Pleasant Hill Shaker Village

I promised adventures this summer, and we are having them! Well, generally, time at home just looks like this. Mess, Dad on the floor, Lukie smothering him, dogs trying to escape.

But this weekend, we took one of our first family trips...kind of. See, when you live 10-12 hours from your family, most vacation time is spent driving back and forth to your far-off loved ones. We haven't had a lot of time for trips that didn't involve a 4 a.m. wake-up and a day's worth of driving on either end. We've gone to Georgia a couple times to see friends, had the ISU reunion...but this weekend, we got to do something just the three of us that was very "family vacation-y."

A few months ago, our friend from the Agricultural History Society asked Peter to chair and comment on a panel at the annual meeting and conference. I pushed Pete to do it-- keeps his hand in history, it's a topic he's interested in, we would see friends. The conference was in Lexington, KY, which is about a 4-hour drive away. Pete agreed and we said, "Oh, that'll be fun," and then we kind of dropped it.

Well, a couple weeks ago, Peter realized he had missed the deadline for getting the hotel room in Lexington at the conference rate and that we were going to have to pay $180 to stay at the hotel where the conference was happening. Other hotels in downtown Lexington weren't much cheaper...and then I had a thought. We had been wanting to visit the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill (here) for a few years. It's about 45 minutes south-west of Lexington, and since I had looked into it as maybe a get-away for Pete and me to take someday, I knew they operate as a hotel, as well. Turns out, for $50 less than we would have paid to stay in Lexington, we could stay in one of the buildings at Shaker Village! Sold!

Two weeks ago, then, I booked this lovely room on the third floor of the Old Stone Shop at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Kentucky.

(Okay, this is the Farm Deacon's shop, but it was identical to the Old Stone Shop.)

What a great substitute for a cookie-cutter hotel experience. No, it doesn't have a pool, but there is an old telephone, which, to a 2-year-old, is far better.

On Saturday, we left the house at 5:00 a.m. to make it to Pete's 10:30-12:00 panel. Pete chaired his panel while Lukas and I rode the escalator about 42 times at the conference center, took a walk around the building multiple times, and watched Despicable Me between moments of trying to escape out the revolving doors. We saw friends (briefly-- they were headed back to Iowa, boo) and by about 3:00 in the afternoon, we were at Shaker Village!

Now, in a perfect world, Peter and I would have had lots of time to look at architecture and furniture. We're Shaker furniture geeks-- everything he makes me is somewhat Shaker inspired (how lucky am I to have that guy?). I love the simple lines and lightness (especially compared to Craftsman furniture, which I often find just a little bit heavy, even if it is beautiful). Our house lends itself to Shaker furniture, anyway- it's fairly simple with small-ish rooms but a good amount of natural light, so the airiness of Shaker furnishings complements it well.

So...this is not a perfect world. We saw just a few of the 40+ buildings and very little furniture. But, you know what? Lukie had lots of stairs to climb, rooms to run through, gravel roads to scuff, birds to chase, and fun. Pete and I'll go back and enjoy it our way someday, but in the meantime, it was kind of nice to enjoy it Lukie's way, too.

(That's the Old Stone Shop, where we stayed, behind me.)

(I think we both hoped he'd be into the piglets, since we were, but Lukie preferred the kitties and the chickens. That's okay, too.)

(Small hitch in our happiness: it was really hard to go anywhere. Lukie doesn't exactly follow us on walks very well yet. He's too interested in everything other than getting where we're going. I think everyone was taught a lesson in patience.)

Don't judge me. The iPad is the only way we get to eat our dinner, sometimes, and the kid was tired, hot, hungry, and thirsty. We shut his brain off so we could eat our delicious meal in peace.

Lukie learned that cups with straws don't work the same way sippy cups do. They're hard.

Our night was pleasant and Lukie slept like a log. We got up in the morning and paid one more visit to the farm animals, and then plopped Lukie in the car (after his Benadryl-- whoever discovered that it prevents car sickness should be given a medal) for a nice long nap. We stopped in Knoxville at Trader Joe's to pick up lunch, snacks, and some other TJ staples, and then were home by at 4:00.

Pete and I both felt like we had been gone for a week instead of a night, but I think it was a pretty successful family mini-vacation. We look forward to taking him to these places when he can talk with us about them, but we know Lukie learned some new things, saw some new animals, worked out a lot of energy, and had lots and lots of fun. None of the things we'd look for in a vacation would necessarily be on his list, but his list was completely checked off:

1. chasing birds
2. petting kitties
3. playing in wagons
4. French fries at most meals
5. chasing birds.

