FETCHING FRANCES

The Beach and Pier at Muskegon

2011-08-17T23:47:00.001-04:00

After our Wednesday mass in Grand Haven, I drove up to Muskegon, because I remembered that there was a playground on the free public beach. Frances had a grand time on the playground equipment, though she was not in the mood to be photographed. Since my camera has a good zoom lense, I sat on a bench at a distance and took pictures anyway.

A visit from her godfather...

2011-08-10T21:18:00.000-04:00

Frances's godfather, who lives in New York, came to visit for a few days, and we went to Holland and walked out to the lighthouse, because that's what I do with out of town guests. Bob and Frances both enjoyed visiting the lighthouse, though Frances played hard to get.

Bob was a bit more adventuresome, when it came to exploring the pier. Did I mention that the water temp was 58 degrees?

Holland: The Park, The Pickels and Our Little Blueberry Thief

2011-08-04T02:15:00.002-04:00

We had an outing and went to Holland, and Frances played at Kollen Park, which she claims is her favorite park. We walked behind the Heinz Pickle Factory, on the waterfront walk on Lake Macatawa. When I was a child, my grandparents lived downwind of Heinz, and I remember the vinegary smell from the factory overwhelming the air. My Great Aunt Itene and her husband Uncle John both retired from Heinz after decades of service, and my mother spent a few summers, back in the 1960's, working in the factory. She talked about how the men who drove the trucks would take hoses and spray down the girls working as pickle packers (nowadays you call that sexual harassment) and she and my grandmother told stories about workers losing fingers in the pickle slicing machines, and the pickled fingers from the workers showing up in the jars of pickles in the grocery stores around the country. It was quite the topic of conversation around my Grandparents' dinner table... the legendary lady who only had one finger left on each hand, whose fingers had turned up in Georgia and Nebraska. There were also stories of workers' bandaids, turning up in the jars of sliced pickles. I decided to share those stories with Frances. She will never know my Aunt Irene or my mother, but its part of our regional history--our ties to the area. Since she has little in ties to her own native homeland, the least I can do for her is create ties to her adopted homeland, such as they are. She was intrigued by the chopped off fingers. Now that you mention it, I think Aunt Irene lost at least one finger in the machines during her tenure at HJ Heinz. I should email her daughter and ask.

She spent some time playing on the equipment at Kollen Park.

Then we walked along the waterfront, on the special boardwalk erected by the Heinz factory.

Then we went to Reender's Blueberry Farms which are just north of Holland, and bought blueberries. They had blueberry bushes for sale, and I caught Frances sampling the fruit right off the bushes. They have u-pick blueberries, and the owner didn't seem to mind the theft of fruit.

Rest in Peace, Mrs. Ford.

2011-07-12T19:20:00.001-04:00

In Grand Rapids, we love the Fords. They are our claim to fame; Gerald and Betty put us on the map. Gerald and Betty were both products of our public schools. My Grandfather was a detective in the town of Holland, and several times, he worked on security detail for Gerald Ford, and in his scrapbook, wherever it is now, he had a handwritten thank-you note signed by "Jerry Ford." Gerald and Betty Ford were also married at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, which is just a few blocks from our house, and which is the church where Frances was baptized, and where Frances and her mothers are members. (I was also a member of that church for seven years, but no longer am. THAT, however, is another story for another time.) As you know, Gerald Ford died on the day after Christmas, 2006, and was buried out of Grace Episcopal during the first part of January, 2007. And Betty is also scheduled to be buried out of Grace Episcopal, the day after tomorrow.

Now when Gerald Ford died, Suzanne and I went with my Aunt Marilyn and her sister, and stood on line with over a hundred thousand other people, and waited for seven hours, to walk past his flag-draped casket, the night before the funeral. We got into the museum at midnight, and were there to watch the changing of the guard. (The bad Michigan weather miraculously held off, there was no snow to speak of, and the temperatures were cold but not bitterly so, for the entire week following Ford's death. I think this may have been the winter where Gun Lake completely melted) On the day of the funeral, I stood in my front yard and could hear the military band playing "Faith of our Fathers" as the casket was loaded into the hearse for its final ride through the city, to the Ford Museum where he was to be interred.

I wanted Frances to be able to say she participated in a piece of Grand Rapids' History, so this morning I brought her to the Ford Museum, and I signed the condolence book. There were no huge lines at the museum this time (when we waited to file past Gerald, the line stretched out of the museum, across the bridge, back and around past the Amway Grand Plaza, then across Pearl Street bridge by Grand Valley, and then back through downtown GR to the other side of the Michigan Street bridge) and there was just one person ahead of us. I signed our names in the book.

And we spent a bit of time looking at the fountain on the grounds of the museum.

Frances got hold of my camera and took this picture of me (below). I rather like it.

Picking Strawberries, at least in theory...

2011-06-29T23:36:00.004-04:00

I got a hankering for some freezer jam, so I took Frances out to Krupp's in Sparta, and we picked some strawberries. She wasn't much help when it came to picking strawberries, so I wound up just buying some. I did snap a picture of her sampling fruit off the bushes.

Frances preferred the rocking horse at the petting zoo, and of course, the ice cream.

At the parks

2011-05-19T10:30:00.001-04:00

Two of our favorite parks are Wedgwood Park in Grandville, and a park on Monroe, north of Michigan Street, near the Seventh Street Bridge.

At three, Frances is into going down slides. It's her thing. She's scared of swings and won't have anything to do with them, but slides she enjoys.

She especially loved the tube slide at Wedgwood Park.

Happy Easter, 2011

2011-04-25T15:28:00.003-04:00

Our Easter morning started out in Gun Lake, down at the cottage. Frances was not very keen on the idea of a visit from the Easter Bunny. The night before, she made me call the Easter Bunny and tell him not to come out our house, that he could leave the Easter Basket at our neighbor's house and her Daddy would go and pick it up there.

In spite of this, she was up at 6:30. Daddy didn't get up until 7:30, so Mom had her all dressed and ready for the egg hunt by the time Daddy got out of bed. This is the facial expression I get when I tell Frances to smile and say cheese. She looks like she's passing a kidney stone.

After the Easter Egg hunt, she opened the Easter Basket given to her by her godmother, Auntie Carol. I made this picture black and white to camouflage the blue candy stain that was all around Franny's mouth.

We drove up to Grand Rapids for the 10:00 service at St. Andrews, and they had an Easter Egg Hunt in the yard after the service.

It took a little bit of coaxing, but once she realized that the boys were going to get all the eggs if she didn't move, she decided to get the lead out and pick up a few. They had gently suggested that parents should limit the eggs to ten per child, and Franny picked up exactly that many--ten--without being reminded. She is very smart. The things she says, they make us nervous.

Here she is with Daddy, after the Easter egg hunt. This is my new profile pic on Facebook. I don't suppose you needed to know that. Most of you are on my facebook already and know this.

People were taking pictures all over the place. Frances wasn't as cooperative the second time around. Her mother pointed and said "look at the man with the camera and smile" and Frances promptly covered her face.

We went to lunch after church, and that child does enjoy her chocolate milks.

She enjoys her desserts too.

Sweetie, I love you, but you're not touching my camera with those gooey sticky hands. Sorry, it just ain't gonna happen.

Baby Jude's baptism in Lansing

2011-03-29T23:33:00.005-04:00

Anthony, Suzanne's youngest brother, became a father in late January, when his son, Jude Anthony, was born. We went to Lansing to meet Baby Jude and attend the baptism at Suzanne's home parish--Resurrection Catholic Church on Michigan Avenue.

This is a priest, and he is reading from a book. I don't suppose I needed to tell you that. But when I don't label pictures, I feel like a slacker. So there you have it.

This is Baby Jude with his mother Angela.

Rita and Dean, otherwise known as the Cincinnati cousins, also materialized in Lansing for the event. Being a big four year old, Rita was allowed to carefully hold Baby Jude at the dinner after the baptism. Dean wasn't a happy camper--perhaps because he's no longer "Baby Dean" with the arrival of "Baby Jude"-- but I took the picture anyway, figuring it would be worth something for blackmail later on.

Franny got in the picture. She was very cute in her good outfit. There is a dress under that coat.

Franny was also able to sit very still and hold Baby Jude. Both children cooperated and nobody went to the hospital.

Suzanne hovered nearby to make sure nobody fell, as respectable mothers are expected to do.

Every now and then, I can snap a picture that turns out perfectly with no editing. This would be one such photograph.

Because it was warm (40 degrees, which is warm for Michigan in late March), Grandpa Gary suggested we go to the 4H Children's Gardens at MSU, so we did. Franny was not interested in the butterflies, she doesn't go for things that fly and land on her. But she enjoyed climbing on the toys in the outdoor gardens.

She even suffered the indignity of having her picture taken with Mom and Grandma.

Frances, a reluctant naturalist

2011-03-07T09:48:00.004-05:00

We decided to go and visit Meijer Gardens with Frances, hoping that she might enjoy seeing their famous butterfly exhibits. Frances was not as pleased by the idea as were her parents.

She wanted to stay home and watch movies, you see. Why would you want to se a bunch of bugs when you can watch the same Chip and Dale DVD three times in a row? But an educational outing is an educational outing, and her parents were getting a bit stir crazy, so Frances was dragged off to Meijer Gardens, against her will. I took the above photograph as she got herself worked up into a snit. It requires no caption.

We saw the butterflies. Frances sat in her stroller and pouted.

This big old fella is a blue something or other, but you only get to see the blue when he opens his wings. Apparently I didn't frighten him enough for him to try to scare me off.

