby) but they were still a step beyond what he is willing to try. Which is fine, he went on a number of rides that I thought were much "scarier," but a mom is free to be greedy when it comes to milestones right?

On the first ride Z went on he met a boy roughly his own age whom was there with his parents. He wanted someone to go on the rides with and invited Z to hang out with him. I told Z it was fine and started to follow the boy to the attraction he was headed to, the ride that is a jungle of foam and bridges ending in a slide, but Z zipped ahead of him and ran through the entire thing almost before the boy had even entered. This continued in the fun house and every other thing the boy asked Z to join him on. The boy was patient and continued to go on things with Z, despite the fact that Z wasn't actually doing any of it with him. Eventually we broke away to do other things, but I wish I had realized there were a couple of rides that required groups of two because of course Z ended up wanting to go on them. He had the good idea of approaching kids his age whom had wristbands to ask them if they wanted to go on any of the rides with him, but none of them did.

When Z was standing in line for the bumper cars he was behind two boys around his age, and in front of them was a boy who appeared to be maybe seven or eight. Z was his usual outgoing self, talking away at them and trying to get them to laugh, all the while standing much too close to them. He got them to laugh all right, but they were clearly laughing at him. Even the boy who was much younger than Z was joining in on making fun of him, which bothered me much more than the older boys for some reason. I guess I feel like younger boys are supposed to look up to the older boys.  They're supposed to be the ones trying to do the impressing.

I wanted to just stand back and let the scene play out because I can't hover over Z his entire life but he was getting more and more wild, spinning, flapping, jumping, and making loud noises in an attempt to get the boys to laugh. I think Z could sense he was being rejected, and when he feels like he isn't being accepted he starts to get more frantic, and "spin" in an attempt to get his audience back. When Miguel came back from the bathroom I sent him over to discreetly tell Z to cool it a little. Z replied, "They think I'm funny." Miguel told him that they weren't laughing with him, and Z did tone it down a little but it's just not in his nature to just stand there and try to look cool. Z could care less about looking cool.

The encounter was a good reminder of how lucky we are to have found the school Z is currently in. Z would be eaten alive at most junior high schools but at the school he's at he's free to (mostly) be himself. He's not the weird kid, and most of the time when the kids are laughing at him it's because they genuinely think he's funny. I think life would be a lot different (and more difficult) if we hadn't been welcomed into his school community.

 This week we also headed to Fort Ross and the ocean. I love that my children love nature as much as I do, and that they are both willing to follow me on my half-cocked adventures.

And finally, we ended the week swimming in my aunt Denise's pool. Z loves his great-aunt so much.

This week was the perfect reminder of why summer is my favorite season.

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We have been trying to spend some time with my aunt Denise, my father's sister, for some time but our schedules were having trouble aligning. When we finally found a date that would work for both Denise and us we decided to visit with her at her condo's pool. Because the only thing better than spending with an adored great-aunt is getting to swim while spending time with an adored great-aunt. It has probably been about a year since Az was in a pool, the last time we came up to Denise's. Being the water lover that she is, I was excited to reintroduce her to a swimming pool.

Az's nap was cut short by our visit so she was a little clingy and cranky when we first got to Denise's but as soon as she saw the pool all of that was forgotten. I love how brave my girl is, but I wish she were just a little more wary of bodies of water. She immediately climbed down the steps until the water reached well over her shoulder and showed no fear about going down to the next step, which would have required her to stand on her tiptoes to keep her nose out of the water.

When Z was this age he too loved the water and would charge in but he showed a little more trepidation than his sister has so far. When he was around four years old he got a little too brave wandering into the deeper water in a swimming pool and I had to yank him out. From that day forward he was fearful of even dunking his head under water. That fear carried on until this summer, and even now Z is barely at that point of being comfortable dunking under quickly. I want Az to be wary of the water just enough where she is careful but still able to enjoy it.

Az agreed to put on her life jacket without much of a fuss when she continued to go a little deeper than I was comfortable with but once she had acclimated to the pool she again wanted it off. Since I was in the pool with her by that time I was fine it. She is so comfortable and proficient in the water. I was helping her float on both her stomach and back and she knew without any coaching to kick when on her stomach. She also wanted to try floating on her back but every time I turned her to her back she put her legs up in the air, as if she were sitting in a chair and the water was the back of the chair. We have plenty of time to perfect her float though.

It was such a joy for me getting Az into the pool. She is such a little ball of muscle, it was amazing to feel her little system of muscles working at swimming. I had played around with putting her in swim lessons this summer but at her age the kids take the lesson with the parent in the pool with them to play games and blow bubbles with. At Az's age swim lessons are about getting the toddler used to water, and Az is beyond being used to water; she and water are on a first name basis.

