Ahem. Anyway, now that Yom Kippur is over, our thoughts turn to Wednesday night, when my personal favorite Jewish holiday begins. Sukkot is a harvest festival, a time of one of the long-ago great pilgrimages to Israel, and to celebrate it we live* in a ramshackle hut for 8 days. The hut is called a sukkah, and is usually decorated festively in the harvest theme.

*”Live”, since we’re Jewish, means “eat”.

After our rather ghetto attempt at a build-it-yourself sukkah last year, this year we decided to order an aluminum kit with canvas walls. Jacob was, uh, a little excited when he realized we were FINALLY going to open those EXCITING BOXES.

(That’s him saying “oh ho ho HOOOOO” over and over again, by the way.)

The frame was disgustingly easy to put together, and while the shiny metal ensures our sukkah will have a little bling this year, it’ll be nowhere near last year’s debacle.

Tomorrow, walls and a roof! Wednesday, decorations!

…and, apropos nothing, in the “He’s totally going to kill me for posting this, if he finds it later on in life” category:

(Don’t worry, kiddo. Your folks aren’t morning people, either.)

It will be the first time I’ve been away from Jacob overnight since his birth almost two years ago. He’s changed so much over the last two years I can scarcely contain it all in my head. He’s still my little baby, in my head. Here in the real world, though, he’s absolutely becoming his own articulate and capable person.

We’ve been preparing him for the weekend the way we prepare him for everything, by talking about it endlessly beforehand. The other day, out of nowhere, he looked up from his trucks and said:

“Mommy fly Maine in airplane for weekend… funeral?

Um, hello? Was I ever really worried about him speaking late?

Grammie Lo-Lo has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I spent a huge part of my childhood in her warm, clean house–being read to, then reading to myself, playing Legos and dress-up, running wild in her back yard. I am like her in many ways, and we always got along very well. We shared a love for all things orderly and clean, for tasks completed well, for baking, for crafting, for keeping a house running smoothly.

To an impressionable young grand-daughter, she was almost more force-of-nature than woman. She ran her house and her life (and yours too, when you were there) efficiently and smoothly. She could do anything, from paper dolls to a magazine-worthy set of gardens to perfect grilled-cheese triangles with tomato soup to flawless stuffed animals with movable heads and limbs. On precious few resources she raised three children, helped care for and raise six grandchildren, and lived to enjoy eight great-grandchildren.

She was one of several role models in my life of strong, independent women. She knew what she thought, wasn’t afraid to say it (tactfully, of course, as we must maintain decorum), and encouraged me to develop my own opinions on things. She was always happy to listen while I worked out some problem or another, sitting me down at the bar in her kitchen and giving me milk and cookies while I talked. As I got older, my problems and interests varied, but she was always there. I’d keep her company in her garden, in her sewing room, around the dinner table. In high school, with more activities than anyone could keep up with, I’d often spend part of an afternoon or dinner-time at her house (five minutes away from the school). I felt as comfortable there, with its wooden floors and cabinets and hand-braided rugs, as I did at home. (More comfortable sometimes, to be perfectly honest, because it lacked my brother and his noise.)

We kept close through my many moves–to California for college, back to Maine for a few months, to several places in Massachusetts, and even this last move (though she was so sick by then that I’m not sure what she really grasped). She helped me tremendously after mom’s death, a dark time I barely remember now. Later, we made my wedding veil together, and when I got pregnant with Jacob she talked me through all of the worries and joys an expecting mother goes through. She even remembered and shared a few things about my mother’s pregnancies, and those times with her are worth more to me than gold.

I know that to some people, she was a difficult woman. I’m not sure she really enjoyed humor, and she could be quite stern and opinionated, but I loved that about her like everything else. To me, she was a constant and indestructible and very loving grandmother. I was very lucky to have so long with her, and I will miss her greatly.

One very frustrating day aside, we’ve been enjoying some warm sunny weather here lately. A few days ago, we all walked the pedestrian path through the Fisherman’s Wharf section of Monterey. It was sunny and almost hot and gorgeous.

(I caught this smile at a museum.)

I’m working on a big deadline for MITRE this week, which I should really stop procrastinating on. This weekend I plan to do no work of any kind, and just enjoy the extra time with Jon. What are your plans?

I think they had a good time.

I hope so, because we loved having them, and hope they return soon!

Me? I’m rejoicing in the spring that has finally arrived. The weather was so warm for Bev and Nancy’s visit, and everything was so sunny for most of this week. Today is cooler and foggy, but that’s okay. I have pictures to remind me!

And to help even more, we got some of the season’s first peaches and tomatoes at the farmer’s market yesterday. Has spring sprung where you are?

Jacob has previously only seen these gardens from the immobility of the back-pack carrier, but yesterday we just let him run wild. Nanny and Mie-Mie taught him how to say “Bamboo”!

He loves bamboo.

They have also successfully taught him how to say “Backhoe”. Not so much, “Mr. Mestophiles”. Boy, he loves his Grammies.

They seem to be having a wonderful time, too!

