Fall Fest

The last couple of years, Halloween has pretty much been like any other night for Stace and me, because in our gated condo complex, no one really comes trick-or-treating.

But this year, since we had a little one with a Tigger costume to show off, we went to a harvest fest put on at Bridgeport Park by a local church we've been checking out the last few months. After all, it was free, there was live music and I didn't get a costume for Cora just for a few photos at Stroller Strides. Here you see Cora and her daddy in front of some of the game booths.

Cora also liked the bubble machine.

Here she is checking out the bounce house and ball pit, and a fellow Tigger, who was missing his Tigger head.

When it calmed down a little, our Tigger got to go inside the bounce house!

Happy Halloween!

Cora the Tiger - or Tigger -wants to wish all her friends a very happy and safe Candy Collecting Day!
She seems to like her costume, and likes looking at herself in the mirror while wearing it. It's a warm polyester, so living here we have to hope it's cool enough in the evening for her to be out in it.
On Monday our Stroller Strides class celebrated the holiday, and all the babies were in their finest. We had a bumblebee, kitty, monkey, Carmen Miranda, punk rocker and Charlie Brown, AKA Cora's friend Thomas.

Ventura

Today we went out to Ventura to a strange event Stace heard about from work - a "kinetic sculpture" race where people race things they've made through water, on land and through the mud.
It was a fun reason to go to the seaside.
You can see Stace and Cora here, with Cora doing a bit of practice standing up. As she isn't even crawling yet, she also is pretty far from walking, I'd say. She normally doesn't try to stand when you hold her over the ground. You also can see Stace wearing his new glasses. Poor guy, aging seems to be hitting him all at once - high blood pressure and cholesterol and glasses, all in the space of a few weeks. I think the glasses look good on him though. He only needs them for distance, so he's not wearing them very often.



































On the way home from Ventura, Cora did a bit of reading in the car.







The last photo is from Friday, when my friend Christy and her son William went with Cora and me to a big baby consignment sale. I did some stocking up for Cora for fall/winter clothes. Christy also has a Phil and Ted's stroller, with the attachable toddler seat. It fit into ours so we took advantage of that by using one stroller for both babies. Perfect.

In Santa Clarita, at least, things are getting back to normal after the fires. It's still bad in other parts of the state, but here most of the fires are contained or out. I believe more than 90,000 acres have burned in the fires near us.
This is from our trip to the mall Tuesday. The smell wasn't too bad, though you can see the smoke on the horizon. The strong winds have driven the smokey smell away for the most part. I took Cora to the mall because we needed to get out of the house. We did a little shopping, and then stopped at the indoor play area upstairs so she could watch the bigger kids playing. My little social butterfly enjoyed that. It seems like she wants to play with the bigger kids. She smiles and talks and is starting to wave at them.
On Wednesday, Stroller Strides classes resumed, and after class two of my friends and I met for lunch. Here I am with Thomas, the six-month-old son of my friend Sarah. Thomas is still big for his age - about 22 pounds! I weighed Cora tonight and she is about 17 pounds, 12 ounces (and 27 1/2 inches, for the record).
Elissa and her son Harvey also came to lunch. Harvey is a few weeks younger than Cora, but bigger of course, being a boy. He also is more active, crawling around everywhere and pulling himself up on things. Cora will stand briefly when you hold her up with her feet on the ground, but not for very long. She hasn't done any true crawling yet, and is happy getting around by rolling and scooting in circles.

Here's Cora with her other boy baby friend, William. I met William's mom Christy through our Gymboree classes. William is about six months too, and scooting everywhere. When I'm around more active babies I realize how good I have it with Cora - it's much easier with her not moving around so quickly! In this photo, she's making a scrunched-up smiley face she started making when Andy was at our home. He would make a similar smile at Cora and she would imitate him.