Yup, you guessed it, another butterfly.

Frances had sort of gotten over her little snit as we were leaving, but this only because we promised to take her to Moe's for black beans and rice.

A visit from the Ohio cousins and other assorted relation

2011-02-22T15:40:00.003-05:00

Franny's birthday was Feb 2, and her cousin Rita's was this past weekend. Because we were royally snowed in for her proper birthday, we had the Cincinnati cousins up to Gun Lake over the weekend and celebrated everyone's birthday.

Cheap plastic sunglasses are very cool, especially when you haven't seen the sun for a month or two.

Because we were sick over Christmas, we never used the "decorate your own gingerbread men" kit she got. We figured February was as good a time as any to decorate gingerbread men.

Uncle Abe and his friend Jenny also materialized for the celebration. Rita, Dean and Franny all really like Uncle Abe,

Grandpa Gary also materialized for the celebration. He was very thoughtful, and did all his eating out of a single dirty sauce pan, so that way I wouldn't have to do so many dishes. I have all that fiestaware that I collect, there's no point in putting it to use, you see. Let it sit there, clean. That's what dishes are for. The dishwasher is working just fine, but Grandpa Gary insisted on teaching his family the virtue of thrift. Yankee thrift and practicality, that's what I'm going to call it--"yankee thrift."

There were lots of presents passed around. Here is Frances with one of hers.

Rita is a big girl, she's four now. Franny, being three, is in awe of this fact.

All that snow we got on Frances's birthday melted during a fluke warm spell. Then it froze up again, and another snowstorm, ready to dump another foot on west Michigan, is raging as I type this. We figured we may as well go outdoors while we could. The lake looks kind of cool frozen solid, with no snow covering the ice.

Here is a nice pic of Abe, Jenny and Dean.

I like a good campfire, and I consider myself a bit of a pyro. But my brother-in-law has me beat, hands down. He got one big-ass roaring fire going. At one point, the flames were as tall as Suzanne.

"I really really like vanilla ice cream"

2011-02-16T13:05:00.001-05:00

I have Frances two mornings a week, and sometimes I just get so tired of those DVDs and of the four walls of our living room, that I need to get out of the house. So, on my stir-crazy days, we will often go to McDonalds' for breakfasts.

Note that I said BREAKFAST. Frances is no fool. She knows full well they have ice cream there, and she started announcing loudly that she really really likes vanilla ice cream, every time she saw an employee walk by our table. I was slightly mortified when a manager appeared with an ice cream cone in hand, and asked if she could have it. I couldn't very well say no. Well, I suppose I could have. But I am not that hard-core. Sometimes, I do know when to lose gracefully. This was one of them.

That toddler! We're in for it, aren't we?

Frances, in a cute mood

2011-02-07T15:22:00.003-05:00

I took these pictures on Friday. I realized that the entire month of January had passed without me taking a single picture of Frances (in part because I left the camera at Gun Lake and then we didn't go down for a few weeks) and then I was pleasantly surprised to see Frances in a cute mood when I actually had my camera handy--and I was doubly pleased to be able to actually get a few pictures of her being cute.

I truly believe there is a sidewalk somewhere under the snow. We shoveled, but snow removal is an imperfect art, and then the snowplows go by and re-coat what we've just shoveled. Anyway, this is our Franny after the "Blizzard of 2011" picture. She is almost smiling in the above picture. I took a second one at the same time, but in that one she was looking more like an outraged Empress, about to order a beheading.

She got cute when we went to McDonald's. (You see the sort of ship I run, here. I am the sort of father who takes his child to McDonald's on Friday mornings, before she goes to school. Its our Friday routine.)

"Look! I'm making a scary face, Daddy! Did I scare you?"

Here's Frances in all her cute toddler glory. She's holding her beloved "Poopsie" bear, which was given to her by one of the nurses in the Pediatric Gastrointestinal clinic where Suzanne works. They give "Poopsie" bears to constipated children when they start showing progress. Franny got her "Poopsie" bear just by showing up one afternoon to fetch Mommy from work. Its one of her favorite stuffed animals, and she can't sleep without "Poopsie."

SNOWPOCALYPSE and Frances's Third Birthday

2011-02-07T10:39:00.001-05:00

Frances turned three today, and today we also experienced the "Blizzard of 2011" which is, at least in theory, the biggest snowstorm Michigan has had since 1978. I think that's a bit of a stretch. We got 16 inches of snow from Tuesday night into Wednesday. 16 inches of snow is a lot, its enough to be an inconvenience, but lets be serious. Its not exactly the end of the world. Suzanne and I were in New Jersey for the Blizzard of 1996, and that dumped darn near three feet of snow on us, but that was New Jersey. Suzanne remembered the grocery store being sold out of everything, and that they even closed the mall. Anyway, on Frances's third birthday, we were pretty much snowed in. Schools were all cancelled. Suzanne, however, had to go to work.

The above picture was the view from our front door at about 9:30 am. You can see traces of Suzanne's footprints, from where she left for work three hours eariler. I would like to point out that Suzanne's clinic did in fact close for the day because of the storm, but nobody called Suzanne and told her this, so she went in, riding the GRATA bus, like she would do any other day. She said it was a very productive day, nobody was around to bug her.

This picture was taken from our bedroom window. You can see two snow-covered cars. One is mine, the other is our neighbor's. Shortly after this, some good samaritan came and snow-blowed our cars out for us. I am not sure who did this, but I was certainly grateful, as we don't have a snow blower and I was not looking forward to shoveling.

I baked Frances a cake, and after it cooled, she watched me put frosting on it. We decorated it with M&Ms. Since the frosting was chocolate, I let her eat the brown M&M's, since they wouldn't add any color to the cake. I also let her lick the spoon from the can of frosting. (Yes, this cake was from a mix, and the frosting was from a can, you see the sort of ship I run here)

I tried to take pictures of Frances blowing out her candles, but well, I didn't take any because she didn't blow them out. I put three candles on the cake and lit them, and when I brought the cake to her, she ran away screaming "don't burn me, don't burn me!" So, I blew out the candles and served the cake.
I want to note that Frances's Uncle Abe surprised--no, shocked--me when he showed up at the house with his girlfriend Jenny at 4pm. Abe lives in Lansing, its 70 miles away. The entire state is buried in snow after a huge storm. The expressway was barely plowed, they said it was down to a single lane. But Abe and Jenny came to Grand Rapids anyway. I was so impressed that they came all the way to Grand Rapids with the roads in the condition they are in, that I felt the only respectable thing to do was to take them to dinner, so, big spender that I am, I took them to Russ's on 28th Street, because it wasn't far, and because it was open. Also, Abe shoveled the sidewalk. So I really couldn't not feed him.

Christmas 2010, part 2: Poppy's Birthday

2011-01-03T14:44:00.000-05:00

We had a second round of Christmas when Poppy and his friend Annette arrived at Gun Lake from Lynchburg, Virginia. It was a bit of a challenging visit. I am just getting over the hump with this awful cold I've had. Unfortunately, Frances caught my cold with a vengeance (104 temperature, trip to the ER) and just as she's beginning to feel human again, Poppy arrived and we're sorry to say she passed her germs on to him, and he was pretty miserable with the crud. Then, to make things even more interesting, the coffee maker died on Thursday night (and Annette really, really, really likes her coffee) so I went into town and bought her a replacement coffee maker, only to arrive home to find out that the fridge and freezer died. It was unseasonably warm at first, so all our perishables had to be moved to our neighbor's extra fridge and freezer.
When we opened presents on New Year's Eve (which was also Poppy's 69th birthday, though he wasn't feeling festive at all), he was as sick (if not worse than)I was at Christmas, and he spent most of his visit in bed, wrapped in, blankets, wearing a stocking hat, calling for hot teas and assorted antibiotics. There was also half a bottle of Nyquil left (I am done with it, I swear) which Poppy helped finish off. With the help of Dayquil, to counteract the Nyquil, he did emerge from his cocoon for an hour to open presents and eat a piece of birthday cake.
Luckily, just when our neighbors were starting to grumble about our coming and going at all hours to retrieve our groceries from their fridge, it got cold, and started snowing, so we could store food outdoors and let nature act as a refrigerant. We only got a bit of snow. Its been a very mild winter.

Poppy opening his Christmas and Birthday presents.

Frances was beginning to feel a bit better, but she was still very clingy. Somehow, Suzanne managed to avoid the crud that hit Frances, Poppy and me so mercilessly.

Poppy's gifts usually wind up in the safe deposit box. His gold business has been very busy this year, so he was in a generous mood.

