We've moved!

The Pikes Peak Parent Mommy blog has moved to a new location. Please check it out here. It has a lovely picture of Kaylee terrorizing the rocky mountains.

Vampire baby

I’m not sure why, but I find it very easy to be creeped out by small children. I think I’ve seen way too many movies and TV shows in which children talk to ghosts, are possessed by the devil or do otherwise scary things. I really don’t know how I’ll handle it the first time I hear Kaylee talking to an imaginary friend.

That said, I’ve never actually been scared of a real child. Even though my niece Hope once told her mom about a woman in her bedroom mirror with red eyes, I don’t consider Hope especially scary. But I wouldn’t go into her room at night.

I think it’s so easy for Hollywood to get to me because kids are supposed to be the height of innocence. So the idea of one of them suddenly turning evil is not only terrifying, but completely unexpected. It doesn’t help that they usually reserve the worst torment for their mothers.

The other night, Rob and I watched an episode of a TV show called Supernatural, in which a town’s children were kidnapped by changlings. The kids were kept in cages while the changlings took their forms and their places in the household. They’d follow their moms around and say things like “Come play with me, Mommy” in this monotone that made me shiver. Then, when the moms were sleeping at night, they’d feed on her by sucking on this wound on her neck.

All right, I know my summary made the show sound stupid and unbelievable, but it was really creepy. Really. Stop laughing at me.

Anyway, later that night, I was feeding Kaylee and thinking about how nice it is that she hasn’t been possessed by an evil spirit or kidnapped by a supernatural creature, and that she didn’t seem terribly interested in devouring my soul. And I put her head on my shoulder to pat her back, while she snoozed away.

And then, very slowly, she turned her head toward me and licked my neck.

I think she’s checking for weak spots. You know, for when she gets teeth.

Dear Kaylee, at 5 months

Dear Kaylee,

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that I have still not sent off for official proof that you were born. We somehow left your keepsake birth certificate behind at the hospital in our rush to get home and start our life with you, and I keep forgetting to send out the form and the check for $17 to get an official one from the county. For all I know, the government doesn’t even acknowledge that you exist. But don’t worry, we do have some photographic evidence that you’re here, plus you keep scratching my face with your inhumanly strong fingernails, so I have some scars I can show people if they question your existence. (As a side note, you’ve completely stopped scratching yourself. That’s great, I just wish you hadn’t turned your wrath on me and your dad.)

Last month you suddenly noticed we have dogs. This month, you’ve decided they’re side-splittingly funny. And that you’d like to pull out handfuls of their hair and eat it. So while they’re still fascinated with you and like to lick your hands and feet, they’ve also learned to keep a careful distance.

And you’ve been so happy lately. Almost every day at daycare, someone tells me how happy you are all the time, and you’re always willing to share a smile with everyone you see. I hope you brighten other people’s days the way you do mine.

A couple of months ago, you learned how to growl. It was cute back then, but now it’s just crazy cute, because you’ve started doing it all the time. You growl all the way to daycare, you growl when we’re playing, when you’re frustrated, and when you’ve scooted off the daycare floor mat and you need to send out a distress signal so your teacher can figure out where you went.

Halloween is coming up soon and we’ve bought you a dragon costume to go with your growl. I don’t even know if dragons growl, but I do know that when we put you in that costume and you unleash your vicious “grrr errr errrrrrrr,” that all the adults just might collapse from the waves of cute emanating from your little body. But that’s ok, because then you’ll get all the candy to yourself. Good luck operating the blender to puree those candy bars.

And the grabbing. Oh, the grabbing. You’ve been reaching for every little thing that catches your attention, and some stuff that you don’t care about but that happens to be near your hand. The other night you grabbed a placemat and almost pulled my dinner into my lap before I stopped you. But it was my fault, really. I shouldn’t have taken all that time to blink.

This month, we’ve started feeding you solids, and you’ve taken to the new food with enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm, in fact, that I’ve now had the experience of cleaning squash out of your right nostril and carrots out of your eyelashes. Feeding you is one of the best parts of my day, because it’s almost always hilarious.

You’ve become so much fun that you’re addictive. I know of a few people outside our household who suffer from Kaylee withdrawal when they don’t get to see you for a couple of days. And your dad and I? We suffer after a couple of hours. Sometimes I head home from work, angry and near tears about something that happened that day, only to have all my frustration melt away the moment I see your bright smile. That’s what you do for us, sweetheart -- you make everything better, like magic.

