Oh, The Places She Went

Oregon, in particular. Portland, Black Butte Ranch, then Portland again. it was the first time NJ had ventured farther away from home than SeaTac and Bellevue. And it was the first excursion-with-a-baby for me and The Wife. All in all it was a good trip -- we saw beautiful scenery, a fun and beautiful wedding, scoped out a couple of potential future vacation spots, and spent some time in one of our favorite cities. Oh, but it wasn't all balloons and sea shells, though. Let's recap, shall we?

We put the good car seat and the lightweight stroller in the SUV, along with a billion other items, and set off Friday morning, right at NJ's naptime. It was all pretty uneventful. Extremely uneventful, in fact. There's not a lot a couple of foodie/wine lover urbanites can do in a city with a ten-month-old. The main reason we stopped off in Portland was to break up the six-plus-hour drive from Seattle to Black Butte, but we naively thought we might have a little old-school (read: pre-baby) fun in Portland as well. But: no. After NJ's afternoon nap (and mine) at the hotel, we ate room service and watched an in-room movie (the exceptional comic abilities of Carell and Fey overcome a pedestrian plot).

All this for a three-day weekend, and not a single baby wipe in any of those bags.

Saturday morning we headed for beautiful Central Oregon, driving through the Detroit Lake area and almost to Bend until we hit Black Butte Ranch (warning: automatic audio track when you click the website). We arrived in time for lunch, but NJ didn't sleep much on the drive and needed her afternoon nap in a big way. The ranch is a beautiful place, but its fatal flaw was the lack of air conditioning in our room (since we were only staying one night, I booked cheap). No windows, only a sliding door to the small porch -- which was surrounded by a six-foot wooden fence, perfect for keeping cool breezes out of the room. We pointed the fan at NJ's crib, and her nap lasted until 3.30 p.m., when we rushed to get ready for the 4 p.m. wedding. Once there there ceremony was about, oh, forty seconds old when NJ decided to yammer loudly about whatever was on her mind (the couple exchanged vows in a spot by a lake with the view in the first photo above), so The Wife spirited her away to the back of the field where they played -- joined by our friends and their kids, one who was ring-bearer and the other flower girl -- while our buddies Jill and Ray got hitched. After wowing everyone at the reception with her off-the-charts cuteness, NJ was hauled off to the sweat box-room by The Wife and put down. Dad Solo remained for a while longer, at one point breaking out his world-famous Mick Jagger funky-chicken dance moves when the band played "Honky Tonk Women."

Sunday's drive back to Portland marked the first time NJ rejected her bottle of formula, a situation that lasted until we got home last night. No obvious explanation -- she was hungry, but wouldn't take the bottle. In Portland again, we toured a street festival and the riverfront -- NJ got a cute little tie-dyed dress out of it -- before returning to the hotel. At lunch The Wife had given her some solid food, but without the formula supplement it wasn't enough and by dinnertime the kid was famished. Dad Solo's decision to eat in the excellent restaurant attached to the hotel proved to be a controversial one: NJ fussed and squawked to the point that The Wife thinks one couple decided to leave rather than listen to her. This was when I defiantly steeled myself, sipped my cocktail, and tucked in to my Kobe brisket. For the first 44 years of my life I weathered countless crying babies on trains, subways and airplanes and in restaurants and other public venues, never once complaining to a parent, sighing dramatically or otherwise expressing my feelings. Now, world, It's My Turn. I will do my best to limit baby-related noise and activity, and you will keep your big yap shut if it doesn't always work out. Oh, and the brisket was ridiculously excellent. NJ devoured four grilled chicken strips and a handful of french fries, which had been cut up into little pieces and piled in front of her. We ordered desert to go. I looked at the mess under NJ's high chair and promptly overtipped. The last night of our vacation? I read, The Wife watched The Food Channel, and NJ fussed for a good, long time before finally drifting off.

NJ did some reading at the hotel, too.

We got home yesterday afternoon. NJ took a two-hour nap on the drive (missing out on a lot of Mariners trade talk on the radio). She's back on the bottle, and a slight fever she had in Portland is gone, too. So all's well and her first vacation is in the books. We've learned valuable lessons about packing and planning around naps, hopefully, because our next trip is in a couple of weeks and we're flying across the country for a week. And the It's My Turn rule will be in effect then, too. I hope I don't have to invoke it. But listen up, New England: I will if I have to.

Call and Response

The Baby Shriek gets more popular by the day around here. In fact, it's pretty much replaced laughing as the top indicator that NJ is having a good time. It's definitely been established as the bridge to NJ's not having any speaking skills at all and her uttering her first words. She's now using her shriek to respond to us verbally ("verbally" being used loosely here).

Today, as Dad Solo went through the laborious process of making his fabled Pork and Black-Eyed Pea Chili -- it takes a long time, but Son of a Bee Sting! is it worth it -- he often ducked into the living room and called out to NJ, who was goofing around on the couch with The Wife. Once I got NJ's attention I'd scream some nonsense sounds and the Smile That Slays Me would spread across her face, then she'd let loose with a good 20-second shriek of her own.

This is arguably the most famous example of Call and Response in modern music (starting at the 2.26 mark, although if you skip ahead and don't listen to the entire thing, well then ... no offense, but I really have to wonder if you're a patriotic American). It literally makes me feel good just to hear it. Of course, blues -- and, by extension, its offspring, rock and roll -- is based on chord repetition and call and response. If you've ever seen the Stones play live, you know how good Mick is at leading a call-and-response during "Brown Sugar" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want," among others. So maybe NJ has it in her bones and blood already: After all, she naps to lullaby renditions of Zeppelin, Stones and U2 songs.

Still, as charming and life-affirming as the Raylettes are, I'll take NJ's call-and-response shrieking any day. Now, she loves it when I sing to her -- honestly! -- and that's doubled the number of people who enjoy my dulcet tones (I'm the other fan). And lately both me and The Wife have been doing our best to talk to her using short, easily understandable words so she can, you know, eventually learn to talk. But it's a hell of a lot of fun to give her a little scream, then sit back and wait for the smile and the response.

What'd I say, indeed.