Tucson 2010 | Caca de vaca

Mommy's brother and the kids' cousin [from Daddy's side] were nice enough to get married only a week apart in the same city.  So we packed up and drove to Tucson for just over a week. First off, Mesa for Mommy's brother K-Dog's wedding. Mommy and her blood-related womenfolk:



The reception was in Tucson. By that point Littler was about toast. She's watching the sunset with her uncle Airic:



For the next few days we drove this way and that, sweated a whole bunch, and spent most of our time getting in and out of the car. Our planned trip to Mexico didn't pan out but we made it to one of Mommy and Daddy's old favorite places, the San Pedro river. Gra'ma and aunt Chisnap came too. We arrived too late for the unparalleled San Pedro birds but Daddy did get a look at a yellow-billed cuckoo and there were lots of frogs. Chesters do what Chesters do, so we got wet. Little and Littler didn't seem to mind the flood-browned water or even the thought that it flowed straight from Mexico:



Mommy and Daddy spent many, many days hiking up and down the San Pedro back in the day. It's a great place for gray hawks, illegal immigrants, botanists, frogs, summer tanagers, drug smugglers, nudists, snakes and green kingfishers. The Littles aspired to nudity but we managed to avoid most of the rest.



Little discovered a thick, gooey, brown substance all around the river. She dubbed it "mudsprake." She and Littler spent a lot of time decorating themselves with mudsprake.













Little likes to get right up to her nozzle in water:



Littler is monstering Chisnap. Whenever she tries to explicitly monster she puts her hands up by her eyes like this and growls/shrieks while wiggling her fingers like a star-nosed mole's snout:





Littler floating away:



Mudsprake may or may not contain a fair amount of caca de vaca.









Little finally got her shirt off and became a river monster.



"I have a shirt made out of mudsprake!"





Little liked jumping into "a river of chocolate milk!"







Little's totally got Lewis hops:









Gra'ma and Littlest chilling out of the water.



Back in Tucson, Daddy thought it would be a flawless idea to get together "Uncle" Pickle, K-Dog, Kiffer, Gobot, Ga-brul and K'naan in a city park at noon and play basketball. It was monsoonly humid and Tucsonly hot. It was somewhat shy of an all-star event. The smart ones then jumped in a pool and spent the rest of the day cooling down. Little, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice the heat at all:
 










We all went to the second wedding, for the Littles' cousin from Daddy's side, Narpete. It was superfun and packed with 24 cousins, 8 uncles and aunts plus Grammy and Grampy. There was a fair amount of bonkers dancing at the reception and Daddy was using aunt Megret's camera so we don't have any pictures. Anyway, it was fun and we gained another rocking member of the family for the second time in a week.

We got to finally meet Pickle's bride-to-be, which was awesome. At various moments in the week we got to see virtually everybody [sans the V's!] in our extended family, which was cool too: Littles-monster Gran'pa, Baffling-but-generous Gra'ma, Incorrect-on-this-one-particular-issue Grammy, Sleepy-and-not-at-all-interested-in-this-one-particular-issue Grampy, Exhausting Megret, Long-lost NoMan, Cowardly-shins Pickle, Undissuadable Kelce, What-am-I-getting-myself-into Petty, What-am-I-getting-him-into Narpete, Perpetually-sleepy Bronkney, Barbet-haired Cam, Not-nearly-as-surly-as-he-seems-on-Facebook Stoney, Will-certainly-be-able-to-crush-us-all-very-soon Chan, Started-out-pretty-huge-at-least Bwenners, Little's-perfect-idol Laney, Angelic Grace, "When-I-gave-a-lecture-at-Harvard"-anecdote-spewing G-Lens, Disturbingly-Mommy-like Barbarian, Random-often-accurate-fact-spouting Abel, Infinitely-nongullible Chameleon, Snake-activist Mawky, Constantly-somersaulting Lenny, Not-blindingly-white-at-least-on-the-back-of-his-neck Christofferson, The-major-grooving-influence-in-the-entire-Lewis-family AD, Snap-happy Ambrosia, Impossible-I-know-but-still-growing Wire-D, Best-moves-on-the-dance-floor YahnBahn, Everybody-wants-one X-Baby, Sweetest-cousin-ever Clavinator, .44 Maggum, Sweet-talking Lydenheimer, Kerpow-eyed Liesiepie, Song-writing D'Bora, Covenant-demolishing Jaded, All-hair-and-freckles Chaste, Village-shaman Pookie, The-village-shaman's-pants Anjee, Indefatigable Kal-N, Really-wish-we-knew-better Livie, Daddy-totally-forgot-he-existed-but-he's-pretty-cool-anyway Jax, Best-welcome-room-book-owner Bobert, Domesticator-extraordinaire EyeLien, Supreme-rockness KatieOGreatie, Contributes-like-90%-of-the-genes-his-kids-have Ty, Always-goofy-and-fun Magda, Doesn't-want-to-be-the-kid-you-just-have-to-cheek-pinch-but-totally-is SamWise, 100%-no-holds-barred-all-boy BeenJammin, Hair-of-a-future-glam-rock-idol Dzhaymz, Water-bottle-slayer Bonk, Sacrifices-his-body-for-the-team Kibbo, Adorably-nerdy IckleFat, Tactical-nuke Noer, I-am-a-beautiful-butterfly Kyysyn, Favorite-child Chisnap, Aptly-named Gordita, Dude-spent-like-forever-in-Afghanistan-and-isn't-even-weird Ereeek, Resembles-a-bitter-vegetable-but-way-cuter Kale-y, Totally-needs-to-get-into-audio-engineering Yoshe, Girlie-legged K-Dog, Bowls-worse-than-Littler-but-totally-tolerates-the-girlie-man-thing Aerial, Thinks-he-can-grab-the-rim-but-really-only-touches-it Gilbot, Kanye-glasses Josie, No-longer-at-all-rotund Gabrul, Kids'-favorite Airic and Shoots-way-too-many-3s K'naan, hailing from Arizona, California, Utah, Montana, Washington, Colorado and South Dakota. Daddy even got to make his own mother vanish in a puff of pure logic, which he thought was pretty fun.  We have to thank D'Bora and Gra'ma, and Bonk and Kibbles for L'Hospital-ity.

