seven months

My love, Clio, you are something quite amazing.  Here you are seven months old and the center of our world.  Could I snatch the moon and stars from the sky to give them to you I would do so in a heartbeat.  You have made life bright again and you help to chase away the darkness.  

We know it is only a matter of weeks before you start crawling and giving us a run for our money.  I can already see the twinkle in your eye and the determination set into the corners of your mouth.  You'll get there soon, my dear.

You have one and half new teeth to add to your already quite formidable and sharp arsenal.  Bite, bite, bite.  Despite the teeth you still are having a hard time with solid foods.  If given the choice you still always choose nursing over eating solids.  I can't say that I object too much though.  I know that soon enough you will be weaning yourself from nursing and I will be longing for the days when I held you and snuggled you close to feed you.

Your Papa and I love how much you dig books.  If you are ever in a bad mood one of the quickest ways to calm you down is to read to you.  Maybe these things are genetic?  I am looking forward to one day taking you to the used bookstores that I love so much and letting you pick out your own books.

The other quickest way to calm you down is to show you the baby who lives in the mirror.  Oh, how excited you get to see the baby in the mirror.  She never fails to make you laugh with glee.  

It may just be a temporary thing, a by-product of our recent trip, but you are once again sleeping through the night.  I just wanted to say thank you.  It is greatly appreciated.  Keep up the good work my little goosey girl.

You have so much ahead of you.  I can't wait to meet the person you are becoming.

stuck

We're stuck.  In Kauai.  In our rented cottage.  There are worse things in the world than being stuck in paradise because of 48 hours of torrential downpour.  But -I'm running the risk of sounding like an ass- I'm trying not to be disappointed at the way this vacation has turned out.  

When we got here we had a day and a half of fairly nice weather before things turned Biblical and people started building arcs.  For the last two days, and I mean that very literally, we have been boxed in our 200 square foot guest cottage on the bank of a river in the middle of the taro fields of Hanalei because the one and only road out has been flooded.  The woman we are renting the cottage from said this is the most she has seen it rain like this in a very, very long time and that this storm was unexpected.  Her sister is stuck at the hotel where she works and her daughter has been stuck at a friend's house for the last two days.

This place was only ever meant to be somewhere to sleep and eat but it has turned out to be a prison, albeit a beautiful one.  We don't get any phone reception.  We get intermittent satellite t.v. reception.  Luckily we get a wifi signal, but only because we highjacked it from someone else and we just figured out its existence yesterday.

Oh, the plans we had for our time on Kauai.  Gardens, snorkeling, beaches...  Instead we are watching, when we are lucky enough to get a signal, marathons of House Hunters and Storage Wars.

Tomorrow we leave for Maui and I am hoping that we are able to get out of here and that the weather is better there.  I'll have half days of a work conference to attend but we should still be able to get in some time at the beach (I hope).

Our only sunny day at the beach. 

Makeshift tent for the girl. 

The beginning of the end.  You can see the clouds rolling on in. 

The valley where we are staying. 

Before the rain.

After the rain.  Some random person's instagram photo of the same valley from yesterday, taken from a different angle.  We can't even get up there now to take the photo because that road you see in the "before" photos is flooded from the river.

This photo is looking towards our only way out of the valley.

This photo you can see the river and how it has completely overflowed its banks.


Today is just a waiting game.  As soon as the road opens enough to let us through we are hightailing it out of the valley and getting a hotel near the airport.

So sad.  Our first vacation in well over a year.

Well, that's it.  I have to go relieve Leif of Clio duty and let him have some highjacked internet time.