Tracking

Animal tracking is something I'd never really heard of before Daniel and his family introduced me to it. The Gray boys can get lost for hours staring at a small patch of dirt, deducing what animals came through, where they were going, and where they were coming from.  Sometimes I really enjoy tagging along, sometimes it's boring for me.  It all depends on the day I guess.  
Juniper hadn't logged too much outdoor ground time until recently.  This summer we were so worried about bugs and sun that we generally kept her in her peapod when we were all outside together.  Last weekend we had somewhat of an impromptu picnic in a grassy park.  It was only then that we realized Juniper had never really been able to explore grass before; our yard isn't grassy and really grass does not abound anywhere we usually spend time.  She thought it was pretty cool and made for a not-so-tasty snack.  Juniper has been really using her pincer grasp lately, so tiny blades of grass and pine needles are excellent toys.  

Yesterday afternoon, we loaded up to go tracking with Cobo (grandpa for the uninitiated).  I erroneously forgot the baby carrier at home so we just carried Juniper in our arms to the tracking destination just a few hundred yards off the road, and set her on a blanket.  She didn't stay put for too long because not only did the pine needles beckon to her, so did the dirt.  

Mmmmmmm, tasty, tasty dirt.  She basically dove face-first into the sandy dirt surrounding her and got a huge mouthful.  I wouldn't say that she liked it (she did let me wipe her mouth out with a damp bandana), but she didn't really complain, and seemed rather pleased with herself.  

okay, mama, I guess you can take these hunks of gravel out of my mouth

After some dirt sampling, she moved onto pine needle sampling.  I think she is maybe, sort of, starting to move out of the everything-goes-in-the-mouth phase (I realize that seems ridiculous to say given this post is about her dining on dirt, but there you go).  She did try out the pine needles, but she was definitely more interested in moving each one with her fingers, breaking them in half, and grabbing for new ones.  

So far, she doesn't seem worse for the wear.  There has been, um, evidence that she did in fact eat and swallow some dirt, but otherwise all is well. I guess she just needed some more minerals in her diet?

Photos by G Gray, 2013

So Long 2012

We had a unexpectedly crazy amount of snow last night.  Well, the amount wasn't really so crazy, but it was enough that it felt real.  We busted out the snowshoes and did a Gray family hike.  Juniper was a champ: she slept on the way up and was cheerfully awake on the way down.  

I don't even know what to say about this year really.  We've already gone from this

to this

in just seven months.  

Things are different now than I anticipated they'd be this time last year.  I'm different.  Juniper is different than I thought she'd be (for starters, she's a girl, and that kind of threw me for a loop).  She's different mostly because there was no way that I could know how amazing she would be, how much she would challenge me to be a better version of myself, and how I'd see how much I still need to learn.  

Juniper was baptized yesterday.  It was something I wasn't entirely sure we were going to do, but I am  glad that we did. There are windows behind the alter of the church, and snow started falling during the service.  It was beautiful.  It was also a reminder of how fleeting our time on this earth is, and how fragile we all are.  In the homily, the priest spoke about our responsibility to the earth and to all of the creatures who live here.  This year has been hard, but I think it is important to constantly remind myself that I am only one small cog in the great machine of the universe, and my most important work here, really, is to first do no harm, and next try to make things maybe just a little bit better than they were before. 

 We are all stewards of the earth and its creatures.  Every time we go on a hike, I wonder how different the landscape will be when Juniper is old enough to really remember the experience.  Whether she'll be able to snowshoe out the back door of our house when she is old enough.  How many more people and houses there will be dotting the landscape when she's an adult.  

I don't have any resolutions this year, but I maybe have some thoughts on how I'd like to see things go from here on out.  Cheers to 2013, friends.  

Festival

We went to the jazz festival up here over the weekend.  I was kind of nervous about how it would go with such long days all weekend, but Juniper was such a champ.  We went right after her morning nap, she hung out for about an hour and a half and then took a good nap in her peapod, hung out some more, took another good nap, hung out some more, and passed out in the car on the way home.  All was well until we tried to put her to bed and she had a minor meltdown which was stopped, oddly, by my wrapping her leg.  I thought, well she's freaking out anyway, might as well wrap her.  As soon as I got the first layer of cotton on, she totally calmed down and I was able to lay her down and finish wrapping, and she pretty much slept through for a solid five- ish hours.  Maybe the wrapping is actually becoming a sleepy cue for her? That would sure be nice. This scenario was not quite repeated on Sunday evening, but close. 

