Farewell to a friend... of sorts.

The other day, I burst into tears, standing, holding my baby at the counter of the local bookshop up here on Mount Hood.  The Wy'east Book Shoppe & Art Gallery, where some of my artwork and books are being sold, has been a part of my life since September of 2004, when we first bought our house up here in the foresty foothills, and I started exploring our darling little town... is going away.

Cozy and cluttery in a good way.

Sandra owns the shop. She's a kind, taciturn kind of lady who has been good and supportive to me as an artist and a writer. She featured local Oregon writers and artists as much as possible, and provided a delightful, welcoming shop for the bookish crowd; as well as a lovely array of local artwork and jewelry to sell to the many visitors to our touristy place.

She smiled at me when I came in and invited me to sit down before she broke the news to me that she was closing the shop.  A corporate employment opportunity; something appealing to her original corporate background, had come up. An opportunity so enticing, she is going to move to the southern part of the state for it. The timing was also good, because a local half-retired pharmacist was looking for a nice location for a new pharmacy, something we lack up in our community and need to drive about 18 or so miles to the nearest one.

The walls are already showing signs of the closure... there's white exposed to the eye.

The news struck me cold. I honestly felt like I'd been told that a good friend was dying. I just started crying.  I've spent many an hour there. She had all these convenient options. Printers and WiFi, computers, a mail office to boot, where you could fed-ex, UPS or USPS whatever you needed. A fax to send stuff. And of course, the books.  We bought Alexander's first wooden toys there. I would go there and read sometimes. Or just sit and BS with Sandra. We would buy cool, hand-made jewelry as gifts there. Go and pet the two cats that pretty much owned the joint.  I would use it for work when I worked from home occasionally, to print and send stuff.  It is just a great place.  We always would go visit after a meal at the Rendezvous, which is next door. It's tradition.  It's part of my home, so to speak. My territory. My routine.

And now it's closing. By the end of the month, to boot.  I am so going to miss Sandra and her wonderful shop. I feel like I am losing a family member or something. :(

Goodbye, Bookshop... cats... and Sandra.  I'm going to miss you all terribly.

Puree-a-palooza

We've entered the land of the solids. I started Alex the first time at five months, but did not continue because he became constipated and I was pretty sure his digestion wasn't quite ready for it yet. Also, he just didn't like the food very much.  Of course at that time, I had no idea how picky my boy is. :)

The Baby Bullet - Not entirely necessary but definitely a cute
little set.

We got the Baby Bullet system for Alex before he was born. It's been waiting for this moment to be taken out of the cabinet and put to use.  If you have a blender or a Cuisinart, you probably don't need to spend the sixty bucks for this. An ice cube tray and a blender is fine. But since we don't have a blender, and my little Cuisinart is a chopper not a puree maker, getting this set was a plus. And it comes with six of these adorable smiley feeding jars.

The freezing tray and some assorted frozen meals, vacuum
saved and ready to to pop into the little cup, and forty five seconds
in the microwave.

The blendery part makes a really smooth food. And it's good to know exactly what is going into my child's stomach. So far, his favourite is sweet potato. That he will chomp happily from his little spoon. Anything with the brown rice cereal, he is no big fan of. Even if it is blended with banana.  His likes: sweet potato, butternut squash. Iffy: pear, carrot and apple. No go: anything with rice cereal. It's a bummer because I went through all this trouble finding brown rice cereal that wasn't one of the brands that has arsenic issues. I went with Bob's Red Mill, which is sourced from California. I'm hoping he'll develop a taste for it as we go along.

What's this? Pear? What's pear?

Umm... Not so sure about this.

Yeah, no.

I don't think so.

These carrots aren't any better.

Sadly, the side effect of solids is that the nicely innocuous yeasty scentless breast milk poops are now a thing of the past.  His emissions are now quite smelly and gross.  Oh well. The price of growing up. I wish he'd stop. I want him to be eensy weensy again. My little frog-leggy baby ball... he's growing too fast. He's grabby, and he rolls around, on the edge of crawling.  He has been standing for about two months already. And we took him swimming recently. Normally Alex hates the bath, he screams and cries like we're putting him in a vat of Hydrochloric Acid. I expected him to scream the same way at the pool, but instead, he had a blast.  Here's a cute video:

Here he is having a giggle fest at my bad Dracula noises. For some reason, it cracks him up to hear it.

Somehow, I get the impression...

That this person from this week's Postsecret collection might be Belgian or a big fan of Belgium. Not exactly sure how I came to this conclusion. :::snicker::::