Old New Friends

A few weeks ago we drove up to Proctor, VT to visit old new friends. Or perhaps they are new old friends. They're new in the sense that we'd only met them twice before, but old in the sense that the first time was over six years ago and the second two years ago. And yet we've managed to keep in touch.

They've bought a second house in Proctor, which is just north of Rutland (i.e. near Killington, Pico, and some other ski areas), and had invited us up to visit. Since we love going to Vermont, we jumped at the chance (although it took us two years to find a good weekend).

Proctor is a cute little town, and houses the Vermont Marble Museum, which we will have to visit next time. Most of the municipal buildings are made of marble, as is a bridge going into town. There are even sidewalks made of marble! Proctor also has a beautiful, recently renovated covered bridge, which I unfortunately did not get a picture of although here is one taken before the renovation. This small town has its own high school (The Phantoms), and has won a surprising number of state championships in baseball and basketball, considering its graduating class is far less than 100 students.

We had a great time swimming at the Proctor Pool, which is technically a pond, but does have a slide, raft, and multiple diving boards. Lee jumped off a diving board for the first time (wearing a life vest).

Saturday night we walked over to Proctor's single restaurant/bar for dinner, and saw that the walls were dedicated to the achievements of The Phantoms. The bar had a great local atmosphere, tasty food, and especially tasty local beers.

On Sunday our plans to do a little hike were rained out, but there were some great puddles to play in on the deck.


But the highlight of the trip was definitely the dogs, Moosie and Nokki. There was a bit of trepidation on Lee's part at first (Lee does have a history of fearing dogs), but she did pretty well. Clara was just thrilled. The dogs were great with the kids. Both dogs just love people, Moosie full of bounces and kisses, and Nokkie more on the mellow side. On the way home, when I asked Lee why she hadn't played with dress-up clothes at all, she said "Mommy, I just wanted to play with the dogs."


On the way home we talked about how we might be able to work out living in Vermont (we've had this conversation many times before).

What Does Clara Say?

Clara's been doing great with the animal noises. This is usually a great way of distracting her when she's gotten herself worked up about something. Usually we end up with smiles and giggles. The other day, though, when her mind was set on doing something that she just wasn't going to get to do, it went something like this:

Me: Clara, what does a sheep say?
Clara: NO!
Me: Clara, what does a frog say?
Clara: NO!
Me: Clara what does a cow say?
Clara: NO!
Me: Clara, what does Clara say?
Clara: NO!

Clara Accessorizes

Clara is into shoes and accessories.

For a while she would crawl with shoes on her hands.


This summer she would put any pair of Crocs left lying around on her feet.

We finally broke down and bought her her own Crocs (the smallest ones they have!).


She's always been very fond of hats, and here is a funny clip from a while back:



This summer, even in the heat, she likes to wear a wool hat, or her favorite wool sweater, or her raincoat, which she'll keep zipped up with the hood up until she's drenched in sweat.

And now, it's the bike helmet. She wanders around the house with it over her eyes. Although she's only truly happy if the rest of us are wearing our helmets too. She brings each of us our helmets and says "on!"

It's All a Tangle

Thanks, Clara.

More Funny Things They Say

Well actually, we're not sure exactly what Clara's saying, but we often find it funny anyway. I have to say, she's talking so much more than a month ago, but we're understanding so much less. How does that work? I guess when she had a limited vocabulary of single words we had a pretty good chance of getting the meaning, but now she tells entire stories and we have no idea what she's saying.

It will come....

Lee is often saying "I'm true" or "You're not true" instead of using the word "truthful." It's very cute.

Last weekend I had the girls at the lake and Bridges stayed home to get some work done. When we came back, I asked Lee (in front of him) "you missed Daddy, didn't you?" and she said "no." Then I said "well, you thought about him a lot, right?" and she paused a bit and then responded "no, I didn't think about him at all!" I was about to press her more on it but Bridges asked me to stop.

A while ago Lee said to me "Preciously, I'm a bit too warm right now." Preciously?!? It's amazing how they have the confidence to throw words around even if they don't know what they mean.

When we were blueberry picking about a month ago, Lee was talking a nonstop stream. She was very excited, and she was just talking, talking, talking. At one point she said "Mommy, I'm exactly the right height today. These berries are right in front of me. I won't always be this height. Soon I will be taller. But today I'm just perfect!" The funny thing about this is that there are blueberries from down low all the way to six or seven feet up, so really any height is just about perfect. But the joy with which she said this was so pure.

Lee still has a tough time with the concept of tomorrow. She insists on saying "the next day," and if we use the word tomorrow, she'll say "do you mean the next day?" Similarly, she will often say "this night" instead of "last night," and we have had very long conversations about tomorrow and yesterday and why today is never tomorrow or yesterday.

Her sense of time is generally still a great cause of amusement for us. She will so confidently throw around numbers, as in "Mommy, I think Clara's been awake up there for about twenty hours or so."

Last night our friends were coming by with their son James, and so in the morning Lee turned to Bridges, her face lit up, and she said "today is the day that James is coming over, right?" I told her yes. Then she started smiling even more and asked "and he is going to stay for dinner, right?" Again, yes. She clapped excitedly and then said "I'm going to pretend that he's here already!"

More rain

I've been very remiss with posting because my wrist has been sore so I've been resting it. My quick update is about the same as the last one - rain and more rain. Actually we had a few nice days this week, but more rain is coming in tonight and tomorrow. What a crazy summer! The plants are happy, though.

And we've had some fun walks in the rain.

Whirlwind Travels

I'm very behind on posting, and just have a minute this morning, but I can at least post an update on the weather here in Lexington.

Here it is: rainy, rainy, rainy. Bridges and I woke up to pouring rain at about 4 am and I said "Oh, good. More rain." At least it's not terribly hot! And to be fair, we've gotten a fair amount of swimming and outdoor activities in this summer. We've just had an awful lot of thunderstorms and rainy days at home. But, we haven't had to water at all, which has been great since we planted all that new stuff in May.

So let's see, last week we (just the girls and I) spent a few days at a friend's house in Orleans on the Cape. It was great fun, the kids had a blast, and the weather was actually pretty good.

This past weekend we drove an awful lot. We went and stayed with friends in Proctor, VT and visited other friends on the way home in Greenfield, MA. I'll post separately on our Proctor visit.

Tomorrow we're off to the lake again for a few days. Bridges may stay home over the weekend so he can actually get some work done.

But then we're here in Lexington for the next two weeks, and then Bridges is on on vacation for two weeks (one week at the lake, and then a partial week on the Cape). And then summer's over. It's going so fast!