Christmas 2010: My Nyquil-fogged narration

2010-12-26T23:53:00.006-05:00

Well, no blog would be complete without an accounting of our family's Christmas, so here goes. The weather this year was nothing special. It was cold, but not terribly cold. We had a "dusting" of snow, but it was nothing special.
I confess that photographs are limited because I take most of the photographs in this family (I also do most of the cooking). Suzanne's parents may very well have taken photographs, but they use those cardboard disposable cameras, so if they did in fact take pictures, the pictures will likely materialize sometime around Memorial Day, and will be in print form, needing to be scanned.
Anyway. By Christmas Eve, I knew I was in the grips of a rather nasty cold. But, stoic dutchman that I am, I vowed to carry on, regardless. Suzanne's family was going to come on Christmas Eve and spend the night. We got down to the cottage at some point on the 23rd. I spent the 24th preparing some basic foodstuffs. I made chili, chocolate chip cookies, and I bought cinnamon rolls in a can. I went back to Grand Rapids in the evening, in part, because we'd forgotten a bag of gifts. I also wanted to attend midnight mass, because I LOVE midnight mass. It is my favorite service of the liturgical year. I know lots of clergy who claim that Easter Sunday is the best service of the church year, but that's clergy for you. Because I couldn't bear to go to Grace Church which is still in the midst of a raging power struggle, I attended midnight mass at St. Andrews, on the north side of town, but I was with so many Grace Episcopal Church people, you'd hardly know the difference, except for the friendly, welcoming atmosphere at St. Andrews. And St. Andrews had incense at their Midnight Mass. I LOVE incense, and so I was quite happy, even though I couldn't really smell it.
Anyway, I got back down to Gun Lake well after midnight. By that time, Suzanne's parents had arrived, and were already sleeping in the guest room. I am also told Suzanne's brother Abe was with them, but for reasons which I am about to relay, you'll understand why I don't quite remember.
Anyway, shortly before I went to sleep, I took this picture of the Christmas Tree, surrounded by all the presents. I like a lot of lights on a Christmas Tree.

I finally got into bed around 3am. I had bought a bottle of Nyquil when I was in Grand Rapids, and as I tiptoed into the bedroom (Suzanne and Frances were both sound asleep) I opened the bottle in the dark, but dropped the measuring cup that comes on top. I didn't want to turn on the light and wake them up just to find the cap, so I took a swig from the bottle and crawled into bed.

I was dragged out of bed on Christmas morning. I had to talk Suzanne out of calling poison control because we ascertained that I'd chugged half the bottle of Nyquil (it just seemed like one mouthfull--I really didn't mean to drink that much) and anyway, it became clear that there's a very good reason they give you those little measuring cups that you're not even supposed to fill. But how was I to know that? Anyway. Poison control was not called. My memory of this day is, however, very spotty. I am told I put cinnamon rolls and then the chocolate chip cookies in the oven and put the chili (I had also made this the night before) in the crock pot and turned it on. The cinnamon rolls were fine, the cookies didn't turn out well.
I also suspect that I took these pictures of Frances opening her presents:

Her favorite present this year was bubble wrap. I bought her a whole roll of bubble wrap, and wrapped it up and put it under the tree. This was her favorite present. Shortly after this, I went back to bed. I vaguely remember eating chili downstairs while Suzanne's family was still here. Apparently I went back to bed, because I remember waking up in the evening and finding her family had gone back to Lansing.
Anyway, there were still some presents from Nei-Nei to open, so I took these videos of Frances opening gifts. You can hear me breathing through my mouth quite loudly, this is because I could not breathe through my nose. I hope it doesn't gross you out.
Here is Frances opening the first package from Nei-Nei.

And here we are, opening the big box from Nei-Nei.

And here are two short clips to show how Frances sings Christmas Carols. Here is
"Jingle Bells"

and here is "Santa Claus is Coming to Town:

Happy Thanksgiving, 2010

2010-11-29T22:42:00.001-05:00

We had a very quiet Thanksgiving Day at the cottage, followed by a big gathering of relatives over the weekend. Suzanne's sister Char came in from Wisconsin with her husband and two children; Suzanne's brother Abe brought his new friend Jenny; and Suzanne's cousin Tricia came with her twin boys and daughter who's Frances's age. Suzanne's parents were there too. The men went outside and built a fire and deep fried turkeys in peanut oil, just like the Pilgrims did at the first Thanksgiving.

My brother-in-law Bill gets credit for the deep fried turkeys, which came out wonderfully--very crispy and not nearly as dry as a turkey roasted in the oven. He brought the equipment that we needed, and he did most of the work. We had a fire going in the fire pit, so we didn't all freeze while the turkeys fried. But, it takes about an hour to fry an average turkey, while it would have been in the oven all day.

Oh, thank heaven for little girls! Here I am with my niece Morgan, and Frances. Frances was not exactly thrilled to see her cousin Morgan climbing all over her daddy, but the two of them get along well enough otherwise.

Franny and Morgan watched videos with Grandpa Gary, but Ella thought Franny's toybox was more interesting.

Franny took a nap on Aunty Char's lap. (That sort of rhymes, doesn't it... nap-lap...)

Her pretty new dress

2010-11-15T12:57:00.002-05:00

I got this picture of Frances in her new dress (an early Christmas present from Nei-Nei) at our church group's pre-Christmas party.

Playing with her Ohio cousins

2010-11-09T07:48:00.000-05:00

Frances's Ohio cousins came to Grand Rapids for a short visit on Sunday morning, and she had a wonderful time playing with them at the McDonalds playplace.

It must have been static electricity, look at how her hair stands on end.

Halloween Fun

2010-11-02T10:53:00.002-04:00

Frances was adamant that she wanted to dress as a bumblebee for Halloween. We will ignore the fact that the costume she selected was a pink and yellow butterfly... she was a bumblebee.

Here she and Mommy are, on the dock at the cottage, feeding stale hamburger buns to the blue gills.

We went trick-or-treating at the mall. I am not sure we will do that again, but as Nei-Nei came down with a touch of the flu, it seemed logical to go someplace climate controlled with comfortable places to sit down.

Don't let the costume fool you, she was a bumblebee.

A visit from Nei-Nei

2010-10-30T20:56:00.000-04:00

Wilda came and visited us for Halloween, and it was a great opportunity for Frances to get re-acquainted with her Nei-Nei.

Since the weather was sunny (but a bit cold) we went for a walk down the pier at Grand Haven.

Here are Frances and Nei-Nei at a farmer's market in Grand Haven, shopping for apples to make applesauce.

Nei-Nei got some schnazzy new sunglasses in her trademark purple.

A sunny weekend in October

2010-10-24T08:41:00.000-04:00

We had gloriously warm and sunny weather over the weekend, and decided to go out to Holland and spend some time by the lake before snow falls. I took a bunch of pictures, but I am still stubbornly using my film SLR. At this point, my efforts are self-defeating, because my film is now expired and the colors are kind of funky, but, well, I guess my stubborn dutch and german roots are coming out.

Here's Frances on the walk out to the Holland Harbor Lighthouse, known to most of the locals as "Big Red." It was a beautiful afternoon for a walk.

Suzanne and Frances, on the steps of the lighthouse.

Exploring the beach behind the lighthouse.

We went to Tunnel Park after visiting Big Red. Tunnel Park is known for the big tunnel leading from the parking lot out to the beach.

Here is Frances in the tunnel. She had a blast running through it, back and forth, shouting "ECHO! ECHO! ECHO!" at the top of her lungs, and listening to her voice echo back.

The Henry Ford Museum

2010-09-29T11:44:00.000-04:00

Frances's godfather was going to be in Toledo for his class reunion, so we got a hotel in Detroitland, and met up with him at the Henry Ford Museum, where we had a wonderful time.

I thought this was a neat picture of Frances and Suzanne, watching a reproduction of the air show at the museum.

Here's Frances in a replica of an old airplane.

Here's an old Ford.

The Henry Ford Museum has a big tribute to the Oscar Meyer Weiner, so we ate our lunch in the Weinermobile Cafe. Later, Frances got to pretend to be a hot dog, smothered in plastic condiments.

I suppose that being covered in plastic condiments is great fun when you're 2 1/2. We certainly don't have one of those at home.

Sunday Lunch at McDonalds with the Grandparents

2010-09-07T11:07:00.001-04:00

Frances had a nice visit from her grandparents this past weekend. Here they are at the Gun Lake McDonalds after church.

A short visit from Poppy

2010-08-15T12:21:00.002-04:00

Poppy came up for a brief visit, so he could attend his 50th High School reunion. He brought someone with him. She was very nice, but then again, most of his friends have been. We're still not sure what to think. But anyway, to commemorate the visit, here's a picture taken at the Gun Lake Sam's Joint. Poppy is very proud of that "Virginia is for Lovers" t-shirt. It has outlasted several of his lovers.

Trying to redeem an awful Sunday....

2010-08-07T10:14:00.003-04:00

Last Sunday, our Sunday morning got off to an awful start at our church, and Suzanne and I wound up storming out halfway through the service, with Frances and about twenty other people, after we watched our seemingly vindictive little priest snub a friend who was standing there waiting to speak during announcements. We decided to go to Frederick Meijer Gardens to see if something could be redeemed from the day. (The devastating conflict at our church has made the Virtue Online, aka Angican Tabloid News. When I first saw this article, it was next to a story about a priest who gave communion to a dog. Its all very sad. Here is a link to the story on Virtue Online. In some ways, this is a tempest in a teapot. The diocese is pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. But our parish church is within walking distance of our house, and it is where Frances was baptized, and its the parish family that supported us through an excruciatingly long adoption journey, and its OUR teapot. There seems to be no end in sight, as the congregation just becomes more polarized and everyone digs in their heels.)
Anyway, we did manage to have a nice time at Meijer Gardens (how can you not have a nice time at Meijer Gardens?). Here are some of the pictures I took...

Here's Frances playing in the Children's Gardens. They have scale models of the five great lakes, and little boats the kids can play around with.

"Look Mama, this door is just my size!" said Frances.

Clowning around with Mama.

Enjoying a cold drink in the cafe' afterwards.

(FYI, I have since lost the beard. I get lazy during the summer and decided not to shave since I wasn't teaching in a classroom....)

New Jersey Visitors

2010-07-27T19:53:00.000-04:00

Our friends from New Jersey came for a visit, and they brought their new, six-week old son Rhys with them. It was a wonderful time to watch all the children get re-acquainted. Franny was in awe of all the things the brave big boys could do, and believed herself to be quite the expert in caring for little Rhys.

