It's a perfectly lazy Sunday morning here in the Mathias-Watkins household, much to our relief and contentment. I am thrilled with inspiration after just finishing a
River Cottage book about preserves, Nick is cozily enthralled in a Ruth Reichle memoir, and Arlo is splayed lifelessly across my lap for his first nap of the day. Nick and I have bellies full of homemade chocolate chip scones and our favorite coffee, and we're debating a walk downtown when Arlo rouses from his dead-to-the-world slumber. We're enjoying that the sky is cloudless and bright, the sun is happily beaming, our house and yard are still intact, and our electricity is continually humming.
We've had a little too much excitement in the Mathias-Watkins household this week.
As you all have probably heard (and/or felt) Virginia experienced a 5.8 earthquake on Tuesday afternoon. Arlo and I were walking home from the park when I felt it: an unusually deep, long rumbling beneath my feet, fierce shaking of the canopy of leaves above us, and a threatening
crrrack! of a nearby tree. I had no idea what this bizarre situation was and attributed it to some nearby construction underway; this reasoning didn't quite add up, but neither did an earthquake. An earthquake is so far outside of normal here that the thought simply never came to mind. Arlo slept soundly through it in our stroller. The phones were out almost immediately, and try as frequently as I might, I was unable to get in contact with Nick for what felt like way too long. Finally, he was able to get a call through to me, and we both confirmed that each other was safe and sound. Nick was in the car traveling between appointments and didn't even feel it. The epicenter is about a 45 minute drive from us, but thankfully the earthquake left little evidence in our home. Some things had skittered off of our mantle (the "g" from our little "imagine" letter figurines disappeared for a while, to be eventually found in Arlo's nearby toy bin) and one of the many aftershocks knocked askew the pelmet box in Arlo's nursery.
Late Thursday afternoon I was in the middle of preparing dinner (this easy, seasonal, and delicious
summer corn lasagne...mmmm!) when we lost power. A fierce thunderstorm was predicted to sweep through Fredericksburg later that evening, and it seems that our entire neighborhood lost power at the very first hefty gust. I left a foodprocessor full of fresh summer corn and basil from the garden on the counter, assuming that the power would be quickly restored. When terrifying gusts of wind forced our trees into unnatural bends and visibility went entirely grey with forceful sheets of rain, I called Nick to make sure he wasn't on the road in this mess. His office had also just lost power, and he decided to brave the 5 minute drive home. Our power was never restored after the storm passsed, and after sitting in the growing dark with Arlo, we headed out to one of the only places in Fredericksburg with power and grabbed burgers for dinner. After dinner we walked through the neighborhood (in a failed attempt to wind our energetic baby down for bedtime) and commiserated with the similarly sans-electricity neighbors. The house grew hot and humid without AC, and we spent the majority of the following 24 hours in our basement where it was relatively cooler. Our power was restored a full 24 hours later, just in time for Hurrican Irene.
We headed to the grocery store on Friday evening to replace some food we lost in the power outage and to get a few supplies for meals that would suffice should the hurricane leave us in the dark again. Nick snapped these pictures while we were in the grocery store, and though they are disappointly blurry cell phone pics, you get the very adorable point.
Introducing solids has not gone so well here, so we've adopted a
baby-led weaning approach, which is, while messy, going well enough to spur a terrifying change in the diaper department. Solid food = solid poo. This weekend we had our very first bonafide turdle, and it HORRIFIED me. Like, I gasped with disbelieving terror and took two steps back from the diaper. I've grown so accustomed to those soupy lil' breastmilk poos, and this was decidedly NOT one of those. Mah bebeh is growin' up, y'all.
Anyway.
We've been giving Arlo pieces of easily-grasped food--sometimes steamed and then chilled, like stalks of carrot, wedges of apple, and sticks of zucchini, and sometimes just big ol' wedges of fresh fruit, like watermelon, canteloupe, and peaches. It goes off with varying degrees of success in terms of how well he hits his target. (I mean, obviously he is hitting his mouth well enough to startle the bejeesus out of his mama with real! baby! turdles!) But he makes a stunning mess of himself--watermelon in his hair, carrot mush behind his ear, peach pulp crusted to his chubby baby legs. There is as much food detritus in the bottom of his tub as there is on the tray of his highchair. But he seems to have fun, and it's all wildly cute, and that makes everybody happy.
While gathering our Hurricane Irene supplies, Arlo reached from his grocery cart perch and grabbed himself an organic black plum from its nearby pyramid and, without hesitation, put it to his mouth and began eating it. We both watched with wide eyes, taken instantly by the laughable adorableness of this sight. We wondered aloud if we should take it away from him (it hadn't been washed, and we hadn't paid for it), but ultimately decided (in what might be a foreshadowing of our style of parenting) to just go with it and mitigate as needed. We let him gnaw and chew and slurp away until it was time to check out, and then we wrapped it in a produce bag and paid for it. The cashier never even blinked as she rang up a skinless, half-eaten plum, so apparently we don't have the only handsy, thieving, baby-led weaner in Fredericksburg.
Our sly little sweet tart!
Nom nom nom nom! Filling his chubby cheeks with plum pulp.
Why are all these passersby making a fuss over me? What's the big deal?
Is your heart melted by this sticky, delicious baby yet?
Irene was eventually downgraded to a category 1 storm and her path must have altered a bit, as we simply had a long day of steady rain accompanied by the occassional firm gust of wind. Our power-outting thunderstorm earlier in the week was much more frightening and mess-making. We feel thankful to be underwhelmed by it all.
So, in summary, we've had our share of natural disasters here: an earthquake, a fierce thunderstorm, a hurricane, a fruit-smeared baby, and frightening cloth diaper surprises.