Love,

Mommy

Crystal ball

I had a premonition today.

I dropped Kaylee off at daycare this morning and suddenly had this vision of her in a dozen years or so, telling me about cheerleader tryouts and the trials of juggling her busy social calendar, while I stand there staring at her perfect hairdo and watching her touch up her lipstick, wondering, “Whose child ARE you?”

My vision was brought on by the realization that my baby is quite popular -- more popular, in fact, than I’ve ever been in my life.

Whenever I take her to school, I get comments from strangers about how they “just love that little one” and what a cute smile she has. At her school’s open house night, Rob discovered that Kaylee has a little three-year-old friend who visits her regularly to play. Today, one of the daycare employees who floats from room to room, helping where needed, admitted to spending her lunch hours in the infant room, playing with my daughter.

It’s so weird knowing that my four-month-old baby has a social life that I’m not a part of, with friends I may never meet.

At least she’s not asking to borrow the car yet.

Clueless

The other night, I had a profound realization: I have no idea what I’m doing.

I was staring with grossed-out, worried-mom fascination at Kaylee’s left eye, which had decided to puff up and seal itself shut with ooze, and that’s when it hit me. I’m in charge of this little person, and she had a problem, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

Do you rinse the eye out with water? Call the doctor in the middle of the night, crying and screaming that your baby’s eye is about to fall out? Let the dog lick the ooze off? (He totally would do that.) Wait until morning, call in sick to work and take her to see the doctor?

Usually Kaylee keeps her problems simple – she needs a bottle, a diaper change or someone to hold her back from diving off the couch in her attempts to catch a dog. But every once in a while, she throws a little curveball, and I’m reminded that I’m really and truly clueless.

And it fills me with a little bit of terror, wondering about all the things she’ll have to talk about with her therapist when she’s older. (“Your mother did WHAT? She got poop on your head?!?!?!”) But more than that, I feel lucky to be entrusted with her life, and with her little hands, her cute little feet, her crusty eye and her snotty nose. And so far, she seems to think I’m doing ok.

But what does she know? She’s only four months old.

My baby eats! Actual food!

Kaylee did the most amazing thing a couple of days ago – she opened her mouth for a spoonful of baby food (squash). Not only is this amazing because squash is gross and what was she thinking letting me put it in her mouth, but it’s also wonderful because it’s like a light bulb turned on in her head and she realized, “OH! I get it! You’re not putting this stuff in my mouth to watch me gag and make faces. You want me to EAT it.”


So FINALLY, I get to take some pictures of Kaylee with food smeared all over her face. I’m so excited, since this is the main reason I became a parent.

Poo-poo head

On Saturday, I dressed Kaylee in one of my favorite outfits for her: a onesie that says “little monkey” and has a picture of a monkey eating a banana. When I saw it in the store, I just had to buy it -- even though I was in a Gymboree, where the clothes are much too expensive when you consider that the baby will grow out of them in 10 minutes. That’s how much I love this onesie.

So imagine my horror when I realized that, 15 minutes after I dressed her, Kaylee had a diaper explosion. And not just any diaper explosion –- a sick baby diaper explosion. That’s the worst kind, I’ve recently learned.

I had to call Rob in for reinforcements while I cleaned poo off her calves, thighs and back. I didn’t actually need him to do anything other than cheer me on, but his laughter was a nice counterpoint to my frantic chanting of “ew, ew, ew, ew.”

After I’d properly mourned the staining of the monkey onesie and sent Rob off to throw it in the washing machine, I dressed Kaylee in something else and started trying to forgive her for the incident.

Later, I carried her into our bedroom to talk to Rob, while I nuzzled her and pretended to eat her neck, face and head. Then I held her out to Rob and said, “Here, kiss your daughter.”

He gave her a peck on the side of the head, and then as I pulled her away, he said, “What is that on her head? ... Is that poo? Does she have POO on her HEAD?”

I turned her around and there it was. Poop. Right there in her hair, most likely deposited there when I took her onesie off.

And Rob, sweet husband that he is, had one more thing to say.

“You really are going to turn her into the stinky kid, aren’t you?”

Survivor

If my family were characters in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi/horror novel a la The Stand, Kaylee would be a survivor and the rest of us would be dead.