I took this at the mall. I thought the expressions on the various faces were quite funny.

Here are Jaden and Jacoby, by the fountain at the Ford Museum.

A great family shot...

The brave big boys ventured out right to the river bank at the Fish Ladder in Grand Rapids. Franny stayed much closer to Mama.

She decided she likes chocolate sauce on her ice cream. We weren't sure, but since the big boys liked it, it must be alright, you see.

Oh, the things you see when you haven't got your gun. My dear friend Jason the CPA, digging a trench for his sons on the beach at Grand Haven.

Here's a good picture of Jacoby.

The beach grew on Franny. She wasn't wholly sold on it, but she was a bit more willing to try to have fun since the big boys were so enthralled with it.

The batteries in my camera died after this picture, so I missed a lot of shots. You wouldn't know that, though, from all the pictures I post. LOL.

Nope, Jason and I didn't get sunburned at all, why do you ask?

This was a great shot, I simply had to include it.

Visit from the Wisconsin Cousins

2010-07-21T16:09:00.001-04:00

I think I've finally gotten the knack for posting more than four photos at a time with picassa. Anyway. Last weekend we had a wonderful visit with Frances's Wisconsin cousins, Morgan and Logan.

Here is Frances at the new Orangeville Township playground near our cottage.

Here's a shot of everyone, just chillin and watching "The Aristocats."

This is Morgan, age five

Logan is 3 1/2, just one year older than Franny. We always watch Logan to see what Franny will be doing next year.

Franny and Auntie Char went fishing off the dock with a Snoopy fishing pole and stale hot dog buns, and look what they caught. I sort of feel sorry for the fish--the indignity of being caught by a 2 1/2 year old with a Snoopy fishing pole must be intense.

Logan enjoyed the ice cream cones.

Hanging out and watching the camp fire.

This is an excellent shot I took at the perfect moment in the play area at Woodland Mall.

Here is our annual Morgan and Uncle Dale pic. Going back for a few years now, Morgan has a collection of pictures of herself with Uncle Dale hanging on the wall in her bedroom. I should have taken off my sunglasses... but oh well.

Carolina Visitors, part three

2010-07-11T08:31:00.000-04:00

It was rainy on Thursday when we put DeAnne and company on the boat from Muskegon to Milwaukee for the second leg of their vacation, but we did stop in Ferrysburg to walk that pier, which has a good view of the Grand Haven lighthouse.

Carolina visitors, part two

2010-07-09T13:28:00.000-04:00

Here is a picture of Franny and Lidi, smiling on command, at the mall in Grandville.

Lidi thoroughly enjoyed Oval Beach in Saugatuck. Franny, who was still a bit sick, not so much.

Franny did perk up a bit in the afternoon at Saugatuck, and when we had lunch, she began to eat a bit, and then as she felt better, she began perking up quite a bit. Its amazing what a hot dog, french fries and chocolate milk will do for your disposition when you're hungry and have a sore mouth.

Carolina visitors, part one

2010-07-09T13:23:00.002-04:00

We were blessed with a visit from DeAnne, Alyssa and Lidi from Frances's travel group. Frances was not feeling terribly well for the first part of their visit, because she came down with hand,foot and mouth virus, and wouldn't eat much of anything for three days. Towards the end of the visit, she perked up a bit and began eating, which was a relief to all of us.

Here is Lidi on the dock at Gun Lake.

Here they are when we visited Big Red in Holland.

Father's Day: The Dam at Rockford

2010-06-23T20:36:00.001-04:00

We decided to spend Sunday afternoon at the dam in Rockford. Frances was fascinated by the turtles on the rocks that were just out of reach of everyone not in the water.

I think this is a great picture. I was in an experimental mood and just dangled the camera in front of her and this was the result. Not bad, eh?

Frances ate her first ice cream cone, and she liked it a lot, but you must understand she does not like strawberry ice cream. She likes PINK ice cream.

Louisville, KY: Scoring AP Exams

2010-06-19T13:08:00.002-04:00

This was my first year scoring the AP Exams in Louisville, and it was quite an experience. In previous years there were 900 English teachers under one roof scoring exams in Daytona Beach, but this year they put the English Language and the English Literature people together, so there were over 2,000 English teachers under one roof, scoring exams. In the picture above, I am in the Hard Rock Cafe in Louisville with some table-mates from last year's reading.

I was rather busy with my online courses and I didn't get away from the convention center and the Galt House Hotel very much, but at the Kentucky Welcome Center, I was able to get my picture taken with Colonel Sanders.

I have gotten to know some interesting people over my years of scoring exams. Here is a picture of one such individual. This is Alice, an English teacher from California. We were sat next to each other at the same table two years in a row, and seem to keep running into each other.

South Haven: Memorial Day Weekend

2010-06-02T20:44:00.000-04:00

Since we went to mass at St. Lukes in Kalamazoo on Sunday, we decided we may as well go and visit South Haven and walk the pier. It must have been a good idea, because it seemed like most of southwest Michigan had the same idea. But it was still fun.

The lighthouse at South Haven is covered in graffiti, and I don't think the warnings of stiff fines and the rewards for those who report the vandals are terribly effective in preventing the graffiti.

It was very hot and sunny, we all got a bit sunburned.

Frances enjoyed walking down the pier with Mama.

Wheeee!

Gun Lake: Memorial Day Weekend

2010-06-01T12:49:00.000-04:00

We had a nice relaxing Memorial Day weekend. At the cottage, we sometimes put soap in the wading pool and let Frany get her bath and play at the same time. She is going through this phase where she makes this cheesy smile whenever I point a camera at her.

Grand Haven: An afternoon at the pier

2010-05-25T12:46:00.000-04:00

I have always loved Grand Haven--walking the pier is one of my favorite things to do. On another daddy-daughter afternoon, we went out to Grand Haven and walked the pier. It was a bit rough, so we got splashed several times and Franny was thrilled, though it looks like she's screaming in the picture above.

Holland's "Big Red," up close and personal

2010-05-18T12:40:00.000-04:00

I have seen "Big Red" many times, but it was always from the state park in Holland. I recently heard that the lighthouse had changed ownership and that now the public had an easement to visit the grounds of the actual lighthouse, so I decided to take Frances and give that a try. It was well worth the visit. Its a bit of a challenge to get to the lighthouse, because parking is very limited and its a half mile hike to actually get to the lighthouse, but we did it and it was a great afternoon adventure. Here are some of the pictures.

Dinner at "The Bib"

2010-05-16T12:23:00.000-04:00

Franny's daycare teacher Miss Chris wanted to make sure Franny got to enjoy a meal at "The Bib" on Gun Lake, which is a restaurant we don't frequent. Anyway, she gave us a gift certificate and said she wanted to see pictures of Franny at "The Bib." So here goes...

Tulip Time

2010-05-03T10:57:00.001-04:00

Here are some pictures from Tulip Time in Holland, Michigan. It's kind of funny, but I've never had much to do with Tulip Time, and this is the first time I've ever actually been in Holland during Tulip Time. My mother was from Holland, and so many of the locals look at Tulip Time as an absolute zoo and a nuisance, that it was never something I'd wanted to participate in. My mother always told horror stories of the blisters she'd get on her feet from while wearing wooden shoes, and marching in parades, it never seemed appealing until Franny came around. One of these years, I'm going to put her in a dutch costume and take her picture by the tulips.

We went to Veldheer's, and got Frances her own pair of wooden shoes. She wasn't interested in wearing them for very long.

Here's Suzanne and Frances at Centennial Park in downtown Holland, by a bunch of orange tulips. Frances did not want to be set down at all. Crowds still make her nervous.

Frances enjoyed Kollen Park on Lake Mackatawa more than she did Centennial Park, because there were no crowds. Here she is, checking out the tulips. Tulips are everywhere in Holland during Tulip Time. My great grandfather used to work for the Holland City Parks Department, and it was his job to plant the tulip bulbs along the streets and sidewalks of the city. If you're caught picking in tulip in Holland during Tulip Time, the fine is $35, per tulip. Once some poor man was in the news because he had a car accident and his car skidded into one of the city's tulip beds, and his fine was in the thousands.

Easter, 2010

2010-04-05T10:54:00.000-04:00

Easter is always a bit of a busy time, but here are some pictures.

Franny made a bunny cake with mom and Grandma. Franny was in charge of decorations

Here she is, eating a cookie after church.

And here she is watching the big kids go crazy at the Easter Egg hunt at church. She was not very eager to join in the chaos, and contented herself with a few eggs she found on the edges of the perimeter, far from the maddening crowds.

Spring Break 2010: Noo Yawk and Joisey, part six

2010-03-09T23:25:00.000-05:00

On our last day in New Jersey we stayed local and just checked out some old haunts and hung with some old friends.

This was the house where we lived from 1987 until I went away to college. My father sold it when he moved to Virginia in 1997. It shocks me to think that I was last in that house 14 years ago, but there it is.

My mother's ashes are buried in the memorial garden of a church in Wayne, NJ and we stopped and saw the little placque on the wall of the church bearing her name. Again, time flies. She's eight years dead now. Thats one year longer than Jacob Marley, when Dickens said he was "dead as a doornail."

Then on our last evening in NJ, we met up with a bunch of High School friends at the TGI Fridays and swapped war stories. Above, Frances is with Christina, and below, with my ex-girlfriend Debbie.

