Family Ties - Labor Day Weekend

As Michelle has already written, we went to Cape Cod to visit the Sweetser side of the family over Labor Day weekend. Jonah got to see some familiar faces, like:

Uncle Russ

Auntie Shannon

Great Grandma Souza - "Oh, Great Gram, you are toooo much!"

Grammy Sweets

Grandpa Sweetser

First cousins, once removed Cory and Robyn Schnaible (and the rest of the Schnaible clan, including meeting Becky!)

We also had a great time visiting with the Toolas family, but we didn't get many pictures that night of Jonah with any one, particularly because he was feeling a bit under the weather. All pictures from our weekend are posted in our Phanfare web album.

Jonah also got to meet some family members he hadn't met previously. 

Great Aunt Marge (and her husband Alan)

Great Uncle Jim (and Sandy, Joey, and Kelly)

Unfortunately, we weren't as good about getting pictures with everyone, so we didn't get pictures with Great Uncle Mike, or Great Aunt Maryrose and Great Uncle Speedy, or cousins (once removed) Sarah and Amanda.

It was a great weekend filled with seeing family! More pics are available in our Phanfare web album.

The Baby on the Bike Goes Wah, Wah, Wah!

Daddy and a sleeping Jonah a few miles into our ride.

We started the morning of our final day on Cape Cod with a bike ride with Grammy Sweetser. We
rented bikes from Barb's Bike Shop in Dennis and hopped on at the Cape Cod Rail Trail trailhead right next to it.  Ben and I were definitely excited to get out and do something more active, especially as Jonah has done fairly well with bike rides in the past. This was his first time riding in a seat behind Ben, rather than in a trailer behind the bike. And as usual, he expressed his distaste for the bike helmet (they do seem impossible to get situated properly and require frequent readjustment).


The ride started out really well - Jonah enjoyed himself a bit before falling asleep.  The day was beautiful for a ride and there were lots of people out on the trail.  We stopped briefly in Nickerson State Park to use the facilities and continued heading east, motivated in part by the mileage indicators every tenth of a mile (how awesome would that be for speed work for running?!).  We turned around just shy of the 12.5 mile mark, as the trail joined the main roadway and we didn't feel like trying to caravan as a group on a busy street.  The day was beautiful, and all seemed to be going great.

Get me out of here!

Unfortunately, the return trip was not nearly as peaceful.  Jonah decided he had had it with the bike ride and cried nonstop for at least 5 miles of the return trip.  We stopped at one point to try to console him, but ultimately had no option but to put him back in the seat and continue on back to our car.  Eventually, he wore himself out and fell asleep as we approached our destination.  In hindsight, we think he was hungry and that exacerbated his frustration: he inhaled his food in the parking lot when we got back.  This serves as a good reminder that we should always plan to have at least a small snack with us!

Hopefully our next bike ride will be much happier.  I doubt we'll attempt 25 miles in the near future, though.

Martha's Vineyard

Jonah and Daddy on the boat at the start of the trip.

On the second day of our vacation, we took the high speed boat from Hyannis to Martha's Vineyard with Grandpa Sweetser, Linda, Uncle Russ, and Aunt Shannon.  It was a beautiful day for a trip, marking Jonah's first time on a boat, and the first time that most of us had been to the Vineyard.

After arriving and taking some time to develop our plans for the day - and grabbing some refreshment in the form of coffee and doughnuts - we headed out to check out Oak Bluffs.  We began by walking around Ocean Park, which is surrounded by homes in the Queen Anne and Gothic Revival style.  There were also great views of the water on our walk, including the one below.

View of the beach at Ocean Park.

After finishing our navigation around Ocean Park, we stopped back at the Flying Horses Carousel so that Jonah could get a ride on the oldest operating platform carousel in the United States. He'd been on a carousel once before, at the zoo here in Milwaukee, and he hadn't been a huge fan of it. As Ben had accompanied him on his previous ride, we decided I would take him on this ride. He definitely was uncertain about the ride and from the first moment I put him on the horse's back, he was wriggling to get off. When the movement and motion started, it helped somewhat, in part because he enjoys music and "danced" in rhythm to the music a bit.

Sign outside the carousel building.

Jonah and Mommy riding the carousel.

After leaving the carousel, we headed toward the gingerbread cottages that surround the Methodist Tabernacle. These were really charming little homes and I should learn more about what led to their construction there. I can't quite imagine residing in them, though, with all of the tourists taking photos all of the time.  That didn't stop me from taking a few photos myself!  These are a couple of my favorites:

Front porches of several cottages, featuring patriotic decorations.

"The Greenup." Love the decorative railing above. So many details in these houses!

Windmill in a garden next to one of the cottages.

Shortly after this, we took the bus to Edgartown, where we grabbed lunch. Most of our activities for the day were pretty grown-up-focused, but Jonah handled the stroller and bus rides pretty well.  Of course it also helped to have reading material for him: he has entered a phase of being extremely interested in books and we read the same board books over and over at least five or six times a day sometimes.

Jonah "reads" his book.

We walked out to the Edgartown Lighthouse, where we shot a family photo or two.

The Sweetser Family.  Too bad Linda and Aunt Shannon aren't included!

