Tucker is 11 months old!

We love our Tucker-Pie! Eleven months old and so much fun. He is a crawling machine, he can cross a room quickly and quietly before you can turn around in a circle. He learned to crawl up onto the fireplace and after a few supervised falls (for learning) he recently mastered how to climb down. Recently he began to let go of furniture and can balance and stand for as long as five seconds. If you hold his hands, he will walk a little although I can feel he doesn't have the balance down yet. My bet is that he will walk on his first birthday, dad thinks it may be sooner.

He eats almost everything; the few things he seems to dislike are raspberries, plain scrambled eggs (but he will gobble french toast) and despite that Hulk-like avocado photo he doesn't seem to want avocados anymore. Already developing his palate, he enjoys kalbi marinated flank steak, salmon and mushrooms in addition to the more traditional baby fare of blueberries, bananas and pasta.

Since he was very small, Tucker has played with his mouth and tongue. There is the classic Fein move of sticking the tongue out of the side of his mouth (this goes back at least as far as grandfather Earl). At four months he would suck in his cheeks and make fish lips and, even better, on occasion he would somehow suck in a lip and make sideways fish lips which I haven't been able to capture on camera. Currently he likes to imitate noises, particularly clicking his tongue; if you click at him he will click back and he does it to dad a lot, I'm beginning to think that his word for dad is "click." He also enjoys blowing raspberries and making the "ma ma ma" and "da da da" noises although he doesn't use them as words for us.

Trip to the Washington Coast

My mom really wanted to plan a family vacation this year over the Independence Day holiday, something to get all of her kids and grand kids under the same roof  allowing her unfettered access to their smiles and shrill screams. Requesting some place near water, we settled on the southwest coast of Washington, just north of Ocean Shores in a place called "Ocean City" although no one would mistake it for a city, there isn't even a stop sign as you drive through "town." The house was situated just up from the beach, with a grassland and stream in between. The beach was a five minute walk through the grass, over a little floating bridge then up and over a sandy embankment.

Michael and Jonathan took the kids exploring and returned with quite a story. As they approached the embankment, the kids suddenly started to cough and gag and then suddenly the adults knew why; the putrid smell of something decaying seemed to have settled right there. They made it up and over and spotted a dead whale 500 yards north on the beach.

Jonathan found local news articles online that told us the "fin whale" was 68 feet long and had been found on the beach about 3 weeks earlier (cause of death was likely blunt force trauma, likely from a boat). While it was a sad sight, I also knew this may be my only chance to see a whale this big, dead or alive, so Gran Hart, Po Po and I made our way to the beach. The smell was indeed terrifically awful but once we got onto the beach the smell was almost nonexistent, in fact we were able to walk within a couple feet of the whale.  In the photo below the head is on the right, turned to the side and partially buried in the sand, we weren't even able to make out an eye or mouth the way it was positioned.

We turned our attention to the seagulls and sand and enjoyed a bit of beach combing. The "tree" was a sort of sign erected by someone to mark the path to leave the beach.

The house had a big deck on the second level looking out towards the ocean which was just barely visible in the distance but you could certainly hear the waves crashing. It was the perfect spot to enjoy a morning cup of coffee, a sunny afternoon eating fresh bing cherries or an evening filled with smores and hamburger grilling.

The location was secluded enough that there wasn't too much to so our days were filled with good company, the kids playing, drives into the town of Ocean Shores, kite flying, a trip to the storybook town of Seabrook and a trip to the Lake Quintault  inside of Olympic National Park. Tucker was really interested in the sand, he was mesmerized watching it slip through his fingers, I think he was shocked he couldn't pick it up and eat it as it disappeared too quikly! The first couple photos were taken in Aberdeen on the drive to the coast.

enthralled by Curious George

Glowsticks! Po Po had a bag full of surprises for the kids

Park and Beach time in Seabrook

Near Lake Quinault

Lake Quintault Lodge