 Juniper wore her jazz festival outfit (dubbed that by Daniel when we got it in the mail back in June), which I neglected to get many pictures of.

The icing on the cake was coming home to (my first ever) pot roast made with the last bit of our grass fed cow, and late dinner on the deck. See? The cooking thing is happening for me again.  I think I missed it, but I'll let you know in a few months.

 Also, the mornings are cool here again and the light is changing into that early fall sort of light.  I love it, but I am a little sad that my happy summer nest is about to get shaken up in a few short days.  Sniffle.

The Great Outdoors?

While there was a lot that went through our minds when Juniper was first diagnosed, I think the thing that worried us the most was how her lymphedema would impact our lifestyle.  I guess that sounds kind of shallow, but it's true.  We were prepared for how a baby might impact our lives, but we definitely were not prepared for a baby who could get a severe infection from a bug bite or a scrape.  We just sort of assumed that baby would come on all of our adventures with us; that we'd just throw him or her in a carrier and we'd keep hiking and camping just like before.  When we found out that Juniper had lymphedema we were both really scared that all of that would end.

Pre-lymphedema, when J was just shy of 3 weeks old

At our first therapy session, we learned that we shouldn't bring Juniper to altitudes higher than where we live or take her on an airplane until she has compression garments to wear.  This was a huge blow as D and I have been going to the Sierras together every summer since we met 12 years ago.  We were also planning to fly to Denver for a friends wedding at the end of the summer.  If the lymphedema didn't feel real before that day, it was definitely starting to.  After that first session, we both went through a lot of ups and downs.  In some ways, we got a lot of perspective that the lymphedema wasn't really that big of a deal, but we also saw how much our lives would change in small ways to keep Juniper healthy.  

Maybe not the biggest lover of the outdoors

A few days ago, we were talking about going on a hike with Daniel's brother, and it occurred to me for the first time that we couldn't go on one of my favorite summertime hikes because the trail went to too high of an elevation.  For the first time in a couple weeks, I got really sad.  I know that there are lots of things that could have happened that would mean we wouldn't be able to go hiking together as a family;  Juniper could have hated to be in the carrier, she could have had colic and cried all the time, when she gets older she could just not like the outdoors in general, but that doesn't stop me from feeling really angry sometimes.  I know that as Juniper gets older, it will be a really fine line that we'll have to walk between making sure that she's as protected as she can be while still letting her enjoy being outside and doing the things that I think all kids should get to do, and that we really enjoy doing.  

At 10 weeks.  Note that you can actually see her head over the top of the Beco!

We did find a hike to go on.  It's a bit higher than where we live, so it's probably not ideal, but not quite as high as some of the other trails around us, so it's a compromise, and everything was fine.  Her leg didn't balloon up to twice it's (already increased) size,* and we managed to keep the bugs off of her.  

I hike with her in a Beco carrier and Daniel sherpas all of the extra crap we now need for her in his pack.  We have an awesome pop-up tent for her called a peapod that we bring, and we set it up wherever we stop to hang out for a bit.  

I really like it because it gives Juniper a chance to stretch out and have a break from being in the carrier and she's protected from bugs.  I put her in one-piece outfits that cover her arms and legs from Kicky-Pants.  They're made from bamboo and are super-thin, so they give her some sun/bug protection and I think are not as hot or clammy as a cotton outfit would be.  

This part of August is usually when we take our Sierras trip.  Someone on Facebook a couple days ago posted some pictures of the sunset over Tuolumne Meadows and it was hard to realize I won't get to see that this summer.  Honestly though, I am just now starting to feel like camping would be do-able, so in some ways I think that being forced not to go has saved my sanity a bit, and hopefully next summer we can make it happen.  

*The reason we can't take her on a plane or to higher altitude without compression garments is because the thinner air at higher elevations has lower pressure than the air at low elevations.  The result means less pressure on your body and skin which can make lymphedema affected limbs swell even more.  Most of us have experienced this on a long flight.  She needs the compression garments to maintain the pressure on her leg.