Spring Break 2010: Noo Yawk and Joisey part five

2010-03-09T22:50:00.000-05:00

And now for New Jersey:

After a few days on Staten Island, we went and spent a few days with my best friend from High School and his family, in Parsippany, New Jersey. Jason lives a few blocks from the house where he grew up. Frances was enamoured with his younger son Jacoby, and was especially thrilled by their pet bunny. She liked rubbing her face against it. It was very cute to watch.

Spring Break 2010: Noo Yawk and Joisey, part three

2010-03-08T23:38:00.000-05:00

Here's another shot from the Staten Island Ferry.

We went into the city again, and met Franny's godfather Bob at the Central Park Zoo.

This is a picture of us three somewhere in Manhattan, near Central Park.

Franny was a bit shy around her godfather.

Spring Break, 2010: Noo Yawk and Joisey, part four

2010-03-08T09:47:00.000-05:00

Here are some more pictures taken around New York City.

Franny got really excited by the tall buildings, she doesn't see much of this in Grand Rapids.

And again. I am trying to remember where this was, because people have asked if this was Times Square, and it wasn't. Frances actually slept through Times Square in her stroller--fancy sleeping through Times Square.

Here we are waiting for the subway. Frances's favorite parts of New York were riding the ferry and the subway, without a doubt. Getting the stroller down all the subway terminals was not always easy, but she really got a kick out of us carrying her stroller down big flights of stairs.

Spring Break 2010: Noo Yawk and Joisey, part 2

2010-03-06T21:32:00.000-05:00

We met my friend Jason and his two boys at Times Square, and then we all went to the Children's Museum of Manhattan on the upper east side.

Here is Franny with Jacoby and Jaden, in the Dr. Seus car at the Children's Museum.

Her favorite part of New York is still riding on the ferry and watching all the big buildings go by.

Spring Break 2010: Noo Yawk and Joisey part 1

2010-03-06T20:21:00.000-05:00

For Spring Break, we drove out to New York and New Jersey. We have friends on Staten Island who live right near the ferry, and spent three days there before heading to northern New Jersey, where I grew up. I was just tallying up the states where Frances has been since coming home, and we have: MI, IN, IL, WI, OH, KY, WV, VA, NC, PA, NJ and NY...so twelve different states so far, that's not too shabby. Anyway, Frances now knows that though her daddy was born in Kalamazoo, he is "from Jersey."

I took this late afternoon shot of the skyline from the ferry as we were leaving the city.

Even though we took her to zoos and the children's museum, Franny's favorite part of the trip was, without a doubt, riding on the "big orange boat."

That's the Statue of Liberty in the background... Franny can now say "statue"

Happy Birthday, Frances!

2010-02-02T22:13:00.000-05:00

Today is Frances's second birthday. Because I had to be teach a night class tonight, we celebrated this weekend with ice cream and presents. She decided she liked ice cream on Thursday, and now knows how to ask for it. We will be having a bigger party in a few weeks with, her cousins and family. Here are some pics of her enjoying ice cream at Steak and Shake.

Beautiful Michigan: Holland (under ice)

2010-02-02T13:01:00.004-05:00

Grand Haven wasn't enough for me, so then we drove down US 31 to Holland. I get all sentimental about Holland. My grandparents lived there, my mother was born there. I dragged Suzanne and Frances to the state park. They humored me, but then Frances got fussy for some reason, and Suzanne decided to take Frances back to the car. She told me to feel free to go climbing on the icebergs and break my neck if I felt like I had to, just so long as my life insurance was paid and in force, and covered death by stupidity.

St. Peter wasn't the only mortal to walk on water. Here I am walking on Lake Michigan. I only fell three times getting out there. I look very pleased with myself. I made some kid snap this picture.

After I got sick of falling on the frozen lake, I just climbed up on the pier. Look at the colors in the sky as sunset came. I got some lady to snap this sunset picture with the frozen channel in the background. It may seem foolhardy, but after you've been cooped up for a month, you just want go outside and do something, even if its climbing on icebergs. And the sun was shining, and it wasn't terribly cold, so that was my chance. I am grateful to my family for humoring this impulse in me.

Beautiful Michigan: Grand Haven, under ice...

2010-02-02T12:59:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, you just need to get outdoors and DO SOMETHING. Since it was bright and sunny and a warm 20 degrees, I decided we should go to Grand Haven and Holland, and see the ice. And did we ever see ice.

Suzanne would not let me go very far out onto the pier. One of our favorite topics of conversations in Michigan is talking about fools who get killed when walking out on the piers when they're not supposed to. Suzanne, apparently, was not ready for widowhood.

How's that for ice? Look at that! Amazing! One of these days, I'm going to drive across Lake Michigan to Chicago. My father swears he did this in 1967 or 68. I feel like Helen Reddy's "Little Ruby Red Dress" everybody laughs... doesn't have a future, never made no past. Call it a midlife crisis. I'm going to be 35 in April. Middle Aged. Halfway to seventy. I feel like I'd better do something before I'm sitting in a wheelchair all day, drooling on an afghan and losing my dentures.

Winter, 2010

2010-01-01T12:54:00.001-05:00

Poppy headed back to Lynchburg this morning, but we had breakfast at the Circle Inn before he headed out.

I decided to fiddle with the settings on my camera. The above pictures were taken in "sepia," and I kind of like it.

Since the lake was frozen solid, I took Frances out in the sled again. It was cold, but we enjoyed ourselves. The above picture was taken on the "Natural Color" setting, and below, in b&w. I am pleased with this last picture, because the only time we can get a picture of someone in front of the cottage is when the lake is frozen.

Sledding

2009-12-26T20:19:00.000-05:00

Poppy brought Frances an old sled from the 1930s, that they used to push me around in when I was her size. We brought Frances over to see the neighbors by the cottage. She didn't take to the whole sled experience at first, but it grew on her.

Here she is with her friend Jaden, and with Suzanne, on their way back to the cottage after spending the afternoon with our neighbors.

Christmas, 2009, part two....

2009-12-26T12:44:00.000-05:00

As Christmas day progressed, Frances got tired of opening presents and decided she would rather play with what she'd already opened. Then Suzanne's parents and brother Abe all materialized, and with them came a renewed interest in the stuff under the tree.

Poppy's blood sugar doesn't react well to the rum and coke, especially when he doesn't drink diet.

She's really getting into her rocking horse.

Christmas Morning, 2009

2009-12-26T12:41:00.000-05:00

On Christmas morning, Frances got up and insisted on putting on a pretty dress because Grandma and Grandpa were coming. We didn't go to quite the same effort. Then we attacked the Christmas tree.

I think all she had for breakfast that morning was pistachios and Crunch n Munch from Poppy's stocking. She loves nuts, and anything salty.

More of Christmas Eve, 2009

2009-12-26T12:39:00.000-05:00

After we got out of the Christmas Eve mass, we slowly drove down to the cottage on Gun Lake, where we will be for the next week. It was nice relaxing upstairs with the lit tree, watching the falling snow cover the frozen lake.

My father had a bit too much rum and coke, it looks like. ;)

Christmas Eve, 2009

2009-12-26T12:36:00.000-05:00

I remember, in life before children, LOVING going to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I think I enjoyed it so much, in part, because there were no whining children, but there was excellent music, ambience and liturgy.

But those days are over. Frances needs her sleep, and we need Frances to get her sleep. This year, we went to the 4:00 service, which was also the Christmas pageant. Frances was pretty good during church.

My father materialized in Michigan this year, wanting his Christmas pudding. This is not his normal. I suspect that the prospect of seeing Frances for Christmas appealed to him more than not seeing snow in Lynchburg.

Christmassy Photo Shoot

2009-12-08T20:34:00.000-05:00

We got together with the Pine Lake cousins at Meijer Botannical Gardens for a Christmas Photo Shoot. As you can see above, organizing small children for photographs isn't always as easy as it looks.

A Warm Saturday in November

2009-11-19T12:27:00.001-05:00

It has been a long time since I've posted anything. Last weekend we were down at the cottage, and it was so warm we went to the state park without wearing our coats. It was an absolutely beautiful afternoon.

Above, see Suzanne and Frances washing the fish in Gun Lake.

Beautiful Michigan: Wilderness State Park

2009-10-25T19:02:00.001-04:00

On our way back home, we stopped at Wilderness State Park, which is at the northwestern tip of the lower peninsula. It has miles and miles of untouched Lake Michigan shoreline. The key word is "wilderness." No manufactured sandy beaches... the beaches are rocky and the indigenous plants are allowed to thrive. Pristine... gorgeous. I love Michigan. You don't find this in New Jersey.

Frances had a wonderful time throwing rocks into the water and watching the splash.

Beautiful Michigan: The Straits of Mackinac

2009-10-25T18:56:00.001-04:00

The Straits of Mackinac is the body of water between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. The two peninsulas are connected by the Mackinac Bridge. In the first three pictures, we are in the upper peninsula, on the Lake Michigan side of the straits, looking to the southeast.
You can see the Mackinac Bridge in the distance. Many Michiganders are very proud of that bridge--but many "yoopers" (people who are native to the "U.P." or Upper Peninsula) wish it had never been built because it brings all the dratted tourists. Up until the 1960s, the only way for trolls and fudgies ("trolls" is "yooper" speak for people who live "below the bridge" in northern lower Michigan. Grandpa and Grandma Weimer are trolls. Suzanne and I are "fudgies" which is yooper-speak for people from southern lower Michigan, who come up to the Upper Peninsula on vacation, and often buy fudge from the tourist shops on Mackinac Island and in the Upper Peninsula... I've also heard this group referred to as "fudge suckers") to access the upper peninsula was by boat.

