video from nina

Here is a cute video of Annabella and Charli playing together. Nina took them to the zoo on Wednesday - Charli has so much more fun with Nina than she has with me and Brian.

cost per use

When we first got Charli's backpack back in June, I suggested to Brian that maybe we could try geocaching as something that would make sure we don't use the backpack once and never again. Got to get that cost per use down! Unfortunately, you need some gear for geocaching - specifically, a GPS - so the idea kind of got tabled for a while.

Geocaching is a hobby where you get a set of coordinates for a cache, put it into your GPS, and then try to find the cache. The caches are various sizes, from so small that all that fits in them is a roll of paper for you to sign your name on, to big enough that people put all kinds of treasures in there (the rule is, if you take a treasure, leave a treasure of the same approximate value). They are also rated on how hard they are to find, once you get to the coordinates, and how hard the terrain is to get there. There are caches all around the world, in both cities and rural areas - and I don't mean just a few. There's probably at least a hundred in San Francisco, and thousands around the bay area.

Then at the beginning of August, cousin Cecily visited Fort Collins again, and it turns out she and Dustin are into geocaching. What a coincidence! They took Sam and went and found 3 caches, and Sam thought it was really fun. I guess she mentioned it to Kim and Brent, and they said they had left their GPS at our house with some of their gear, so Sam called us to tell us to send her Brent's GPS. Well, nothing doing! I said, "You mean we have a GPS here that we didn't know about, and you want us to send it to you for geocaching? Forget it! WE'RE going to use it for geocaching!" And so we did!

Our first geocaching outing was last weekend to Samuel P. Taylor state park, where it looked like there were about 8 easy caches along the main trail by the road (not that we would have time to find that many, it just gave us options). Daisy and her cousin Wayne came with us to try it out. Here it is, our very first geocache find ever! And our second (which had a little treasure in it)! We don't have pictures of the third, because Brian and Wayne found it by themselves while Daisy and I (and the camera) stood in the last shady part of the path up the hill, and Brian didn't think to use his iPhone. So we found 3 (well, 2 1/2), and it was fun, and we used the backpack, so that was good.

So, having decided it was fun, we got our own GPS. We would have continued using Brent's, except... well, it's really not good for geocaching. It's old, and it doesn't get signal under tree cover, and the UI for entering in coordinates to look for is about as bad as it can be. It's ok for figuring out what coordinates you're at, as long as you're not under trees or in a building or a car, but the trees thing makes it really hard for geocaching. New GPSs have high sensitivity antennas, so you get signal in canyons and forests (and even in our condo, although not in the garage), and the UI is somewhat improved. So we got the GPS on Friday, and we went geocaching on Saturday and Sunday!

On Saturday we went in the city, which was pretty fun, and which allowed us to get food and stop at a playground with Charli. Here she is with our smallest geocache find ever (which is not a very long time, of course). Someone also put a geocache right in Clarion Alley, just last week! Well, we had to get that one. We met a bunch of other parents at the playground, and Charli kept trying to put gross things in her mouth, and then she had the biggest blast ever once we finally got a free swing. Another dosa place, Udupi Palace, opened up a couple of months ago, about 3 doors away from the first dosa place, and it is AWESOME. It's actually a chain, and we used to go to one down by work for lunch every now and then, before our office moved. I'll never go to to Dosa again (not that I went that much in the first place). Dosa is a "nice" restaurant, which means you wait a long time for your food and the menu is limited - not what I want out for dosas! Udupi Palace is proper - several different types of dosas with several different types of fillings, plus other standard dosa place fare, like uttapam and, uh, that other stuff that I'm blanking on right now. Charli likes their mango lassi, and she figured out how the straw works (although it was very helpful that the lassi is so thick).

On Sunday we went to China Camp and looked for 3 geocaches there, but we only found 2. >:( But it was a gorgeous day, and we got to use the backpack again (the cost per use is plummeting!), and we had a lovely picnic. Here's an example of a nicely camouflaged cache, with some treasure (which, if it weren't hidden in a secret place, might also be known as "trash"). Flip the rock over, and it's invisible!

I guess I could send Brent's GPS to Sam now...

sourpuss

Thursday I cut up some frozen strawberries to have with Charli's dinner. I gave her a piece and she started making the worst faces! I was puzzled, because I know she likes strawberries, until I tried one. They were indeed VERY sour!

Yes, I kept feeding her sour strawberries so I could get these pictures. I ate them too! I didn't make her eat anything I wouldn't eat! It was fun. I made faces too. :)

By the way, we found some dinner that Charli really likes - turkey sandwiches! We chop up turkey and cheese and bread and maybe some avocado and give her a pile, and she can't eat it fast enough!

in her cups

Last weekend, while we were at Ikea, we got Charli some kid friendly cups, and she really likes them. I gave her water in them for a couple of days, and she seemed to be doing really well, but for the past couple of days she hasn't been so good with them (over enthusiastic, I think). So this is from a few days ago - you can see her getting over enthusiastic at the end...

banana face

I was feeding Charli bananas with dinner tonight, and she was making the funniest faces! I have about 30 pictures like this, and they are all just cracking me up!

gettin' around

Charli crawls like a champ now. She's given up on worming around, and crawling has become the only form of Charli-powered locomotion. Since she's so proficient, we thought we'd better get her something to help practice, since we were at Ikea anyway... Speaking of which, Ikea is really baby friendly. The catalog says they have baby food, in case you forgot yours, although we didn't test that. It also says they'll warm up your bottle for you! We didn't test that either. We did use their high chairs, though, and tested out a bunch of toys and kid furniture in their play area, and proceeded to buy lots of toys... We went early on Saturday, and it wasn't too crowded and the lines weren't too long. We even had a snack while we were there. It was so tolerable that Brian actually said, "We can do that any weekend!" I'll hold him to that... :)

controls and switches

Charli found some controls and switches this weekend. She found the volume control, that's for sure! Everything is done louder now, happy or mad, as all the customers at Mission Beach Cafe can tell you (who, by the way, added biscuits and gravy back onto their menu - yay! Alas, when I tried to order it this morning, they were out of gravy). She also found the 'go to sleep easy' switch, and, unfortunately, turned it off. She napped hardly at all the entire weekend, and only once in her crib. Every other time we tried to put her down for a nap, she cried (screamed - see comment about volume) for about an hour until we finally gave up. In happier news, you can see her teeth in this picture! You might have to click on it to really see them.

We spent most of the weekend finishing up the big work on Charli's room. She's got a sleeping area and a slightly separated play area. We put up some Elfa shelving and took the tv stand out, and now it's pretty much done other than hanging up some hooks and lights and pictures. It looks pretty good, and it's mighty comfortable, and Charli seems to like it. She loves the mirror, and as you can see, she likes to pull the bins off the shelves and take everything out of them. We have moved Charli to her room at an optimal time, since she's discovered the volume control. She is now in the most sound insulated room we've got. The neighbors might not realize it, but they're really happy. :) We also finally managed to get the stairwell gate mounted. Nina will be so proud of us - she's been after me to get the gate up.

Oh, I forgot to mention the funny thing that happened this morning! We were walking back from breakfast and we passed a little girl in a stroller and her mother (?) going the opposite direction. As we passed them, I heard the little girl say, "That's baby Charli! That's baby Charli!" Well of course we had to stop and say, "It IS baby Charli!" Turns out it was Elfi (sp?), one of the little girls that Jillian often plays with when she and Charli and Maria go to the park. Maria's mentioned her several times, so I knew the name. Brian and I thought it was pretty funny that Charli knows people in the neighborhood that we don't know.

This picture has nothing to do with that story.