Edgartown Lighthouse.

We headed back and got on the bus, planning to get off at an alpaca farm, but changed plans and got off in Vineyard Haven instead. We got some yummy ice cream at Mad Martha's and browsed in  a couple of shops.  The Black Dog ship was in the harbor, featuring a flag with the eponymous dog.

The Black Dog ship was in the harbor.

With bellies filled, we boarded the bus back to Oak Bluffs and returned to Ocean Park to kill time until the ferry. There were some kite flying festivities going on by this point and Jonah enjoyed watching people go by.

A woman entertained those gathered in Ocean Park.

Three generations of Sweetsers watch the kites.

After a busy day, we boarded the boat back to Hyannis just in time for Jonah to crash and take a nap, which meant that Mommy and Daddy snuck one in too!  What a great day!  Loads more photos are on the Phanfare site.

Sign o' the (bath) times

We've tried to use sign language with Jonah in the hopes that he will be able to communicate with us more easily before he can talk. We use the signs for eat, drink, more, milk/nurse, and sleep among some others. The first one he picked up and started to do though, was bath.

Jonah loves his bath time! It was one of the first words that he seemed to recognize, and he would always perk up when he heard it. On the night I captured this (about a month ago - yes, I'm a bit behind in posting), we were outside talking with the neighbors when it seemed to be time to go in, so I asked if he was ready for bath. As soon as he heard it, he started doing the sign for it. When we got back inside, I was hoping he would do it again so I could capture it. I think he got tired of me asking at the end and just decided to walk out of the room.



He also does the signs for outside (kind of), eat (though he puts his hand to his nose instead of his mouth), and more (but we never really know what he wants more of, because sometimes we try to give him more and he refuses...).

Beach Baby

We took a trip to Cape Cod over Labor Day weekend and had a wonderful time catching up with family members.  The trip started out with a visit to the beach, Jonah's first time there. Fortunately we were on the Cape the weekend after Irene had gone through, so a trip to the beach was possible (there did seem to be more debris than usual on the beach, probably as a result of the hurricane).

We thought Jonah would really enjoy the water as he has always loved baths and has generally seemed to enjoy his wading pool experiences.  The beach experience was a mixed success: Jonah wasn't too sure about the water (maybe it was too cold, the waves too strong, the noise too loud, or some combination thereof), but he did seem to enjoy playing in the sand.

This video shows his initial reaction to the waves:



At times, he would warm up to the water when we did more playful things with him, like Ben did here, dipping Jonah in and out of the water:



Two other videos of Jonah in the water are available on YouTube: here and here.

We didn't take our camera along, so the only pictures we have to document are those we took with our phones (and I was playing with Hipstamatic, so some of them really aren't that great). Grandpa Sweetser got a few with his camera before it died, but he still needs to share them with us. Here are some of our favorites:

Maybe I can smile about this.

 

That water is COLD on my foot!

Hey - where did my legs go?

What IS this stuff??

Having a good time showing Mama the sand.

 

Grandpa, don't you go stealing my seashell!

Jonah definitely enjoyed playing in the sand and tried eating it at one point.  Imagine his shock upon tasting sand.  Not pretty!  He liked the seashells he found scattered throughout, and also liked putting shoes into the stroller and attempting to push it around:





All in all, we had a nice time and look forward to many more trips to the beach!

Houston

Playing in the water area outdoors.

Jonah and I flew to Texas together on August 19 to join Ben, who had already been there for the week, in attending Tim and Amy's wedding.  Jonah had been on several flights before, but I wasn't certain how I would do managing alone. It went remarkably well, in part because Ben had taken the vast majority of our personal items with him in a suitcase earlier in the week.  I only needed to manage a small diaper bag, a few food items, the car seat and stroller, and entertainment for the flight. 

Once we got to the airport, Jonah entertained himself (and lots of other people) by pushing his stroller around the terminal.  This served two purposes: entertaining him and wearing him out.  Within 15 minutes of takeoff, he was sound asleep on my lap and I was able to do some reading on my iPad.  The twenty-something gentleman seated next to me told me when we landed that Jonah had been an angel.  Now that's definitely a compliment coming from a college student!

"Driving" one of the trucks.

Aside from wedding activities - Ben was the best man - we had a bit of time to catch up with our friend Amy (who delivered her first baby a week later), and to visit with my cousin, Johanna, and her family at the Children's Museum of Houston. What a great museum with a fabulous area for kids Jonah's age!! He really loved it and could certainly have spent more time there, had it not been time for lunch and a nap.  Featured here are a few of our favorite shots from the trip (I'm really surprised that we didn't get more shots while we were there).

Jonah did really well overall with the travel, though his napping and bedtimes were not always in synch with the schedule of wedding events, and unfortunately, he chose to vocalize a bit while the bridal couple were saying their vows. I do think he won lots of people over with his smile and antics. I'm really glad we were able to join in on Tim and Amy's special day!


Additional images from the trip (including a lot of wedding photos) are on our Phanfare site.

Learning to milk a cow.

Playing with all kinds of knobs and checking out the dials.

All tuckered out and napping in the pack and play.

With the groom!

In the hotel room as we were packing to leave.