Because she was able to giggle and play immediately after episodes of Exorcist-style vomiting, Rob and I attributed Kaylee’s trouble last week to “air in the tummy” or difficulty digesting her new solid foods. We were wrong. Very, very wrong.

Kaylee apparently brought the superflu home from daycare, and she managed to pass it on to all of her Colorado Springs-based family within 24 hours. I never thought a 12-pound, 10-ounce little person could wreak that kind of havoc.

On Friday night, we had dinner with Grandma and Uncle Tim, and Kaylee exploded all over a previously clean eating establishment. On Saturday, we had a picnic with Gram, Papa, Uncle Jamie, Aunt Laura and cousins Hope and Evie, and there were no major bodily-fluid incidents.

By Sunday night, Grandma, Uncle Tim, Gram, Aunt Laura, Rob and I were all in the grip of a nasty stomach bug, and Papa was feeling kind of queasy.

That’s right. My baby took out four households.

And while we were all incapacitated with misery, she was bouncing in her Jumperoo, laughing her little head off.

Again with the puking / I’m so happy I have Rob

I think I may have to saran-wrap everything in Kaylee’s room.

Kaylee almost always wakes up at around 3 a.m. and has a bottle before drifting quietly back to sleep. This is usually a rather uneventful experience: feed the baby, put her back in bed, the end.

Not so much the last two nights, though.

Rather than going right back to sleep, Kaylee’s bottle-drinking has been followed by a hiccup and then a shower of vomit. She hasn't seemed to mind, really. She's been in just as good a mood after channeling Linda Blair as beforehand, so I don’t think she’s actually been sick.

Kaylee may not have minded, but it was a bit traumatic for Rob. In two out of three spit-up incidents, he actually had to go take a shower because of the volume of vomit that had been dumped on him. The carpet in front of the rocking chair in her room was squishy, Kaylee’s pajamas were soaked, and the dog was in heaven.

You may remember that this is the week that Rob was scheduled to go out of town for work, but something came up and his company decided not to send him. This was disappointing in an aww-now-he-can’t-have-adventures-in-Virginia kind of way, but a relief in a now-Mommy-is-less-likely-to-go-crazy kind of way.

And thankgodthankgodthankgod he was here. Because a hysterical 3 a.m. phone call from his wife screaming, “I’M COVERED IN PUKE. GET ON A PLANE AND COME HOME RIGHT NOW SO I CAN TAKE A SHOWER!” probably wouldn’t have helped him achieve maximum productivity.

Jumpin’ monkey

Kaylee has recently taken up jumping. Of course, to a four-month-old baby, jumping involves the following steps:

1. Complain until Mommy helps you stand up.
2. Suddenly pick your legs up off the floor.
3. Hope Mommy realizes what you’re doing before you collapse into a heap.
4. If Mommy plays her part, she will bounce you up and down, letting you launch yourself off the floor with every bounce.
5. Repeat every few minutes, all day long, or until Mommy’s arms give out.

We didn’t know where she’d learned this particular stunt until Rob went to pick her up from daycare late last week. He was gathering her stuff into her diaper bag when he heard something going “boing! boing! boing!” and the joyous laughter of a highly entertained baby. Kaylee was sitting in a Jumperoo, bouncing enthusiastically and enjoying every moment.

We were still in search of something that’ll keep Kaylee busy while we eat dinner, so over the weekend we bought her a Rainforest Jumperoo that takes up about a third of the living room.

She loves it. More than she loves us, I think.


If there were a way to give her bottles via IV so she didn’t have to stop bouncing, I think she’d go for it. As it is, whenever she gets hungry, tired or otherwise upset while in her Jumperoo, she makes sure she lets us know, and loudly –- but she doesn’t stop jumping. And it’s entertaining to us, too, because it’s very weird to see a baby jump spastically while alternating between crying and laughing. (“I’m hungry! This is fun, wheee! Give me a bottle! I like jumping!”)

Here’s hoping it’ll keep her entertained long enough for Rob and me to eat a meal at the same time. That would be nothing short of miraculous.

Six things I’ve said to Kaylee in the past seven days

"How’d you get a booger in your ear?”

“Don’t pee don’t pee don’t pee don’t pee don’t pee don’t pee…”

“That’s one thing you’ll learn when you’re older: Boys don’t listen.”

