Beaches, trails, and harmonicas

Never not smiling. But who wouldn't smile at Point Reyes?

Anja likes to pose for the camera now. She thought it would be great to show her sandy hands at the beach.

As we were walking down this trail after a few hours at the beach: "Mommy, I like this place." "Me too."

Limantour Beach, Point Reyes. We had one of those great blue sky/foggy days, where thick fog repeatedly rolls in off the ocean and then clears to blue sky again.

Jay calls this the baby gate. It prevents sand eating.

3/4 family portrait.

Anja still mostly thinks Maija is pretty funny, or at the very least, entertaining. Maija doesn't get the joke.

Maija is really getting around now. Mostly through army crawling and inchworming, but also sometimes through rolling. And she pulls herself up quite a bit too.

I love this little local park - so does Anja. She took "Dave the Minion" for this walk.

With some Christmas money, we bought a set of harmonicas and a mandolin. Anja loves the harmonicas. Here she is playing a song for Maija, and then for me:

We took the girls for a stroller hike on Bolinas Ridge trail last weekend. It's a fire road along a ridge that goes on for miles with views of the bay area. I had somewhat higher hopes for the road condition, and we were only able to go a couple of miles with the strollers before turning around. Maija can ride in the backpack carrier now, but Anja is just too heavy for us to carry, so stroller hikes are really the only way we can hike for any distance right now. The road actually looks fine in these pictures, but it's pretty rough further down, since it's also open pastureland.

Anja with her tights, sun hat and sunglasses. Anja still loves to go for hikes in any form. She always want to see animals, "like lizards... and birds... and whales..."

Jay took this great picture of the girls at the store. I love Maija's dazed baby look and Anja's Elton John sunglasses. As usual Jay noted that he received piles of comments about how he was Super Dad for grocery shopping alone with two kids, even though there were at least six other women doing exactly the same thing.

Anja's comments:

Jay: Anja, do you want to do some yoga with me?

Anja: No. I'm gonna do dinosaur yoga. (puts head on the ground and foot up in the air) It's for spinosauruses and ankylosauruses... and brachiosauruses... and pterodactyls...

Anja: I'm a baby brachiosaurus. And that's Mommy brachiosaurus, and Auntie brachiosaurus.

Me: Are you going to help Daddy do that puzzle?

Anja: Yeah, I'm a brachiosaurus. I'm so strong.

Anja: Auntie Heather eat all your food and get big and fat!

Jay: No, you mean 'big and strong'

Anja: Yeah, like Daddy!

Jay: Yeah.

Anja: Mommy, it's so nice to meet you at our house. It's so nice to meet you here.

Me: Oh, thanks, it's nice to meet you too.

Anja: Yeah. And you can live with us here. There's lots of room for you. And you can play with my toys!

Jay: I'm gonna go change a diaper, Honey. Want to help me?

Anja: NOOOO!!!

Jay: Okay, just checking.

Seven months old

Maija is very sneakily getting bigger. It's hard to believe she is seven months old already. We weighed and measured her for the first time in a while today: 98th percentile for height and 40th percentile for weight. Still tall and thin for her age, and eating like crazy. She can demolish a huge bowl of solid food, and even cries for the split second between spoonfuls when she isn't actually receiving more food.

She loves the baby swing at the park!

And actually, Anja still does too.

Now that Maija is eating a lot more solid food and no longer nurses EVERY minute of the day, I can actually leave the house without her sometimes. On one of those occasions, Anja and I went on a short hike in the park at the edge of town recently. The hike was really just to the top of a large-ish hill overlooking Petaluma, but a good little trek for Anja, and I love that she calls it a hike. I told her we would look for salamanders since it was so wet lately, but it turned out to be way too cold for them to be out. We did see a hunting kestrel, and one hummingbird, which was good enough for her. And later the next week Anja asked me if I remembered when we saw the kestral on that hike.

Anja really loves dancing lately. Dancing mostly means walking in a circle with exaggerated slow movements to music, but it's really fun for her.

I think it's funny that Maija never really understood the concept of a pacifier. We bought every brand, style and size pacifier when she was a month old and I was so desperate for a break, but she hated them all. Even now, she seems to think, "I ought to like this, but I just don't." At least now we don't have to worry about weaning her from it later.

A nice photo of Anja and me from my 365 Day Project - a self portrait per day for a year.

We went to Fisherman's Wharf this past weekend to visit the aquarium where we have a membership. It expires soon, and I think we may instead get a membership to Cal Academy this time (which actually has a bigger aquarium than this, although I will miss these gigantic underwater tunnels). Maija loved the jellies, they're my favorite too:

Awesome.

Anja built this great playdoh boat for her guys to ride in. They are on their way to the aquarium to see "fish and dinosaurs and sheep."

And from Anja:

Anja: (as Maija grabs her) NO! I'm not a very good baby toy!

Anja: (looking at the toilet paper roll that had been unrolled and then rolled back up) Who did that? Was it me?

Me: It's going to be cold outside today and a little bit rainy.

Anja: But we can still go outside. It's going to be dry outside today, is that okay?

Me: Tonight is a movie night. What movie should we watch?

Anja: How to Train Your Dragon! But we don't usually train dragons, that's just a funny joke.

Anja: Let's both be Night Furies! (crawls around on all fours)

Me: And Maija can be a Gronkle.

Anja: And Daddy and Auntie Heather can both be Deadly Nadders. We are all dragons in this house!

Me: When I was a little girl, I had those books too.

Anja: When you were a little girl? And then what happened, when you were a little girl?

Me: I grew up, and now I'm big. And some day you will be big too.

Anja: I will grow up. I want to be just like you guys.

Me: Sure, you can grow up just like us.

Anja: And then what can I be?

Me: Well, you can be anything you want. You can even be a mommy like me, if you want.

Anja: I want to be a spinosaurus.

Me: Okay, you can be a spinosaurus.