Feeling pretty groovy...

OK - sometimes life can only be described as
GROOVY.

I can't begin to describe all of the hours during this past year that have evaporated just being lost in the enormous personality of my little baby girl.

I doubt that anything can capture the essence of pure joy and happiness the way that her smile does. It comes from somewhere deep within that beautiful old soul she has and is almost always accompanied by the most disarmingly sincere belly laugh you could ever imagine.

I particularly love the smile in the shot above. Colleen was just playing with her after we got home from Christmas shopping when I walked in to the room. Sequoia saw me and lit up with this smile - which is pretty much how she always greets me these days, but it always feels like the first time I've ever seen it.

Watching her is like watching the weather - it is always the same but always changing at the same time. Never boring and so fundamentally part of the energy that connects us all that you can not ignore even the smallest part of the whole.

I of course love my little girl - that is a given and explains a part of why I am so fascinated by her, but only a part. The other part that can not be underestimated is the way that she makes me feel connected to the spiritual constant that makes this world such a beautiful experience. I feel the same sense of completeness with her in my life that I do while watching the sunrise from the top of some remote mountaintop or standing on a beach feeling the full power of a winter storm rolling in off of the Pacific.

There are just certain elements of life that make the journey make sense and without a doubt none are more immediate or honest than what Sequoia brings to my life these days.
That's about as groovy as it gets.

Sequoia's first Thanksgiving...

Sequoia celebrated her first Thanksgiving close to home at the home of our friends Pam and Harry Speiser. It was a nice day with good food and great company.

Sequoia is particularly thankful that she manages to survive in spite of our apparent carelessness. Take a close look at the above picture and count the number of ways our little girl could find to get into trouble. Shame on you if you can't find at least four good ones... these don't even include the fireplace just out of the shot that she is staring at.
Remember - you have to watch these little critters.

Well anyway, we do watch her and we are VERY thankful that we have the opportunity to do that. Certainly that is what I am thankful for this year.

I am also thankful that my little girl and her mommy are so very much in love with each other. I knew that I would fall in love with my little girl, but I was not prepared for how powerful an experience it would be watching how the two of them would grow together.
Pretty cool in my book.

Giving thanks and taking snacks...

The Peninsula Mommies went to the assisted living home again to help the residents celebrate Thanksgiving early this year. They all made special cards to hand out and spent the morning bringing smiles to everyone. Sequoia took advantage of all this activity to steal a few toys and snacks. Never let an opportunity slip by...

Clare certainly knows how to share a smile with the world.

To help maintain the blog, we have hired young Troy to document some of the Peninsula Mommies events on film. I should probably be concerned that he seems particularly fascinated with close ups of Sequoia...

Here is Sequoia chowing down on a Teddy Graham that she "borrowed" from Troy while he was off working. Again, never let an opportunity slip past you...

I'm not honestly certain what the topic of conversation was during this meeting between Brooklyn and Sequoia, but rest assured that the world is better off now that they sorted out whatever it was.

Just hanging around...

The other night Sequoia discovered an amazingly cool toy - a laundry basket full of clothes hangers.
She had Colleen and I rolling with laughter as she proceeded to unload the basket and play with the hangers. It was absolutely hysterical and completely changed Santa's list for her this year...

scratch the new doll,
add one basket of clothes hangers.

Of course even then, she will probably be more fascinated with the box it comes in...

Upstanding stander-upper...

As I mentioned previously, Sequoia has started to stand up on her own.

Well not completely on her own - she still needs to balance herself - but she does pull herself all the way to an upright standing position and can then balance with just one hand. She even occasionally forgets that she does not know how to stand and will let go and wobble for a few seconds before grabbing hold again.

As you can see in this series of shots, it usually starts with a devilish and mischievous smirk. She will then crawl with surprising speed to whatever route she has chosen to climb and with definitive moves that indicate she has been scouting the route for quite some time, she will methodically begin her ascent.

She is currently fearless of the kabooms that often accompany this new endeavor - me, not so much. It is one of the few times that I long for soft wall to wall carpeting. At what age can I get away with fitting her with a cool rock climbing helmet and saddle harness without being labeled an overprotective dork?

Well luckily for me she is quite coordinated and rarely falls into anything that hurts her. I know that she will fall, and she will bleed and I will cry and we will both get over it, but honestly right now I am amazed by the mixture of fear and pride that accompanies these achievements.

I know that in time she needs to learn an honest respect for pain so that she can also learn to manage her risk taking, but right now I just want to wrap her up in bubble wrap to protect that adorable sense of confidence that she has that nothing will ever hurt her.

Where the wild things are...

Colleen, Sequoia and I spent the day today at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News.
It is a great place for kids to learn about nature, plus it is a really fun place to just hang out at as a family.

We tried to teach Sequoia a thing or two about spelunking.

Stalactite? Stalagmite? No problem. Sequoia can handle them all - even when they are fiberglass and in a museum...

It is always fun to watch Sequoia while she is discovering everything around her. She is so animated and interested in things it amazes me.

Now that she is such an upstanding stander-upper, the discovery and interaction process is taking on new dimensions.

As her physical abilities continue to develop she is able to act on more and more of her thoughts and desires. Although she is a long way from talking, her ability to communicate increases with her ability to get around.

Of course as she struggles with the real and serious questions of the universe her mom and I are on a mission to pose her on or next to anything that will make a funny or cute picture. Hopefully Sequoia will be able to overcome her parents shortcomings.... But I honestly think she enjoyed riding on the frog statue.

You can't beat getting up close and personal with a big old sea turtle.

I can only hope that this early fascination with animals will stay with our little girl as she grows up.

All in all it was another great day spent watching our little girl absorb the world around her.
You can't beat that.

