Final Days

This last week has been an attempt to tie up all the loose ends before summer is over.  It reminds me of one of my favorite maine quotes.  I asked a friend, "so, how was your summer?" "It's ovah."  First we had to knock off some hikes, joining up with jen and luca to go to s. cottonwood creek (mike, you're right, it was fanastic. It seems I should take all my recreation advice from you.  I remember when I first met cate, and laura was preggers, and we weren't joining you two at the bar and you said, "eh, that's okay, you're not missing much." If I remember right, cate gave you a funny look), and then heading over to the humbug spires to check the dish. Let me tell you, the dish is gooooood.


I had to doggy paddle across the middle part of the creek, er,
um, River I mean... Raging river.



It turns out squeek digs the stream crossings



For those of that can see what I'm pointing at, and
for those of you that care (which I recognize are a scant few),
Above is the 800 ft tall granite wedge.  Superb rock quality,
coupled with a 3 mile approach.  In Montana terms,
this would be considered an afternoon crag (as opposed
to CA, where this is considered alpine).  We bailed due to
a horizon of lightning.



Sienna also digs checking out obscure climbing areas that we won't
climb at till she's bigger.



Lunch Time.  For those of you with tinies, or are
expecting, note the packet at sienna's foot.  There's a
couple different companies that make them including happy baby and
peter rabbit.  pure organic fruits and veggies, and they're
delicious.

We also had some final things to take care of up in boulder MT.  grandma and papa were out of town so we were taking care of the animals and garden while they were gone.



Sienna's giving the chicks water. She loved to watch the chickens,
whcih she calls ducks, but when amidst them mostly ignores em and
plays with the pail.  With this shirt she is lined up to play lacrosse,
which would be a good fit for her build.  Men's lacrosse, that is.



the dill went crazy this year.

We also had to put the final trim on the kitchen, which we were able to do.  Pretty darn pleased with how the whole thing turned out.

The final product.  The drawers to the right are full-extension drawers
(awesome), note the hanging pot rack (awesome), and behind the garbage
instead of a lazy susan we put in more ddrawer slides for the dehydrator and
canning jars.



Here's a close-up of the overhead shelves.
We used reclaimed lumber, which was a pain
to work with and way beyond our skill level,
but in the end turned out great.

 We also had to get in some running.  Tyson and I have egged each other into doing the seattle marathon in november, and after talking with jen, laura is psyched to do the half marathon then, too.  So, we've been doing some track workouts, which sienna also enjoys.


Definitely less baby, more girl.



While laura and I are pretty good at keeping pace in our intervals,
sienna has a long way to go.  I kept yelling, "you lack discipline" though
that didn't seem to help. She just wanted to play.



I think that's all I got.  What's she doing these days.  She walks and runs, climbs stairs and climbs down (still working on that), balances on one foot well enough to step over toys and legs and things.  She climbs into short rocking chairs, rocks, and climbs out.  Likewise on drums, strollers, plastic cars, etc.  She's experimenting with her movement, and is very confident over any terrain walking (including up and down hill, which is a big improvement).  She babbles, and repeats words.  She knows mama, dada, up, dog, woof, cat (not meow), bellybutton (which she drops the last syllable, and fudges the 'l's'), bubbles (bubuh), baby, head, shoes, and maybe some others (water, maybe).  More notably, she is understanding things.  She'll bring her shoes over to us because that means we're going outside.  When we say "you need to sit while you eat" she gives you a dirty look and sits.  "What's in your mouth," she opens her mouth.  "Where's your head," she points to her head. she starts to climb the stairs when it's nap time.  She reads books and finds the dogs in them. yesterday her hands were filthy with food and she was wiping it in her hair.  I threw my head into my hands in shame, and she kept doing it, and I realized that after a while she was pantomiming daddy by putting her head in her hands (thereby spreading the food).  She drinks well out of cups, sippy cups, bottles, eats mostly with her fingers and sometimes will feed herself with a spoon (usually the food drops into her lap before it makes it to her mouth (which is frustrating, though hilarious if you think of an adult doing it)).  She cuddles stuffed animals and sometimes kisses them, which makes daddy jealous.  Her favorite game remains running to the other side of the room, flopping onto the ground with her belly exposed, and giving you a big smile (that's your cue to march intimidatingly over to her and give her belly raspberries).  She learned this game from momma, who also flops onto the ground. When in her stroller she sings and lets the bumps play with her pitch.  throwing some excellent tantrums, though less violent than last month.  Is semi-purposefully bashing her head into the concrete with less frequency now.  This makes me happy.
That's about it.  i start med school tomorrow, so my posts will almost certainly be less frequent.  Laura is charged with taking over the picture taking.  Sienna is still in charge of being cute and kind.
c ya.