Here are Grandma and Grandpa Weimer. They are trolls because they live in northern lower Michigan. They don't find the term "troll" offensive in the slightest.

Two trolls, and two fudgies.

Fudgies, all...

This picture of the bridge (often referred to as "the Big Mack")was taken from the Straits State Park, which is on the Lake Huron side of the bridge. This is the bridge viewed from the upper peninsula, looking to the southwest.

Beautiful Michigan: Taquamenon Falls, pt. 1

2009-10-24T20:45:00.002-04:00

Frances's Great Grandma Weimer is sure a trooper. She walked all the way up to the falls, and pushed Frances in her stroller as she went. Grandpa said she hadn't walked that far in years.

I was the only one who walked the 94 steps down to the brink of the falls, and it was just amazing. They are so powerful.

The browns and gold in the water is due to the tanins in the water from the tree roots...

There's a view of the Taquemon River, as it flows away from the falls.

Beautiful Michigan: Taquamenon Falls pt. 2

2009-10-24T20:42:00.002-04:00

On the path to the falls, Grandpa spotted this interesting root sticking up from the ground.

Frances and Great Grandma had a good chance to get acquainted as they waited for me to come back up from the brink.

Look at that adorable baby... love the bunny hat.

Here is a view of the falls from farther away...

Beautiful Michigan: Autumn in the Upper Peninsula

2009-10-24T20:36:00.001-04:00

We had the most gorgeous color last weekend as we drove through the U.P. I took these pictures along the road up to Whitefish Point and Taquammenon Falls, while Grandpa told me where to drive. This is what most of the Upper Peninsula looks like--little two-lane roads going through miles of forests and wilderness, and tiny little towns.

We lucked out and got to see some absolutely gorgeous color... it just went on for miles and miles and miles of beautiful reds and yellows and oranges and browns, with the greens of the pine trees mixed in. The area is very isolated, sparsely populated, and absolutely gorgeous.

I took this picture in Paradise, near Whitefish Point. I did a double take when I saw gas below $2 a gallon, until Grandpa pointed out that the station was closed down.

Beautiful Michigan: Whitefish Point on Lake Superior

2009-10-24T20:14:00.002-04:00

We got a hotel in St. Ignace, which is in the Upper Peninsula, just over the bridge. Suzanne's grandparents met us in St. Ignace, and we headed north to Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior. It was the second time in my life that I'd seen Lake Superior--the only other time I saw Lake Superior was on a family vacation in 1984 or 1985, when my parents dared me to swim in it. (You can almost never swim in Lake Superior because its so cold, even in August)

Lake Superior is the northern border of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Canada is on the other side of the lake. Lake Superior is the largest great lake, and its also the cleanest and coldest.

Here are Suzanne and Frances with Suzanne's grandparents.

Here is a shot of the Whitefish Bay Lighthouse, near the Great Lakes Ship Wreck Museum. The town where this is all located is called Paradise, and we went into town, so we'd be able to say we had a cheeseburger in Paradise...the restaurant was very... casual. Yes, thats the word... casual.

Beautiful Michigan: Going "Up North"

2009-10-17T00:06:00.003-04:00

I tell non-Michigan people that I live "100 miles north of flyoverland" and thats in Grand Rapids. This weekend, however, we're going on a trip. We're heading "Up North" and by that, we mean 200 miles north of Grand Rapids in the lower peninsula, and then maybe up to the top of the upper peninsula, as well. Our hotel is in St. Ignace, which is the first town over the bridge. But these pictures are taken in northern lower Michigan--about 300 miles north of flyoverland. This weekend we are going on a "color tour" (visiting pretty areas to see the colorful autumn foliage--in Michigan, the trick is to get your color tour taken late enough in October that the leaves have turned, but are still on the trees, but before snow flies). The above picture was taken at one of those scenic drive-offs on US 131 near Boyne City. The place is called "Dead Man's Hill."

Here I am with that baby of ours who is a blessing in so many ways that fills my heart with gratitude. I forgot to mention that before we left on our color tour, we had our 12 month appointment with our social worker, which should complete our required adoption paperwork with China.

And lastly, here are Suzanne and Frances, with the City of Petoskey in the background. Suzanne was born in Petoskey, which I think is kind of cool. Petoskey is what we trolls (those who live south of the Mackinac Bridge) call "way up North" because it is at the northern tip of the lower peninsula, which is above the 45th parallel. Petoskey has a unique personality, and it also has a bit of an exotic reputation because Madonna, Tom Seleck and Tim Allen all have summer homes in Petoskey. Petoskey gets respect because its winters are extreme, even by west Michigan standards. Petoskey also gets respect, because its popular and its resorty and rather expensive. Anyway, in this picture, you can also see the steeple of the church where Suzanne was baptized, and where her parents were married, in the background behind her.

Its been a while...

2009-09-18T15:27:00.000-04:00

Life has gotten busy again, and its been a while since I've written anything. September 2 was the anniversary of the day we first saw pictures of Frances, and when we look at her now, and see how much she has changed from the little girl we brought home in November, its just amazing. She talks quite a bit...Daa-doe is "hello," I am called "Nay-Nah" and Suzanne is Mama. The cats are called "ba-ba." She says "jeesh" for cheese, and "muh" for milk and "woof" for dog. The car is "car-car" which is sometimes hard to distinguish from "cracker" and she has a little pewter Jesus doll she likes, and sometimes she'll as for "Jesus" and I'll think she wants cheese. The quilted blanket she was given by the orphanage has gotten the nickname "soothy" and she says "soojie" quite clearly whenever she wants it. She loves books, especially Goodnight Moon, Curious George and Clifford, and she also loves sitting in my lap, watching music videos on you tube. She especially loves the Chinese re-make of Ozone's Numa Numa song. She's still very attached to it, and its always a challenge to get it away and wash it. She seems to be picking up about five new words a week, and she's getting better with people's names, and recognizing people in pictures.
In terms of her health, she seems to be doing fairly well. We did get a referral to a local pediatric ENT specialist, and she is now on Flonase, which is a relief for us because we were afraid they would want to put tubes in her ears. She seems to have some seasonal allergies emerging, as fall settles in, though at the moment the weather is mild. All in all, we've had a very mild summer, and I hope that mild weather trend will continue into the winter, because our last two winters have been record-breaking.
I have been looking into having this blog made into a book... do any of the other bloggers have experiences with the various services available for that? I want to preserve this for her, but for privacy's sake, I'm not sure I want all this available online.
Anyway, thats the news. We hope you're all doing well.

Above, we have a nice picture of Franny I took one afternoon last month at Lookout Park in Grand Rapids. Below, you'll see three pictures taken on the pier at Ferrysburg. I had gone with the intention of walking the pier at Grand Haven, but it was closed due to strong winds, so I drove to Ferrysburg, and we walked down that pier instead.

Beautiful Michigan: Muskegon

2009-08-07T23:27:00.001-04:00

Yesterday Franny got up a bit earlier than usual, so she got up from her nap a bit earlier than usual as well, and since it was a beautiful day, I decided to drive out to Muskegon to see the Lighthouses. Access to this beach in Muskegon is free, as its owned by the city, and there is a very long pier and two lighthouses. It was a gorgeous day, and the water was so blue. It makes me love Michigan. Though you can probably tell that I already love Michigan. Anyway, here are the pics I took from our beautiful afternoon. In the past, Frances has been a bit hesitant about venturing out at the beach, but this time she was happy to run along the pier, and if anything, she was a bit mad when I insisted on carrying her when there were no ropes or fences to keep her from going over the edge.

There is a very long pier which is bordered by rocks

This is the OTHER Lighthouse, seen from across Muskegon Lake. I didn't drive out far enough to get to this lighthouse.

Frances was mesmerized, watching the waves wash against the rocks.

This is what we get when we tell Frances to smile for a picture. It is cute in small doses.

Here she is looking very cute and girly...

Someone on the pier snapped this picture for us.

And I just thought this would make a good picture.

Weekend at the cottage...

2009-08-03T19:02:00.001-04:00

Here are some pics I took during the weekend, when we were at our cottage.

These two pictures are a bit experimental, I but kind of like them. It was Saturday afternoon and we were leaving for mass. Though I'm not Roman Catholic, I sort of like being able to go to church on Saturday afternoons, because it leaves us every excuse, then, to sleep in on Sunday mornings. Anyway, the picture is a bit unorthodox, but so what? Its not always easy to get all three of us in a picture, but if there is a mirror, there is always a way to do it.

Don't let the stained glass fool you, these pictures were actually taken in what used to be a bar. After mass, we went to have dinner at Sam's Joint, which is where these pictures were taken. Sam's Joint Restaurant is in what used to be known as the Aero Tavern, and the place is full of stained glass windows and lots of taxidermied animals. It has a lot of local flavor. All of the Sam's Joints have a lot of local flavor. Anyway, I liked the stained glass window and thought it would make a good picture, but Frances was feeling insecure, and thus, she wasn't best pleased to be sat down on a table and have her daddy walk away from her. Oh well.

At the zoo...

2009-07-31T16:09:00.001-04:00

I'll close July's blogging with some more pictures from our daddy-daughter summer field trips. Yesterday we went to the zoo.

Franny especially loved looking down on the apes. I am not sure if it was the height that fascinated her, or the animals.

A visit with Poppy

2009-07-31T03:58:00.001-04:00

My father--known to Frances as "Poppy"--came to visit the cottage for a few days. I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but its interesting for me to see my father, who has always been a force to be reckoned with, acting like a grandfather. It amazes me how enamored with him Frances is. I remember seeing my own grandparents with eyes very different from the ones my mother saw them with, and now I guess that is a continuation of that phenomenon.