So what’s been happening? Well, a steady stream of visitors, which I guess shouldn’t surprise me since we live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Not that I’m gloating or anything! (That’s Jon’s job.) Our friend Gayle snapped the above picture while spending a weekend here with us.

Jacob would like you to know that I still take far, far too many pictures of him.

On the Wednesday following Gayle’s visit, my wonderful Aunt Dina, her really cool son Ryan and his equally cool friend Jamie arrived for an extended weekend visit. We showed them all of the beautiful scenery the Central Coast has to offer, despite less-than-perfect weather. PCH 1 is pictured above…

…Big Sur…

…some trees…

…but I think their favorite was the PGA course tour of Pebble Beach. Turns out, there are three PGA courses within a mile of the house. I think Ryan was a little scandalized that I had no idea. We had an absolute blast with them, and were very sad to see them leave. Jacob was especially grateful, since they prompted me to get off my butt and drive the long haul up to San Francisco for a day. Jacob LOVED San Francisco. You wouldn’t believe the number of buses and trucks in that town! Not to mention the boat ride we took.

It was his first, to Alcatraz Island, and he and I had a lot of fun exploring while Dina and the boys took the audio tour. He is still talking about the boat. The night that Dina and the boys left, our friend Carl from college showed up and stayed most of a week with us. That was also a lot of fun, though I have far fewer pictures.

Carl, the saint, even watched Jacob one afternoon so that Jon and I could escape for an hour alone. Man, we needed that. This weekend we were supposed to head down to LA for our ten-year college reunion, but Jon’s mother and Bev show up on Friday, and I’ve taken on some contract work for MITRE, and I think someone is going to send in the troops to deal with the laundry/dishes situation soon… yeah. Suffice it to say, we needed a weekend wherein we do absolutely nothing but catch up.

So, hi! Sorry I’ve been away. Greetings from a very busy household–what have you all been up to? (Credit for the last photo goes to our friend Carl Coryell-Martin, by the way–he took the camera and tripod out while we put Jacob to bed one night. Thanks, Carl!)

And then, since I don’t have any time to clean anymore, they mix in with all of the other dust already there and I blink and a month has gone by since I’ve last written.

Jacob is enjoying the rain (bagel included for scale). We’ve been getting more of it lately, which is pretty nice since it’s still also sunny almost every day. I like the variety, it reminds me of Maine. Except, you know, there are no mosquitoes. :)

We had a wonderful time hosting the Providence Herzogs here for a couple of weeks, even if the house was a bit bursting at the seams with 8 residents. Many deer and seals and otters were seen, lots of gorgeous scenery drunk in, many good meals shared. And Wednesday night, Jacob and I hop a plane to spend a 10 days or so in Maine, seeing family there. I’m really looking forward to the Maine part–not so much the traveling alone with a toddler part. But, we’ll make it through okay, I’m sure.

(Jacob loves to be tossed in the air, by the way.)

It’s still about as beautiful here as you’d expect, and I still pinch myself occasionally just to make sure it’s all real. Which isn’t to say that we don’t have our funk days, even here in paradise, of course. Life is life, no matter where you’re living it. But it’s almost always possible to take a beautiful walk and snap out of it, here. It’s a nice contrast with March in Boston, always my least-favorite month.

I’m not sure where I’m going with that, but Jon just came downstairs for our nightly TV watching so I guess I’ll sign off. Hope you’re well!

I’m sorry I haven’t posted much recently, we’re just having too much fun I guess. Here’s a general baby-update: Jacob is more of a little boy every day, and the first year is slinking into hazy sleep-deprived long-term memory. He feeds himself with spoons and forks, can drink from an adult glass under supervision, and loves to draw. The other day, he drew a few little squiggles and pointed at one of them, and said “Da da”. So I asked what the other one was, and he pointed at me! And then he informed me that the little one (I kid you not) was “Yaycuh”. I almost died.

He’s still kind of half-and-half with actually saying “Ma ma”, although he clearly knows who I am (and where my eyes, ears, nose, hair, etc. are). We’ve been waiting for him to talk for ages, it seems. But it looks like he’s going to follow the path that our friend Stacy followed, and simply wait until he can speak in complete sentences. The other day, out of the blue, as he was going down the stairs he beamed up at me, and said “Jacob go down!”.

On nice days, which we’re having a lot of lately, we like to go to this awesome playground with a fenced-in toddler area.

There are lots of places to climb, and music chimes to ring.

And stairs to climb down ALL BY HIMSELF, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

And yesterday, when he decided he’d had enough, and wanted to run around on the soccer field, he figured out that he could squeeze himself right through the grates in the fence.

God help us.

Damn.

Good.

To be home.

Sorry about the radio silence, folks. The jet-lag has hit all of us a lot harder in this direction, and we’re basically just coming up for air. It was wonderful to see friends and family, but I have to say I vastly prefer the CA surroundings. Crisp but not cold temps, leaves on the trees, sunshine, a distinct lack of anything dreary.

Jacob is pretty glad to be back, too. I snapped all of these pictures at our outing to the beach today. Our music class and some drop-in Gymboree-type classes start for us next week–I am expecting the spring to be a lot busier than the fall!