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Little Emster
Remember my niece who was born way back in February? Well, look at her now! I can’t believe how much a baby changes in six months. It just makes me realize that in almost half the time I’m waiting for my baby to get here, my baby will be growing right out of that little baby stage. Amazing.
I loved hanging out with the little Emster (that’s her nick name, more on that later) because I need all the baby practice I can get. I’ve been picking my sister-in-law’s brains for info on everything from postpartum blues to brands of nursing pumps to how much you really need to pack when you want to go somewhere. The learning curve for this motherhood stuff is huge! But I think I’m up for it.
Toby and I have officially started the whole naming game. We’ve talked about names we liked since before we even got married. It’s always been a fun topic. But now, it’s exhausting! There are NO boy names out there that I like. None, zip, nada. We are both so picky. We bought the coolest name book (thanks to whoorl for the heads up on that) and read it from cover to cover. We’ve settled on a girl’s name, no problem, but we might have to change it now because we both agreed to keep it a secret and of course I blew it within the first 24 hours and told somebody. I’m the worst secret keeper EVER!
We also agreed that I’m not allowed to put my baby’s name on this website ever. Bummer. I really wanted to follow my favorite mommy blogger’s and just lay it all out there but Toby put his foot down and said, absolutely not. I reluctantly agree with him. It’s okay if I advertise my identity for every thief to steal but it’s not really okay for me to advertise my kid’s, especially when I plan exploit them with a zillion cute pictures every day.
So there it is. You’ll never get to know my baby’s name. I’m sad too. But don’t worry, I’ll have to come up with a very cute nickname. Right now I’m thinking “june-bug” or something like that. I’ve always wanted to call my baby some bug name. I think it’s cute. What a june bug has to do with a baby born in January I have no idea. Maybe for the sake of this site’s theme, I’ll call them “baby-spy”. We’ll see…
That brings me around to the whole nicknaming of my little cutie-patootie niece up there. All little children will be nick named on this site from now on, so her mother gave me the honor of nicknaming her. Yikes! Can I do it? I’m having naming writer’s block these days. If it’s not coming up with a name for my kid, it’s coming up with a name for Toby’s Dad Cove. I’ve already struck out three times on a name for the Cove. What, you don’t like “Yannop (as in Ponnay backwards) Cove”? Come on!
So I struggled with nicknaming little Emster. She has the biggest blue eyes you’ve ever seen and the creamiest of skin. I thought about calling her Peepers or Peaches… but decided on Emster instead. I think sometimes you have to just go with whatever comes first. Maybe I’ll change it later after her mom reads this and tells me it’s the stupidest nick name she’s ever heard.
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Centerville Beach
It was sunny yesterday, so we went to the beach. Going to the beach on a sunny day in Eureka is a whole different concept from going to beach back home on a sunny day. As we left the hotel, I shivered and asked Toby how this could be called a “warm day.” He said when you live up here, you just learn to think of this as warm. To me it felt like something right out of November. But the sun was shining and if you could find a spot out of the icy breeze, it did feel nice. It certainly made everything look nicer.
The funny thing about the beach here is that nobody has “beach front property”. They do, but they just let their cows roam on it, or it’s parkland. It’s not like down south where the houses squeeze in so tight, you can have a conversation with your neighbors right through the wall. Eureka is a harbor town and the harbor is so big you have to drive quite a ways out into the country to get to the beach. And when you do, it’s usually so windswept by weather, it’s not anywhere you want to spread out a towel and read a book.
I was surprised how pleasant it actually was though, once we started walking on the sand. The sand was so warm! I just wanted to lay down on it like it was a heated floor. But then I forgot all about the sand when I saw the smooth polished rocks along the shore.
I’m such a sucker for rocks! I love rocks. I always have. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had collections. Right up into my teens, I had a little shelf in my closet with various rocks labeled with the names of places where I had collected them from. Later as an adult, I started keeping jars of rocks but that got to be too much clutter so now I just keep them in my plants and in the little space in my car by the seat lever. (I asked Toby what that space is called and he said the “knick-knack depression” (!).) Anyway, I’m kind of a nut about rocks. Toby thinks it’s really silly and stupid. Maybe it is. People have told me there’s some “I Love Lucy” episode about just such a hobby but I haven’t seen it. I try to keep the rock collecting to a minimum but it sure does make the hiking around in the outdoors more fun.
Toby gave me a rock collecting minimum this trip. I wasn’t allowed to take any sort of bag or container to the beach. I could only bring back what I could carry, which wasn’t much since I had to carry my shoes and on the way back a yellow jacket chased me all the way to the car. Oh well, today we are going to Agate Beach and I’ll find lots of rocks there.