For much of the time we were in the pool together Az would exclaim, "Fishy!" and I would pull her through the water in a zigzag motion. When I was zigging her left she would turn her head right to keep the water out of her face and no matter how quickly I zigged her right she would quickly snap her head to the left, over and over. I really do think it's possible that Az will be swimming with very little to any help next summer. Hopefully that will motivate her brother to give swim lessons a chance. We spend way too much time in water for him to not know how to maneuver in it.

Z loves swimming (with the aid of a life jacket) almost as much as he loves his great-aunt. Az hasn't spent as much time with Denise as Z had at her age but I'm hoping to fix that. She's already added Denise to her list of people she wants to call on the telephone daily.

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Az brought my old Madame Alexandra baby doll out with her for this month's photo shoot, and posed her for the photos. The doll had slipped out of her pose by this shot. I'm a little late with the monthly photo this time, and it's been a few more days since I took the photo. But, at 24 months give or take a few days:

• She has discovered her deep love for pistachios. Because you know my girl can't just love a more affordable nut.
• Her new favorite pastime is calling people on the phone, usually both of her grandmas. She's really putting Miguel's and my phone contacts to the test.
• Her favorite things at the moment are dolls and trucks. Whenever we see trucks on the street she gets excited, and she is drawn to car, truck, and train toys in the store. She seems pretty set on dolls for a while so we're going to have to increase her collection of vehicles. I love a cute little girl with a doll but I think a cute little girl with a truck might be even better.
• Animals are also big on the Az excitement scale, both live animals and animals on TV and in books. Ponies, hippos, and birds seem to have a special appeal. She likes dinosaurs as well, but since Z never went through a dinosaur phase we don't have much to support this interest of hers yet. I'm sure this will soon change.
• Az vocabulary has exploded. It seems like every day she has at least one new word she's throwing around in conversation. She still isn't speaking in sentences regularly but she will work in four or five word sentences into her communication.
• She can be a little shy sometimes, usually around kids her age. Z was always outgoing so I'm going to have to adjust to needing to encourage her to play and interact. I was a painfully shy child and missed out on opportunities because of it so I'm hoping it's just a toddler thing. She is generally outgoing and chatty with adults, I think she may just not be used to young children. I've been trying to find kids Az's age for her to interact with since before she was crawling but we don't have any built-in friends for her.
• Az is keeping my hygiene in check. Whenever she sees a booger in someone's nose she points to it and says, "Bug." Miguel and I have begun adopting the phrase ourselves; I have to admit I sort of like it. ("Bug" is Az's word for small objects that she considers to be dirty, such as a smudge of food on her clothing, or an actual insect in the house.)
• She is very good at wiping her hands and face both while eating and after. If I hand her a diaper wipe she is generally good at keeping herself clean and presentable. Z never had that desire to wipe his hands or face. He still doesn't in fact.
• Az also enjoys wiping down surfaces with a diaper wipe. A few times now I've handed her a wipe and she's cleaned off a table for me. Her dad isn't always fastidious about wiping off her highchair tray (i.e. he only does it with some reminding) so I've been keeping some wipes next to her chair so that she can clean the tray herself before eating. This is all very novel to me because as I said, Z has never shown any interest in having a clean environment. In fact, he says it stresses him out to have things be too clean.
• Az is still my rough and tumble, play in the dirt girl. But when she's done, she does want to clean up.
• She always needs a sippy cup of water nearby. I'm getting used to bringing her sippy cup with us when we leave each day so I can meet her demands of "Sippy." I keep bottles of water in the van at all times and she's never minded them but recently she has grown to strongly prefer a sippy cup to anything else. I actually had thought we might be done with suppy cups altogether until recently.

I love watching this girl grow!

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Since Miguel had the day off and Z was still on break from ESY I decided it was high time for a mini road trip. I consulted my book of hikes in the area and once again was a little disappointed by the limited options listed. However, it did remind me that I had been meaning to bring the kids to Fort Ross. I love trips that are both beautiful and educational; the teacher in me doesn't fully go on summer vacation I guess.

 Although, when I asked Z towards the end of our visit what he had learned, he gave me such gems as, "You can walk down the road to the beach." Oh well, the scenery was still pretty at least.

Okay, we need to discuss the above photo. As we were walking out of one of the buildings Az ran to the cannon and I started shooting away. After I had taken a few shots Az ran up to me and requested to see the photo. She then ran a few feet away and walked back, and I took this photo. Again she ran up to me and requested to see the photo. She did this three or four times, each time very nonchalantly posing for me and then checking to see how the photo had come out. It made me wonder what effect having a mother who is so constantly taking photos of her will have on her. I'll be sad if I have to stop taking photos because it begins to seem like I am making her too self-conscious of the way she looks.