Not exactly a vacation but a very worthwhile trip!

Littlest, aka Dude

When Littlest was born he was super skinny and long [4.30.10]:



He got bigger fast [6.22.10]:





And he got happy [7.14.10 and 7.21.10]:






 Now he's bursting out of his 6-month clothes and generally amplifying himself in all dimensions [7.24.10]:



 I like to call him "Just a Dude [Little]" because he's very much like our first when she was a baby: fat, superhappy, adorable, and typifying the same hard-to-describe round/creamy gestalt that Little invented. And not at all put-downable.

Littlest's favorite activity: staring in Mommy or Daddy's face and grinning and cooing. He does it from across the room, the lap, or the carseat. He pretty much would smile and gurgle and tongue-wag all day long if anybody else had the endurance he does. It's super sweet.

Littler loves Littlest to death; quite nearly literally. She is so fond of him that she sits on him, drops him, pokes his eye, shoves her food into his mouth, hammers him on the head with her solid dolly, kisses him while lying on him so he can't breathe, and generally does anything violent that could possibly be construed as well-intentioned affection.  In fact, Littlest now recognizes Littler as a source of unique terror, so whenever he can even see her he screams.  We don't really want to discourage sibling affection--especially considering the lack of love lost between the two girls--but Littlest's welfare is at stake here.  So Littler isn't even allowed to touch him any more. Sad, but--trust us here--totally necessary.

Our Weekend

Our good friends recently moved up to the mountains. It's a ridiculously sweet place to live, connected up to hundreds of miles of preserve trails right from their front door. We went up on Friday night and slept in a corrugated-aluminum grannyshack on their property. An impossible-to-describe cascade of noises came down from the attic throughout the night, only a small fraction of which were explainable by the bats living up there.  The sound of a deflated cheap soccer ball rolling on linoleum. Sproinging Victorian gadget components dislodged by wrestling poltergeists. Impossible inorganic resonances. It was exciting and trippy and tiring.

In the morning, Daddy and Olivander's Daddy and Kason's Daddy went mountain biking. The final 1,500-foot relentless climb left Daddy, at least, completely wasted. It was a great trail, though. Later, Mommy and Olivander's Mommy and Kason's Mommy went for a trail run. Overall a great and exciting morning.

We all spent the rest of the day at a beach near Santa Cruz, a lot colder than it looks. Here's where the pictures come in:























Little, Maleb, Olivander, and Kason, pretty much a who's-who of Little's favorite boy toys. However, she got married to her friend Canyon this week so hopefully he won't see this picture and get jealous.




It looks painful but that's what everybody was doing and it seemed fun.








The weekend at least compensated for the fact that, for the first time in our married life, we haven't been able to go anywhere fun this summer. Not yet anyhow!