sad news

We have a running joke about the L.A. television media, about how they blow everything out of proportion - "STORM WATCH 2000 - OUR LIVE NONSTOP WALL-TO-WALL COVERAGE" of a little rain shower.
This time, though, the nonstop wall-to-wall coverage is needed, because the news is that big, that scary, that incredible to watch.
We've had the fire news on all day, and it's still fascinating. When a fire dies down in one area (Canyon Country or Saugus, for example - or Malibu), it flares up majorly somewhere else (Westridge/Stevenson Ranch on the west side of I-5, or Lake Arrowhead, or Orange County). It's fascinating but heartbreaking all at the same time. A dozen-plus homes have been destroyed in town, and 600 structures in San Diego County. Hard to fathom.
Here's another view from outside our home - this is from near the trash cans and the carport on the perimeter of our complex. This is the Westridge fire. Now on Sunday, we attended a church that meets at West Ranch High School, a new school in this new community of Westridge. When we were leaving, along with the high winds, we noticed some smoke on the horizon. We checked the news when we got to the car and learned about all the fires. Today, we saw the field behind the school's baseball field on fire.
In a separate fire, the one that moved from Agua Dulce to Canyon Country to Saugus Sunday and Monday, local landmark Lombardi Ranch was reportedly burned up. This makes me so sad, as I grew up going to Lombardi's this time of year, and we just went there a few days ago with Andy and Jen. In fact, I hadn't even posted these photos yet here. I'm so glad we made it there this year with Cora.
Surprisingly, the air quality hasn't been too bad Monday at our home. The strong winds were taking all the smoke away from us. We even took a walk in the evening (with the new stroller of course). We figure we'd better walk outside while we can, because when the winds die down the air quality is sure to plunge.

The Great Santa Clarita Smokeout

Here are photos from our balcony Sunday as the smoke came pouring in. It was very dramatic; I was working in the kitchen, watching the TV coverage of Malibu on fire, and then the house got dark pretty suddenly. Still not sure if the smoke (at that point) was from the big Castaic fire (now 29,000 acres) or from the Agua Dulce fire (now 25,000 acres). The Agua Dulce fire is the one that moved into Santa Clarita - Canyon Country last night and right now it is in the north Saugus/Valencia area, north of Copper Hill/Seco area for those of you familiar with the area.

Also from our balcony

This is from Golden Valley Road, just off Sierra Highway, Sunday evening. This is the Whites Canyon area of Canyon Country.

For now, the skies are clear blue from our condo. It smells smokey, but not too bad. The fires are a lot closer to my parents' house in Saugus than to here, but my mom said the air is clear there too because of the wind's direction.

SoCal aflame!

I'm guessing this is making the news all over the world - it seems like all of Southern California is on fire! Please, no one worry about us, we are fine. The air is very smokey and gross, but so far we haven't had ash in our area in Newhall. BUT yes, one of the big fires spread from Agua
Dulce, where we took Andy and Jen just last weekend, all the way south to Canyon Country and destroyed some homes. We saw the flames from a hillside off Sierra Highway on our way to the grocery store. I'll post photos tomorrow; it's gotten too late now and I should join my hubby in bed. Monday will be weird too - Stroller Strides has been canceled, and I'm sure we'll just stay in to avoid the smoke.
And to think that we had planned to take our new jogger out Sunday for one of our megawalks, to break it in!
Sadly, in Sunday's big fire in Malibu, a thriving church I attended while going to Pepperdine has burned to the ground. A number of other homes were damaged/destroyed too.

Cora's New Wheels

In the last four weeks I feel I have really aged.
I have gone from relatively fit to needing glasses and
having high blood pressure and cholesterol.

I need to get back in shape. I went from all that running
around at football to nothing; just the occasional game of
golf and walks around the block.

Time for a change.
I need to get back on the bike and ride to work, then follow
that up with running.
Lisa does her Stroller Strides class three times a week and said
she it would be better with one of those three wheeled buggies
to push Cora around in.
So with her needs and my desire to go running again we decided
to splash out on a Phil and Ted's baby buggy.

We found in Westwood after dropping Andy and Jenny
off at the airport.
Lisa paid for it with the money she made from writing a few stories.

What do you think? Nice and bright isn't it!

Cora seems to like it.

It's easy to run with too.

See them?