That's all that matters, right?

21 Months Old!

I promised a big Lukie update, so here it is...

This guy...

...is 21 months old! That means he's only 3 months from being a 2-year-old. I find it mind-boggling. We took him upstairs to his "bedroom" (as in the room we decorated before he arrived in which he has never slept) to take his 21-month-old photos. Traditionally, this has meant sitting him in the chair in his room to be photographed the same way he was once a month for his first year and every 3 months since turning 1. It was...difficult...

In the end, I decided this is his 21-month-old photo.

I think it accurately portrays the likelihood of success when you're trying to get an almost-two-year-old to sit in a chair. It pairs perfectly with his 18-month-old photo, in which he is wearing a bicycle helmet...

So update-y things. It's hard to put things into categories, even though I'm a librarian and categorizing things is one of my all-time, absolute, most favorite things to do, ever. It seems like every part of his personality is so wrapped up in the rest of it that I have a hard time talking about one thing without jumbling in the rest!

We'll start with all the things Lukie likes right now. His favorite thing in the world being outside. We have an epic meltdown every evening when it's time to go in the house. We are outside from the moment it is warm enough to the moment darkness falls, and even that wouldn't be enough for him. He loves bugs (particularly flying bugs, particularly bees and wasps, but he knows not to touch them), birds, his play equipment which looks like a castle, the lawn mower (the LAWN MOWER OH MY GOD THE LAWN MOWER), running back and forth to Daddy's wood shop, and bubbles. He dislikes being told to come inside and being forced to stay in the side yard. 

Lukie is a copycat right now. The other day, he was spinning around and laughing at a bumble bee, and Peter realized he was pretending to be Shaun the Sheep, a character in his favorite TV show, who does the same thing when the Farmer is attacked by a bee. He likes to pretend to scoop dog poop out of the yard and throw it over the fence. He sniffs flowers like I do, even though instead of sniffing, he blows through his nose. It amazes me every day when he has picked up on something Pete does or I do.

Eating-wise, well, Lukie is still a super picky eater. He loves peanut butter sandwiches, cottage cheese, applesauce, bananas, grapes, strawberries, sweet potato puffs, french fries, pancakes, French toast, anything sweet, and apparently (though I haven't been able to replicate this at home), the meat sauce pasta they give him at daycare. He eats few foods other than those, but that doesn't mean I don't keep trying. He's Peter's child; someday, he'll eat anything and everything.

Lukie weaned two weeks ago-- after nursing for 21 months to the day. All along, I have hoped that Lukie and I could go as long as we needed to for him to just stop on his own. That was, until my co-worker and I got accepted to speak at the Tennessee Library Association meeting next week in Memphis. I'll be gone for 2 nights and 3 days, and Peter will be alone with Lukas. We had thought that we would wean him this week, but two weeks ago, he went all night without asking to nurse. Oh, he still woke up, but instead of grabbing his pillow and handing it to me, he just cuddled into me and went back to sleep (that's pretty much how we sleep now). I decided it was time, and for the next two nights, I gently told him "nursies were sleeping" when he asked to nurse. There was a little crying, but not as much as I had feared. He hasn't nursed since the 3rd or 4th of April. I'm a weird combination of relieved and sad. Relieved that my body is mine again, sad because it kind of felt like the last thing that I could do for him that Peter couldn't. I know I'm the mommy. I get that. But telling him "nursies are sleeping" felt a bit like saying "Mommy can't love you right now." Irrational, I know, and holding him while he fell back to sleep says the opposite of that. But it's certainly bittersweet. He's growing up, and it was the last connection to that time when he and I were one working unit.

Ah, well. On to speaking.

Lukie still doesn't talk much. To be truthful, he wasn't a very babble-y baby, and it was something I noticed before he was a year old. He has a few words: juice, weeee (for swinging or playing with something), yay, Dada, shoes. Those are all new developments, though. At his 18-month appointment, he still had no words, and the doctor recommended we see the speech therapist. She assessed him and said that he was behind on his expression (using words) and reception (understanding words). Both were things she felt he needed to work on, and she recommended speech therapy.

Lukie goes once a week for half an hour. The therapy is play-based. He and the speech therapy assistant, whom he really loves, play and do tasks- a lot of them have to do with teaching him to pay attention and listen when she's speaking. Lukas is a focused child, and because of that, he often tunes out the world in order to really focus on the toy he's playing with or the activity he's doing. He wasn't listening when Pete or I would speak to him, so we work on making sure he stops what he's doing and listens to us. 