“Is that chocolate on the back of your head?”

“Don’t believe anything your daddy tells you. Ever.”

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I have poo under my fingernail. Now I have to go boil my hand.”

Dear Kaylee, at 4 months

Dear Kaylee,

You have changed so much this month that it’s hard to believe you’re the same baby. Suddenly, you’ve noticed the world around you, and you seem extremely eager to get yourself out into it. You’d like nothing more than to crawl over to the dog food bowl and take a sample.


Speaking of the dogs, your disinterested attitude toward them has changed to one of fascination. You can’t get enough of watching their epic wrestling matches on the living room floor. And now that you get a lot of floor time, they’re finding you more interesting, too. Kody, in particular, likes to place himself right at your feet when you’re trying to crawl so that your frantic kicks will pet him on the head.

You’re also always looking for new and exciting things to put in your mouth, from blankets to rattles to monkeys. If our dogs would let you, I’m pretty sure you’d be happy to chew on their ears.


And you’ve apparently decided that Mommy would look better bald. You’re lightning fast at grabbing a handful of hair and yanking as much out as possible. I really should start putting my hair in a ponytail for preservation purposes.

Sitting still no longer appeals to you, and if you’re not being held in a standing position, you’re complaining because you want someone to help you stand. Grandma bought you a Bumbo chair, which we thought would hold you in place long enough for Mommy and Daddy to shovel dinner into our mouths, but you’re so adept at squirming that you’ve almost figured out how to escape. I’m looking forward to seeing your shocked expression when you do manage to roll yourself out of the chair and onto the floor, because I’m pretty sure you haven’t thought far enough ahead to know what you’ll do next.


You’re getting more interesting every day, little monkey, and flashes of your personality are starting to peek through your babyness – you’re already starting to seem like a little kid. Seeing you smile at me is the highlight of every single day, and it more than makes up for the dirty diapers and the late-night feedings. I think we’ve got a good thing going here, kid.

Love,
Mommy

Bring on the mashed carrots

Lately I’ve been reading up on when I get to start giving Kaylee solid foods. From what I understand, 4 to 6 months is a good age to try out cereal, and she’ll be four months old tomorrow.

I can’t explain why, but I am so excited about feeding her with a spoon and watching her smear pureed green beans into her hair. (Is there a type of fruit or vegetable that stimulates hair growth when it’s rubbed onto a head? Maybe I could start her on that.) And my dogs should be excited, too. Ever since we brought her home and they took their first wary sniffs of her little feet, I’ve been telling them, “Just you wait. One day she’ll figure out that you guys get excited when she throws her food on the floor, and then? Then you’ll be in heaven.”

She exhibits most of the signs of being ready to eat solids; she’s definitely taking an interest in our food when we eat, often trying to grab drinks out of our hands or watching longingly while we eat forkfuls of mashed potatoes.

Plus, our house has just delivered a secret weapon, I think, to stimulate her desire to eat the kinds of things we eat. Since we turned on the heat the other night, we’ve discovered that through the magic of physics, all of the smells of the kitchen are somehow channeled directly into Kaylee’s room –- and NOWHERE else. Thus, two nights ago Rob woke me up in the middle of the night, after giving the baby a bottle, to ask me why Kaylee’s room smelled like hamburgers. And this morning, I went to get her out of bed and was greeted with the strong aroma of chicken fried rice.

With these kinds of forces at work, surely she’ll be flinging food at the dogs in no time.

Budding artist

Kaylee created her first work of art at daycare on Friday. Do I detect a budding Picasso? ... Or a kid who likes to eat paint?

My baby Einstein

When I picked Kaylee up from daycare yesterday, one of her teachers told me that a classmate’s brother had asked about her. The 9-year-old boy has a little sister, and wanted to know whether Kaylee is younger than her. She is, by a week or two.

At this, the boy said, “Well, she is really smart. She stands up really well and is always smiling. She’s just really, really smart.”

I know that a 9-year-old’s stamp of approval isn’t that big of a deal, but it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. A stranger’s son thinks my daughter is smart. Yay!

Daycare 1, Mommy 0

When I picked Kaylee up from daycare last Friday, she was asleep in a bouncy seat with a blanket wrapped around her. She looked peaceful and serene, but when I went to pick her up I realized the blanket was essentially acting as a straightjacket.

