Dewdrops In The Garden

Our Mission: Recover Ernie

Since we had some beautiful weather on Mother’s Day, I decided to take my daughter for a run in the morning while Dave hung back to look after Ocean. Because we had festivities to attend later in the afternoon, my plan was to do a quick 6 miles while pushing Mar in the jogging stroller. As has been the case lately, Marley wanted to bring her little Sesame Street figures to accompany her for the ride.

As I reached the 5th mile, Marley awakened from her nap yelling, “Ernie, Ernie!” I stopped for a moment and checked her stroller. Ernie was gone, which meant Marley must have dropped him along the way. Panic ensued. “We have to go back and rescue Ernie!” I thought. So, rather than exit the trail to go back home, I instead turned around and kept running, re-tracing my steps in hopes we wouldn’t be too late to save Ernie.

At mile 7, still no sign of the little guy. Shortly thereafter, Mar starts yelling, “Grover, Grover!” “You dropped Grover too?” I asked. Once again I found myself doing an about face, intent on protecting Grover from the same fate as Ernie. Luckily, we found Grover without going too far, so one more time I found myself reversing direction to continue our pursuit of Ernie (imagine what invisible onlookers must have thought while watching this crazy woman and her stroller going back and forth).

No Ernie was to be found as I finished re-tracing my steps, so I abandoned all hope. I arrived at home 8.2 miles later and asked Dave if he had seen Ernie. “Yes, he’s here at home,” he replied. “I took him from Mar before you left, because I was afraid she would drop him if she had too many to hold onto.”

You don’t say.

This week started off with a bang and ended with a boom as Ocean achieved four milestones.  On Monday, Ocean began standing in his crib.  I walked in to check on him after putting him down for his nap, only to find him standing up and smiling, as if to say “Hey Mom, how cool am I?”  I had to laugh and brace myself for the work ahead (which included stressing over him every time he fell down and went “boom”).

On Tuesday, Dad discovered that Ocean was officially crawling (apparently “Gamma” discovered his crawling earlier in the day, but we told her it didn’t count since she forgot to tell us).  Previously, he’d do the army crawl, but hadn’t yet mastered your classic hands-and-knees form.  We thought he’d skip crawling entirely and go straight for walking.  We were close in our prediction, because this week he also started walking along things, i.e., cruising and walking with his walker (a little Mail Carrier the Reeps gave us back when Marley was just a wee lass). 

Now that he can stand up, he decided he will have none of that “sitting down stuff”, which means we don’t get to “sit down” either as we are always on the run keeping him out of trouble.  Ocean just began doing the sign for “More”.  He had previously learned the sign for “All done.”  He seems to like to use the “All done” sign more often.  In fact, he tries calling “All done” when dinner has just begun …  especially if it’s any green vegetable.  Good try, Ocean.

"Thank God you showed up; I don't know how to get down!"

Marley was sweet enough to hand her baby car down to Ocean, so we rewarded her with a brand new Strider bike.  For those not familiar with the Strider, it’s a bike without pedals.  I know you are probably thinking, “Well, what’s the point?”  I thought the same thing, but the purpose of the bike is to teach them to balance so that they can skip training wheels entirely.  Marley loves her new “weh-woh” (yellow) bike with her matching helmet.

Ready for Ride the Rockies.