A few new tricks...

Sequoia has been ticking off the milestones lately - faster than her old man can keep up with in the blog. These shots show one of the newest developments - crawling on all fours. She is pretty proud of herself although she still uses the commando crawl as well. These pictures also show why we normally use a hair bow to keep our little hippie-chick's hair out of her eyes.

Her crawling has really increased her ability to cover some ground - she is into everything these days.
But back to her milestones....

I guess it comes naturally with the crawling, but suddenly she can pop herself into an upright sitting position whenever she wants. This has greatly improved her ability to entertain herself with toys etc... Again, she is quite impressed with this new skill.

But I guess that is still not enough since during the same week that all of this is going on, she has also decided that being vertical is really where it is at and has discovered how to pull herself up into a full upright standing position on anything that will hold her weight. Unfortunately as you all know, the way she discovers whether or not it holds her weight is by getting to it before it dawns on us that it won't hold her weight, and knocking it over. An amazing number of things that have survived being carted across the country multiple times in addition to the trials of exuberant puppies and nephews, have fallen under the attack of a little girl named Sequoia. No damage yet, but this has definitely marked the beginning of her relationship with gravity. There will be many, many , many KABOOMS! in her future...
One more milestone is that she has started feeding herself some solid foods like cereals and baby crackers. That is a big step for her.
Something that is not so much a milestone but is a fun stage is that she now absolutely loves her baths. She never disliked them, but now she is able to sit up in her tub and splash and play with her little toys. She is a joy to watch. Tonight while Colleen was getting Sequoia's bath ready, Sequoia pulled herself up to a standing position next to her at the tub and stood there waiting for her bath to be ready.
That was pretty cool to see.

Happy Thanksgiving...

Sequoia would like to wish everyone out there a Happy Thanksgiving.
She and Colleen made these fun Turkey hand print cards for the people down at the assisted living center that they volunteer at in Gloucester. I walked in during their first attempt and was greeted by a baby, wife and kitchen that were painted brown. It was a pretty funny mess.

Some of you out there may not know that Sequoia has a cat named Evinrude. The poor guy has not made the blog before now - largely because I am not the world's biggest cat person, although I do love this one dearly.

Evinrude shares my shop with me and is the king of our woods. Sequoia loves him and I certainly believe Evinrude returns the sentiment.

This weekend we were visited by my brother Mark and his two boys Christopher and William. Chis and Will were great with Sequoia and she was really excited to see them. She laughed and squealed in delight whenever they were around. I have some hilarious footage of them letting her chase them up and down the hallway in her walker-car. It was too funny. You could tell she was enthralled by them and wanted to do whatever they were doing.

She got some good quality time with her Uncle Mark as well. It was a nice visit and the first time that Sequoia has had a real chance to interact with these cousins. Up until now she has largely been an adorable lump for them. I find it amazing how grown up she can seem some times, especially when she is trying to be one of the big kids.

Stats from my house...

I think it is safe to say that there has been a definite change in the average height of our house guests this year. Here is a picture of a typical gathering these days.
You have Kim and Grant, Colleen and Sequoia, Kristi and Elizabeth and Andrea and Ava.

Average height 2 foot eleven inches....

That is down by about 3 feet from last year.

Perfect day in Williamsburg...

Today was as pretty a day as you will ever find. The air had that unmistakable fall feeling. It was crisp but not cold - just cool enough to bring the smell of wood fires to the air, bright and sunny with beautiful cloud formations rolling by overhead and everywhere you looked the leaves were just exploding with color.

My day started the way I wish more could. I got up early with a wide awake Sequoia and snuck out to the living room to give Colleen a chance to sleep in ... probably for the first time in months. Sequoia and I took the dogs for a walk in our woods before we came back in to spend our morning together.

Our house is small so we have to rearrange furniture to allow Sequoia room to roam when she is in her exploring mode. With the coffee table out of the way and chairs strategically repositioned, Sequoia had free roam of the living room and kitchen while I made some coffee and helped her play with her toys. We watched a very inspiring surfing documentary and ate some yogurt together.

Eventually Colleen woke up and I made us some scrambled eggs and we all watched an entertaining Baby Einstein video about the animals in the neighborhood. Sequoia loves these videos but I hope she is not disappointed when she finds out we do not have Asian River Otters, Sea Otters or some of the other "neighborhood" animals in our neighborhood.

After beakfast and Sequoia's nap we all headed over to Williamsburg to walk around the town and enjoy the great weather and scenery. As you will see, Sequoia found a place in the grass with some fascinating leaves and we stopped and played for awhile. I apologize for all of the pictures - I just really like them...
After we finished walking around we had a nice late lunch at Aroma's where Sequoia was entertained by the two Blood Hounds at the table next to us. One was a massive old guy named Bags and the other was a 5 month old pup named Porter. (we were eating outside)

So to fill out the rest of these pictures I think I'll list a few of my favorite things about hanging out with my little girl.

#1- The way she looks when she is sleeping.

#2- The way she laughs - especially when I help her attack mommy.

#3 - The way she slaps the floor with excitement before crawling at lightning speed to greet me when I come home from work.

#4 - How much she loves when I play guitar for her. She sings along and plays music on whatever she has.

#5 - The way she sees me as a big jungle gym with perfectly blind confidence that I will never let her fall.

#6 - The way that she and her mommy are absolutly crazy about each other.

#7 - The way her soft little breath feels on my neck when she falls asleep in my arm and starts her little snoring.

#8 - How much she loves her dogs and anything that remotely reminds her of her dogs. She definitely has a fascination with animals.

#9 - The way she makes me a better person simply by being here and loving me.

#10 - The fact that she has made us a family.