Her arms were pinned to her sides so securely that she couldn’t move them at all. As I was unwrapping her, I thought, “Jeez, she’s not a cannibal. It’s not like she’ll lunge for your throat if you let her use her arms.”

My annoyance quietly smoldered for the rest of the afternoon, until I decided to try to get Kaylee to go to sleep. She’s reached a point where she fights sleep with every fiber of her being, and she’s mastered the art of squirming off of laps when she thinks an evil adult is trying to put her under. (Unfortunately, she can’t sit up or crawl, so she just squirms off to the side and then whines because she’s landed herself face-down on the couch.)

Anyway, as I cuddled Kaylee and rocked her, she was in her full-throttle I’m-never-going-to-sleep-again mode, even though she could hardly keep her eyes open. Her legs were kicking, her arms were flailing, and she kept yanking out her pacifier or smacking herself in the face.

So I decided to try the daycare’s methods and wrap her up in a blanket. (I used to swaddle her when she was a newborn, but she quickly figured out how to break out, so I stopped.) I couldn’t get the blanket straightjacket-tight, but I was able to keep her arms under control.

It was like magic. Within seconds her eyes started to close, and she was sound asleep within five minutes.

All right, daycare people. You win this round.

So, um, could someone restart my heart please? Thanks.

I checked the mail over the weekend and found that the hospital had sent me bills for almost $2,000 for Kaylee’s birth, when I thought we didn’t owe anything because of the extra insurance coverage we’d bought.

Now, ok. Kaylee is, of course, priceless. If someone told me that we’d have to pay a million dollars in order to keep her, I’d find a way to set up a payment plan or sell off my soul.

But still, when you think your bills are paid, a statement saying “send payment within 30 days” -- where said payment is several digits long -- is kind of shocking.

I spent all weekend in a bit of a panic, trying to figure out how we’d manage to come up with that much money so quickly. (They don’t repossess babies, do they?)

I called the hospital this morning, having practiced my angry speech all day yesterday and all the way to work today. It involved creative swear words, a couple of insults and perhaps some crying. It was really quite beautiful.

But I didn’t get to use it after all. The lady on the phone almost immediately recognized a clerical error and told me that I didn’t owe anything.

So, there’s one weekend needlessly lost to panic (and a three-day weekend, at that), but at least I get to keep my baby. Whew.

*whine, whine, whine*

Yesterday, Rob told me that he has to go on an out-of-state business trip for a week in mid-September. This is good news in that it means his employer likes him and thinks he’s worth sending across the country to participate in important meetings. And hey, the potential for overtime pay doesn’t hurt, either.

There was a time when I actually looked forward to a couple of days on my own. I’d get to eat macaroni and cheese for dinner every night if I wanted to, and the quiet time would allow me to do some reading or watch a couple of chick flicks whenever I want.

But now, I just have one thought that keeps circling in my head: I have to watch the baby for a week ALL BY MYSELF.

I shouldn’t be whining, because I know there are single moms out there who never get a break, and they are heroes. But I can’t help it. That means it’ll be my night to get up with her for seven days in a row. I have to figure out how to take showers every morning for a whole week without Rob around to watch Kaylee, AND I have to get to work on time. Plus, Kaylee has to get her second round of immunizations during that week, so I’m practically guaranteed one sleepless night dealing with an extremely unhappy baby.

It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.

At the very least, I won’t run out of things to say on this blog while he's gone.

Determined

One weekend when I was in early elementary school, I announced to my parents that I wanted to start riding my bike to school like my older brother. They said I was welcome to do so –- as soon as I learned to ride without training wheels.

No problem, I decided, and asked my dad to remove the extra wheels. I assured my parents I’d be ready to ride to school by Monday, and they nodded their encouragement while privately chuckling at my naivete.

I remember spending all day Sunday practicing in the front yard, riding in circles over and over, and trying again every time I lost my balance. At the end of the afternoon, I called my parents to the yard, declaring that I was ready and reveling in their surprise when I showed them my new ability. They had no choice but to let me ride to school the next morning.

That’s always been my approach to learning new skills –- isolating myself and working with single-minded determination until I had mastered whatever I wanted to learn, be it shuffling a deck of cards or driving a stick shift.

I bring this up only because I recently noticed that it’s one way in which my daughter seems to be just like me.