Poppy read to Frances from a farm book she's very fond of right now.

And he brought with him a child's rocking chair from 1902, which originally belonged to my grandmother Frances. He used it as a child, I used it as a child, and now Frances will also, undoubtedly get a lot of use out of it. Four generations--I guess my great grandparents would be pleased to know they got their money's worth out of that chair.

He also brought an antique child's sled--I remember my parents attaching our dog to the sled and letting him pull me around... we don't have a dog, but I am sure the sled will be put to use. It can be pushed. And there will certainly be snow. Maybe we'll take her out on the frozen lake this winter.

This is Frances with her father and Grandfather. We took this from the upper deck on the cottage, which looks out over the canal.

Beautiful Michigan: The Grand River and the Fish Ladder

2009-07-21T22:17:00.003-04:00

Every now and then I have this teacher urge come over me and I start answering questions nobody asked. Here is one such example. Grand Rapids is called Grand Rapids because it is situated on the Grand River... hence the Rapids of the Grand. Here ends the lecture.
Anyway, summer continues, and so do our father-daughter field trips. Today I took Frances to the Fish Ladder Park in Grand Rapids, so she could see the fish. The Fish Ladder is a piece of functional art to aide migrating fish, and it enables them to circumvent the man-made rapids in the Grand River. It is quite a sight, seeing these large catfish swimming up and down the steps of the fish ladder. The City made it into a park, and there are nice views of the Grand River, and of the city on the east banks of the river to be seen from the park. Since Frances is big on vocabulary acquisition right now, I thought she would enjoy seeing the fish and the ducks and the river.

This picture turned out wonderfully... I love the expression on her face.

This is what I call an environmental oddity... a fallen tree has produced an island of detritus, consisting of sticks, soda bottles, and a propane tank that somehow found its way into the river, and nature takes up residence on this makeshift island... count the ducks.

Here is a picture of the fallen tree, over the actual "Grand Rapids" which are man made. You can see the historical Sixth Street Bridge in the background.

Here is a shot of Franny, sitting on a ledge with the river and bridge in the background.

Here are some of the large catfish we saw in the water at the fish ladder. It was really quite a sight, watching these fat fish trying to swim up the fish ladder, against the current. Some of the fish were really quite large.

And here is Franny with the Fish Ladder in the background, looking very much like a pouty fashion model...

Beautiful Michigan: Kollen Park, Lake Macatawa

2009-07-21T20:32:00.001-04:00

Here are some pictures from a recent visit to Kollen Park in Holland. Kollen Park is on what is now called Lake Macatawa, though my mother called it Black Lake. Anyway, we went to Kollen Park so Frances could meet her Great Great Aunt Ethel. The two of them got along swimmingly.

Here is her ladyship on the playground equipment.

Here she is, charming Aunt Ethel...

I thought this was a good shot.

And here is the view of Lake Macatawa as seen from one of the Benches at Kollen Park.

Downtown Grand Rapids: The Ford Museum

2009-07-17T16:00:00.006-04:00

Since last Tuesday would have been the late President Ford's 96th Birthday, they offered free admission at the Ford Museum, and I decided Franny and I might as well go. (During my summer as a stay-at-home Dad, she has three half-days in daycare a week... Mon-Weds-Fri... and Tues-Thurs are our days for fun outings)
I hadn't been to the Ford museum since Ford died. I have a special fondness for Gerald Ford... when he was a congressman, my grandfather occasionally served as his body guard. Ford was married at the church we now attend, where Frances was baptized. (Ford's mother purportedly dropped dead of a heart attack during a service at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in downtown Grand Rapids, which is where Suzanne and I were married--of course, that was long before our time) There was a funeral for Gerald Ford at our church, attended by Jimmy Carter, the Ford family, Peter Secchia and many other big names. The night before Ford was buried, his coffin was lying in state at the Ford Museum, and Suzanne and I stood on line for seven hours with almost 100,000 other people and we filed past the coffin right at the stroke of midnight, and were able to watch the changing of the guard. I hadn't been to the museum since then--I think that was 2006. He died right after Christmas, and his funeral was in the dead of winter, though Grand Rapids was blessed with very mild weather that week, and there was no snow.
I've been called a sentimental fool--but I can even get sentimental about downtown Grand Rapids if I have half a chance. When I first came to Grand Rapids, I lived in the dorms at Aquinas College for two years, but then got an apartment downtown, on College Avenue, where I lived until we bought our house...I was in that apartment for a total of six years. Suzanne had an apartment on Lyon Street, just a few blocks from me. I had a variety of jobs, ranging from security guard to substitute teacher, before I got my first real job, teaching 7th grade in a rural farm town in central Michigan. After we got married, we bought our house on the East side of town, and we switched churches, but as I mentioned before, Suzanne and I were married in 2001 at St. Marks, a gorgeous, old neo-gothic church which has been in downtown Grand Rapids for over 150 years, and was at one time the Cathedral Church for the Diocese of West Michigan (until the late Bishop Bennison built that hideous monstrosity of modern architecture on I-94 in Portage which they had to sell to the Pentecostals a few years back because the Diocese was on the verge of bankruptcy)
Anyway, I will spare you more of my going down memory lane. Even though I drive through downtown Grand Rapids almost every day (Suzanne works at the Children's Hospital) I rarely get out of my car and do anything downtown. So visiting the Ford Museum was fun...

...although it made me feel a bit old. Look at this picture for a minute--Ford was president when I was born. He died before Frances was born. I started feeling old when I realized that, to Frances, Gerald Ford would be what F.D.R. was to me--the old dead white Episcopalian who was president way back when my father was born...

Here is Frances, inspecting the Oval Office exhibit--no doubt planning how she'll redecorate it after she's elected.

Here I am, doing one of those self-portraits in a mirror that I think are so cool.

Here she is, having a run by the fountain. Note the red, white and blue flowers.

I think that this has to be one of the best pictures I've taken in ages... just look at THAT BABY.

Here is a shot of downtown Grand Rapids, as reflected from the glass wall of the Ford Museum.

This is where Ford is buried. Note that Frances had gotten her hands on my camera for a second, and left a greasy fingerprint on the lens (she had been eating a sugar cookie) which I wasn't aware of until I got home and started looking at the pictures...hence the smudge in the lower right corner.

And here can you see Frances doing her new favorite thing--pushing her own stroller. She always strongly prefers the cheap plastic stroller that Suzanne and Wilda bought at one of the shops in Guangzhou to any of the others we have, and since its lightweight, we go along with it. Nobody has anything like it here--its got Chinese writing all over it. You can also see the greasy finger smudge in the lower right corner.

Cute as a Bug's Ear

2009-07-17T15:49:00.000-04:00

Here are two pictures I just couldn't resist taking of her ladyship last Saturday when I was at the cottage. The above shot shows Frances looking like the Imperial Emperess she no doubt was in a previous life, and the shot below shows her toothy "on command" smile, which looks more like she's trying to pass a kidney stone...

Beautiful Michigan--More from Big Red at Holland State Park

2009-07-09T10:31:00.006-04:00

THAT BABY... surprised me and went down at 10:15 for a nap. Wonders never cease. More recently, it has seemed that her morning nap was going to become a thing of the past. So, since the child is asleep, I have some time to blog.
Sunday the fifth was a nice relaxing day--we went to church, went to lunch, went to visit my Aunt and cousin in Holland, and then, since we were there, and since I have a state park sticker this year, we decided to go and swing by the state park for some sunshine and beach. This time Franny was much more willing to venture out and enjoy herself, and she enjoied running up and down the pier--at least the part of the pier that has railings... And we took some more pictures of the lighthouse, known to the locals at "Big Red." I was never exactly a local in Holland, but I don't suppose it matters now. Anyway, Holland has two big beaches, each a mile from the other... one we always called "Ottawa Beach" which is the State Park, which you need to pay $6 or have a sticker to get into. The other beach is called "Tunnel Park" because it has a big tunnel leading to the beach, and Tunnel Park used to be free, but now, since Ottawa County took it over, it also charges visitors. I am only going on about this because of the terminology... Tunnel Park is now an Ottawa County Park, and we used to call what is now the state park, Ottawa Beach. It could get confusing, as they are smack dab next to each other. Anyway, I digress. Here are the pictures we took, posted in no particular order.

The child loves feeling a breeze... it always makes her smile

I am not pleased to see the bald spot forming on the top of my head, but as I am 34 now, and quickly approaching (if I'm not there already) middle age, I resolve to face this new and unavoidable challenge head-on, and not start doing a comb-over or anything else to try to re-capture my lost youth. Some things improve with age, and I hope I am such an entity...

Look at Franny in this one--she looks like she's having a religious experience. I hope this isn't a sign that she's going to grow up to be a charismatic...

Chillin with Mama

Suzanne just made this one her profile pic on Facebook...

Must have been an airplane flying over head...

I especially like this picture...