 I have no problem with bribing Z into photo ops though. He really wanted to go into a particular building but I wanted to make our way from each building in a clock-ways direction, rather than zig-zagging back and forth across the yard. Since we were about to enter the building he was lusting after anyhow I told him that if he went and did drills with the ranger and a couple of other boys we could go to the building. I was a little surprised that he agreed to do it, but I had a blast watching him march all around the fort. He may or may not have accidentally hit the boy behind him in the head with his gun, but otherwise he did very well staying in formation.

We headed down to the beach after we had fully explored the fort. I've always driven down to the beach but the road down was closed on this day and once we got to the parking lot we discovered that parking was actually not allowed in the lot any longer anyhow. Being such a remote beach, and sort of a hassle to get to, we had the entire thing mostly to ourselves. The photo of the kids together was supposed to be of just Z by the way, but when Az saw him posing she ran to stand next to him. I'm not understanding her change in heart regarding her attitude about having photos taken but I'm going to enjoy it as long as it lasts.

While we were exploring the beach Miguel found a secret den built into the trees. We crawled through a small, low opening in the branches to discover a hidden world created by the branches of the bushes that grew on the beach. It was large enough in there to pitch a tent or two, which Miguel and I both made special note of. Az was feeling pretty tired by then so we decided to cut our secret hideout time short to head back up to the car. Except that we ended up taking a shortcut that we knew going in led the opposite direction from where we needed to go, and ended nowhere near our destination. Az was fine enough with this though, as she got to nap in her dad's arms during the trek.

Where the path ended.

I wasn't ready to go home when we were done with the fort. Rather than turning right back in the direction of home and the ever expanding laundry pile waiting for me at home I decided to turn left, north, further up the coast to see where it would bring me. It brought me to Gualala, where we stopped for dinner at a supermarket/bakery/Mexican food/ice cream parlor/pizzeria. We opted for the pizzeria part of the menu, and okay maybe a little of the bakery too. Eating in a supermarket wasn't the most ambient of environments, but the pizza was good. When we were done with the dinner (we were ejected a little suddenly and prematurely because the woman running the place wanted to go home) Miguel assumed we would go home too. Except I wasn't done with my adventuring, so I again headed north.

I am so glad I decided to push my luck with the Great North, because we happened upon a KOA in Manchester Beach that was quite the poor man's resort, and we were poor men looking for a vacation spot. Miguel and I are determined to find our way back there in the not too distant future. We loved the KOA so much that we figured we sort of had to check out the beach. Actually, I think I was just looking for a bathroom at the time but in any case we ended up climbing the sand dunes to check out the beach. We happened to get there at sunset, and it was just the sort of ending I was looking for to our day of exploration.

 Manchester Beach is the furthest north I've been on Highway 1 in many, many years, though we were a little surprised to get into the dunes and see Point Arena jutting out not that far away. We had driven a ways to end up not really very far from the lighthouse we visited earlier this year, as the crow flies. When I was little my dad used to throw a couple of bags and a camp stove into his van and during the summers we would spend a week driving up and down Highway 1 ending up wherever the road led. My dad had a much larger van than the one I inherited from him that I'm currently driving; in it were two caption chairs, an ice box that was designed like a fridge (with one compartment on top of of the other) and a bed in the back. It lent itself to passing out on the side of the road much better than my present van, and I now travel in a group twice as large as the one my dad and I made, but I'm determined to throw some clothing and a tent into the van and just start driving up the coast the next time Miguel has two days off in a row.

(And yes, in the above picture Miguel is in fact standing on the highest dune checking his phone. He shall forever remain a little more of a city slicker than me.)

I've always known I wanted children. Always. And when I imagined my life with my littles, this was the exact type of day I imagined getting to have. It can be so easy to get over-whelmed and focus on all of the mundane tasks that fill daily life, but it is days like this that give me pause. I can't express how blessed I felt to be living the life I am with the people I am as I watched the people I love moving about the beach. The next time I'm feeling stressed and irritable I want to remember the feeling of this evening on the beach with my family.

I may have gotten a little greedy about not wanting to let the adventure end; on the drive back home I decided to take what I hoped would turn out to be a short cut. It was pitch black by then and the hour we spent of the unbelievably winding, isolated road was a little terrifying. A few days later I told my aunt, my dad's sister, about my experience with the road. She said that my dad had warned her to stay away from that particular road because it was so unpleasant. My dad had a Class A license. He drove delivery trucks in San Francisco and whipping motor homes around narrow roads that dropped off into nothing. He was not a man to be deterred by a road. It's probably good that it was so dark on the road; I have a feeling the journey would have been even worse had I been able to see what I was doing.

Not counting the wretched hour or so when I wasn't sure if I was going to ever see civilization again, the day was by far one of the best I've had in a good long while. I love that I'm raising such adventurous, nature loving children and that Miguel is up for the half-cocked journeys I take him on. One of these days we may even convince him to go ahead and tuck that smart phone of his away.