Lukie's therapist says he's doing really well. He will now mimic her when she does something with a toy, respond with increasingly varied babble (both the sounds he's making and the inflection he uses while making them), and pays attention a little better every time. I know his reception is better; the other night, I asked him if he was ready to watch Shaun the Sheep, part of our bedtime routine as he's still not great with books, though we're working on it, and he ran directly to the bedroom and wanted help onto the bed. We don't know how long he'll be in therapy, but it is really nice to see him making some serious leaps in the speech department. 

So that's it; that's our life with Lukie right now. He's developing a personality, which we can't wait to find out more about once he's talking to us, and we're watching and enjoying. We're slowing being able to do more and more fun things with him, and that is such a welcome development. As he grows older, it's so fun to watch as our family settles into a life where Lukie is interested in the things we're doing, learning from us, and teaching us to be patient and creative.

Oh, and here's my first tiny bouquet of cuttings from my garden. :)

You Should See the Other Guy...

Ok, first things first. Lukie go his first real shiner over the weekend. He was playing swords with his Daddy (a constant pass-time in our house ever since we watched The Princess Bride a few weeks ago), tripped, and smacked his brow bone on a concrete flower pot. There was LOTS of swelling, but now it's mostly just bruising. I was going to postpone taking his 21-month-old (I KNOW!) pictures until it was gone, but I think I'll take those tomorrow. It's all part of the story of growing up, I guess.

Anyway, there have been some "What did you do's?!?" and a lot of "poor guy's", but I think ultimately, it has looked way worse than it has felt. He hasn't complained about it or messed with it since Friday, when it happened. It's definitely a good one, though.

Last weekend was, of course, Easter, and my folks came down for the long weekend. The weather was great--- it's SPRING in TENNESSEE, which I will admit I LOVE. Spring is beautiful and mercifully early in this state. We had a lot of fun playing outside, especially when we did an Easter egg hunt with Lukie. He had one at his daycare on Thursday, so he knew exactly what to do with all the eggs we had hidden for him!

You may think he's crying, and he probably was previously, but this is actually his "fake crying, not quite done fussing yet but not really able to scream anymore" face. It is identifiable by the scrunched up nose-- he does that when he wants to pretend to cry a little longer than he really cries.

My dad's birthday was March 30th, so we had a very ugly but very tasty German chocolate cake on Saturday night. Lukie helped blow out the candles, but then he wanted to keep blowing after the candle was out. :)

It was a great weekend.

To switch gears, my perennial garden is starting to really take off. When we moved into the house 3 years ago, there were a lot of ill-placed plantings behind the house. Hostas in full sun, daylillies where they could push into and destroy a rock wall, bugleweed covering everything. I've spent two years moving plants and tackling what seemed like an insurmountable seed bed of weeds, particularly bindweed. I feel like this is the first year it's looking like MY garden- not the previous owner's. I've replaced everything in the back with perennials. The phlox is taking off and covering the top of the rock wall, my dianthus and coreopsis are growing and spreading, and my rose bushes are starting to leaf out.

All the hosta I moved have now been in their own garden for 2 summers, and this spring I split them to spread them out and fill in my hosta bed. I've also created another new hosta bed. It's impatiently awaiting the three rather unique varieties I ordered from a hosta nursery in Vermont. I could see myself really getting into the hosta variety collecting game-- I love their beautiful green foliage and all the awesome combinations of white, green, yellow, and blue you can find in it. When we leave this place, I'll make sure to take starts of all my varieties. I think there is some of my Grandma Noel, the queen of beautiful gardens, in me.

The new bed, above. It's waiting for its Blue Gourd, Happy Hearts, and June hosta varieties.

I'm excited that the ones I split the most look to be the ones with the best variegation. I have no idea what varieties they are, but I really hope that the biggest ones in the center there maintain that awesome color variegation!

Oh, and my tomato plants are progressing nicely. I started them in a Park's Seed Biodome, but they have subsequently been moved to their own individual newspaper cups. They'll get a shot of fish fertilizer pretty soon and find their new homes after the frost date, which I can say is a short 5 days from now. I do love planting early in Tennessee. We'll have Cherokee Purples before we know it!

Check back after the weekend for a giant Lukie update-- including, eating, sleeping, nursing, talking, growing...all the important things!