I’ve already mentioned the sudden, overwhelming desire to roll over, which she accomplished and mastered seemingly overnight. Now she’s decided it’s time to crawl, sit up and stand. I’ve sat her down and tried to tell her that there’s no need to rush these things, that she’s only three months old and her little legs can only take so much.

She doesn’t listen.

If I lie her down on her back, she rolls over and tries to crawl. (She doesn’t realize yet that she needs to use her arms, so mostly she just kicks her legs and slides around the floor on her face.) The whining starts almost immediately when she can’t get very far, but she tries again anyway. And again, and again, and again.

Or she’ll wait for me to take her hands so she can pull into a sitting position, and then a standing position. And once she’s standing, she’ll stay that way until her legs give out, if you let her.

If I sit her down and lean her back against something, she struggles and strains to get into an upright sitting position. She can’t do it yet, but she tries and tries and tries, focusing harder on her goal than I do on half my projects for work.

I wonder how much she practices when she’s alone, and whether one of these days I’ll go to get her from her crib and find her crawling laps around the edges with a big, toothless grin on her face.

You’ll get there, baby. Just keep trying.

Baby in the woods

We took Kaylee camping for the first time over the weekend. We were invited by my parents, who have been hoarding camping equipment for the past few months in anticipation of a large family camping trip.

While we were kind of excited about going camping –- Rob and I had never camped together –- we were nervous about taking our three-month-old baby along. What if she got cold? What if she were attacked by West Nile-infected mosquitoes? What if she were kidnapped by wolves and raised by them, only to be discovered years later and brought back to civilization by a well-meaning zoologist, with hilarious results?

My parents and friends assured us that, really, this is a good age for taking kids camping, because they’re too young to wander off and fall in a river. And as long as you keep them fed and slathered with sunscreen, not much can happen. So we packed up our car, took the dogs to Rob’s mom’s house for the weekend, picked up Uncle Tim, and drove off into the wilderness.

Shortly after we got there, my mom recommended that we keep Kaylee’s formula in the car so it wouldn’t attract bears. Bears?!? Nobody mentioned bears before. And wouldn’t a bear kind of ignore the formula and go after the tasty human that’s too tiny to run away?

Of course, the only bear we saw was Kaylee, who was dressed in a bear hoodie and wasn’t scary at all. (Although her newly-learned growl can be kind of intimidating.)

For the most part, camping was a fun change of pace from spending the weekend watching TV on the couch. We played cards, roasted marshmallows and grilled hamburgers while Kaylee stared at the campfire and occasionally napped.

The trouble started when we decided to call it a night and go to sleep. Kaylee had already been asleep in her portable crib for a while, snug in sweats and a couple of blankets. After the rest of us had been asleep for a couple of hours, I started waking up every few minutes because I’d gotten very, very cold. That made me worry about Kaylee, so when my mom noticed that the baby’s hands were cold, I brought her to bed with me and Rob. I’m sure this was nice for Kaylee, but it meant that I spent the night with a stiff shoulder, constantly concerned about keeping the comforter pulled up to just the right spot –- to her shoulders but not over her face –- and having dreams about frozen babies in the rare moments when I was actually able to sleep.

Lately, Kaylee’s been sleeping a solid 10 hours or so without waking up at night –- and yes, I know, we’re very lucky to have a baby who sleeps so well. And when she wakes up, it’s in stages: a few squeaks, followed by some grunts, a little bit of babbling, and then crying if we haven’t responded yet. But on Saturday night, she woke up about every three hours and skipped immediately to full-on screaming every time.

And of course, the formula was in the car. So feeding her required putting on shoes, carrying her across the campsite to the car, and allowing her to project her voice across the entire campground to the annoyance of other campers and the intrigue of all the bears. But at least we got to sit in the car with the heater on for a while.

By morning, Kaylee was happy and rested, and most of the adults were exhausted and much, much worse for the wear.

Ultimately, though, I guess I’d say it was a successful, fun camping trip, as we all cheered up after the sun came up and warmed the chill out of our bones.

But we won’t be going again this year. We’ll wait until Kaylee’s old enough to run from the bears, when I won’t have to worry about her crying for a bottle in the middle of the night. Then I’ll only have to worry about her sticking her hands in the fire, getting lost in the woods, drowning in a river, falling off a cliff, walking into a tree, getting bitten by a snake . . .