New tricks

At eight months, Cora has begun performing several new tricks for her adoring fans. She plays peekaboo - I tried to capture it on this video, and it's not the best example but it's the only one I've got so far. She also has kind of started waving hello. She is still a social butterfly, ever interested in the people around her, and she loves to entertain us. She coughs to get attention, and still makes her shrieky "bird"noises. Over the last couple of days she's been experimenting with new mouth noises, and sometimes sounds like she's smacking. She also likes using her index finger to point at things, and even to poke things (and us). Her two front lower teeth are coming through - still quite small but high enough that it now hurts when she gnaws on our fingers.

Change of plans

The Antelope Valley isn't a typical stop on the Howards Custom SoCal Tours itinerary for our foreign visitors.
But here we were, dressed and getting into the car with plans for a day out in Los Angeles on Saturday when we learned that all routes heading south from Santa Clarita were either jam-packed or closed because of a huge fiery crash in the Newhall Pass.
What to do? Stace thought of a good alternate (Placerita Canyon Road to Sand Canyon to Little Tujunga to the 210, for those of you familiar with the area) but then we heard the traffic reporter on the radio suggesting it as the best way for people to get out of town. "Town" also was choked with traffic as the 5 southbound was completely shut (and could be until Tuesday morning). So we instead went north, up in to Green Valley before heading to Blackbird Airpark with a Subway-supplied picnic lunch. The airpark features many military planes.
In the late afternoon we stopped for a nice walk around Vasquez Rocks, the site of many Western movies and commercials. Andy and Jen said they had a very nice time, despite the unplanned nature of our day. Thankfully, Stace came home early from work Friday and we went into Hollywood/Beverly Hills. That was meant to be obviously, as it's hard to say if/when it will be easy to get down there in the next few days with the closed freeway.

Just ducky

Here's a couple of photos from Malibu - when we walked down to the beach, these two ducks were very, very friendly. They walked right up to us, and would have eaten out of our hands if we had had anything to feed them.
The second photo is from Starbucks, where I fed Cora. Eight months old and nursing is still going very well! I think we've spent maybe $5 on food for Cora so far. :)
Today, Thursday, Cora and I went to an eye appointment for her, just a well-baby vision check our optometrist offers for free through a U.S. government program. She did very well and her eyes are just as they should be so far.
She slept a lot of the day, as the eye drops the doctor used made her sleepy.
Andy and Jen went to the market and Jen cooked a lovely roast chicken dinner for all of us. We then went to the Valencia Town Center area and walked around, and I met up with a couple of Stroller Strides moms for a glass of wine. A very nice evening!

Water Park

Yes, it's Cora's 8-month birthday, but since I haven't blogged for a few days I'll catch you dear readers up on our exciting weekend instead of talking solely about our growing baby.
On Saturday we went to visit some friends in Moorpark who were having a housewarming, and then went onto Malibu.
On Sunday, we all went to Hurricane Harbor for my dad's end-of-summer work party, sponsored by his union. Free food and drinks, free parking, free admission. Our kind of party! It wasn't a middle-of-summer 100-degree day at the water park, but it was warm enough. As Stace said, gotta love walking around in your bathing suit in October. Because it was a private party, the lines were super short.





Here are Stace and the Campbells celebrating with their free beer and margaritas.


The water was a little cold for Cora to enjoy it very much, but she was a trooper.
Notice her cutie hat, a gift from Andy and Jen from a cool store in Malibu.


In the end, my dad, sister and the Campbells watched Cora and helped her fall asleep in a makeshift bed while Stace and my mom and I enjoyed some water slides.

Into things

Cora is entering the stage of getting into things.
At this point, it's still cute.
I know it will get much more intense as the months pass!
The other night, she was in her room rolling around and she found the trash can. You can see what happened next! I managed to get there before she ate anything.
Earlier the same evening, Stace and I were in her room on the computer, organizing some of our photos on the computer. (That is a job in itself! And we've still hardly printed any for ourselves. That's definitely something on my "to do" list.)
Cora was rolling, rolling, rolling and wound up under her crib. What a rabbit, as her daddy would say.
Our friends Andy and Jen are back in town in time for a bit of weekend fun. They had a great time up the coast.