Fourth of July: Fireworks and Bug Bites

2009-07-04T10:58:00.002-04:00

We are spending most of the weekend at our cottage, though I have to be back in GR tomorrow morning because I'm ushering at church. (I get my internet access at the Gun Lake Grind, a fabulous little coffee house thats walking distance from the cottage--even in the country, we have our trappings of the city...) To celebrate Frances's first fourth of July as an American (I hesitate to call her an American Citizen just yet, as we are waiting for her N600 to be processed... we mailed the form, with the $425 and the stack of birth certificates, marriage certificate and adoption decree) to Detroit a few monhts back, but it seems as if the current processing times on that document run about 18 months... does this mean we can't get a passport until the N600 is processed? Anyone have any ideas? (Adoptive Parents: Did any of you obtain a passport for your child before getting the Citizenship Certificate? If yes, did both parents travel to China, or just one? Its all so unclear--the only thing that is clear is that the Detroit Field Office is slower than Christmas!) Anyway, it was Frances's first July 4th in America, and we will call her an "American" for the moment. We went to watch the fireworks being set off over the lake from the island in the State Park.

We went out a bit earlier than we should have, and the bugs just love devouring Frances, the poor thing. So as we sat on the ground waiting for the fireworks to start, in addition to long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, we tried to protect Frances from the bugs by putting a hooded blanket on her little head, but she didn't tolerate that for long. Before long, she was free, as she wants to be, and the mosquitos were having a free-for-all, feasting on her soft flesh.

She liked waving the American flags.

You can see quite clearly here, the bug bites that began popping up on the back of her neck. We didn't see these nearly as clearly, because it was dark at night, and the flash on my camera is what illuminated these nasty little bug bites in shocking detail... note, they don't look nearly so nasty in the light of day...

And here is the poor child's feasted-on forehead. Does anyone know if its okay to treat babies with Deet? We've been hesitant to dose her with chemicals, but at the same time, I think she gives off so much heat that she's irresistable to the bugs. Poor thing. Again, these bites don't look nearly as bad in the light of day.

I also need to point out, that her ladyship was not terribly impressed by the fireworks. She watched at first, but was far more interested in climbing on Daddy than she was in wathing the show. My only explanation for her complacency is that perhaps spending her first nine months in China--where they invented fireworks, where most fireworks are manufactured--during the time when the Olympics were taking place, maybe she got to see a lot of fireworks so she's nonplussed by them? I don't know. She got bored, and I thought the show was quite good, especially with the economy being what it is.

During the fireworks, I started trying to take the perfect picture of the fireworks going off, with the lake reflecting the colors back... I eventually gave up and put the camera away and decided to just enjoy the fireworks.

Beautiful Michigan: Holland and "Big Red"

2009-07-02T15:52:00.004-04:00

We also were able to stop in Holland State Park and visit the Holland Harbor Lighthouse, otherwise known as "Big Red."

The first thing I realized was that Frances was having nothing to do with beach sand. She didn't mind walking on the pavement, but she wanted nothing to do with moving water, or with sand. So I let her run up and down the pier, which she enjoied quite a bit.

It took a minute or two for her to warm up to things, but she quickly enjoied running up and down the pier.

She stops all the time and asks "Whats this?" Apparently, she'd never seen a life preserver...

Look at that smile, and at those beautiful teeth...

Since she would have nothing to do with walking on beach sand, I put her on this picnic table, and she got a big kick out of it. This way, I was able to get some pictures of her with the lighthouse in the background.

And if you turn the other way, Lake Michigan is in the background...

And this is where I ran out of film and took her home.

Beautiful Michigan: Wedgwood Park in Grandville

2009-07-02T15:42:00.001-04:00

Last month, I took Frances on a photo shoot to one of these gorgeous local parks we have around here--Wedgwood Park in Grandville. It is a photographer's dream, because it has babbling brooks and stones and ducks and looks just like the sort of thing they put on backdrops used in photo studios. The park is tucked away off Wilson Avenue, next to the Middle School.

Here is Frances, checking out all the ducks. I tried to get her to feed them, but every time I handed her piece of hot dog bun, she ate it herself, instead of feeding it to the ducks.

I just thought this would make an interesting picture, so I took it.

We will just have to label this one the "uncooperative subject." I had the perfect natural backdrop for the picture, only Frances was not in the mood to be set down, poor child.

She enjoied the playground equipment more than she did the photo shoot...

Beautiful Michigan--Father's Day

2009-06-25T10:04:00.005-04:00

I get terribly sentimental about Ottawa County. I am probably a distant cousin to half of it. My mother's family has been in Ottawa County her great great grandmother Cornelia van der Bie emigrated there from the Netherlands in the late 1850's. I only have a couple of elderly aunts and some distant cousins who live there now, but when I was a child, I spent most of the time I spent in Michigan, in Ottawa County. My grandparents lived there, my aunts and uncles lived there, my cousins lived there. And I still like to visit Ottawa County.
This year, for Father's Day, we went to Grand Haven, which is the county seat. Grand Haven has a big state park, and the pier and the lighthouse. I wanted Frances to experience Lake Michigan.
Truth be told, she wasn't best pleased to experience Lake Michigan. She didn't want to walk on the sand, she didn't want to walk in the surf, so we carried her. She was rather partial to being carried by her Mommy. Of course, that's what Daddy gets, for going to Florida for eight days without Frances.

This is a shot of the beach at the state park in Grand Haven, with a view of the lighthouse and pier. I broke down and bought that new C-41 process black and white film, so the pictures could be processed in a one hour lab. There is a marked difference in the image quality, but I can't say I don't like the result.

Frances perked up when we carried her on our shoulders up and down the pier. There was no scary beach sand to walk on, so once she felt comfortable, she was willing to get down and explore things a bit.

She really enjoied watching all the boats go by. Watching the boats go by in Grand Haven put me in a very sentimental mood. My grandparents used to like taking me to the pier at Grand Haven, to watch the boats go by, when I was a child and underfoot. Ahh, the memories.

Franny took great pleasure in climbing on top of that round thing sticking up out of the concrete. She did it again and again, and smiled each time, like it was a grand accomplishment.

We would talk about the different boats, as they went by. "There's one with a red top... oh, look, they have their doggie with them. What does a doggie say? Woof! Woof! That's right, smart girl." You know how conversations with toddlers go.

We watched people swimming on the beach, and Frances wanted no part of that. We even watched cocky teenagers jumping off the pier the end of the pier, into the waves. Thats an unwise thing to do, and it brought back fond memories of my dear Grandfather... he was a retired police officer, and if he saw teenagers doing those running leaps off the pier, he would often remark "there's a fool who wants his name on a death certificate--I can't tell you how many times I've had to hose the brains of some stupid kid off that pier after the waves sent him crashing into it..." Frances was a bit startled when she saw teenagers running and doing canonballs off the pier, and so I whispered "there's a fool who wants his name on a death certificate" but, enlightened and sophisticated parent that I am, I spared her the more gory details that might fascinate a young boy, but might give a young lady nightmares. Ahh, memories...

Florida

2009-06-21T23:44:00.011-04:00

Lastly, I just got back from a week in Florida. I went without Suzanne and Frances, because I was there to work. Every year, a company flies nearly one thousand teachers from all over the world to a location so they can gather and grade a test involving student writing. Because of confidentiality laws, I can't go into any more detail than that about the test. It is my fourth year doing this sort of work, and I always have a great time meeting other teachers.

Here I am, assessing writing. My assessment is that they stopped teaching penmanship in many schools...

I met a grotesque old woman (her words, not mine) from Georgia.

As well as two interesting teachers from Utah.

And here I am with Noreen from California, and Miriam from Texas, who have, in past readings, been my partners in crime. When we did this last year, we went and got henna tattoos on the last day of the reading.

I took this picture of palm trees-- as I live in Michigan, palm trees are terribly exotic and fascinating, though they are all over the place down there.

Here is a shot of the pier by the hotel. One year, I paid $1 to walk on the pier and realized it was a bunch of fishermen.

I took this picture of the beach at dawn one morning.

Here is a shot of my friend Noreen reading her poetry at a reading they held one night.

I took this picture from the window of my hotel room, on the 11th floor of the hotel. My camera had sat in air conditioning all day, and when I opened the window and stuck my camera out into the hot, humid air, the glass lens of the camera immediately began to fog up.

Here you can see what the beach looked like through my foggy camera lense. I kind of like the effect.

The company we worked for gave us money to go out to dinner one night, and I had a friend who had driven herself to the reading, so we decided to take a road trip to the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse in her convertible. The three of us climbed to the top of that lighthouse.

And here I am at the top. The view was worth climbing 21o steps.

Allegedly, we were supposed to be able to see Cape Canaveral from the top of that lighthouse, but I didn't know what to look for.

After doing all that climbing, we were hungry, so we went and had dinner at "Lighthouse Landing" which was, surprise, surprise, right across the street from the lighthouse.

I don't know what gave me the impression that Florida was tacky...

This was our view from our table, at Lighthouse Landing.

Lastly, here is a self-portrait that I took in one of the gift shops. It shows my little Olympus XA2, which I just love shooting. Some call it the "poor man's Leica"-- and while I don't know as I would go that far, I think its a fabulous camera because its compact, sturdy, it has fantastic optics, and its amazingly quiet. It was one of the first idiot-proof point and shoot cameras, and its worth every penny of the $13 I spent for it on ebay. I also love it because it has this electric eye (it runs on two button batteries) which automatically sets the correct apeture and exposure for the lighting, and because of this, you almost never need to use a flash, and as you can see, I carry it around without a flash most of the time. It takes grainy, contrasty, color-saturated pictures, which I love. Also, its a fast camera--it has a range focussing system which works well, and it works fast--much faster than most digital cameras.
I also must add, that I enjoyed the reading. I enjoyed meeting colleagues from all over, and I enjoyed being near the ocean and getting some sunshine to take back to Michigan. But I missed Suzanne, and I missed Frances, and after eight days away from them, I was very ready to get home.
This post has probably gotten longer than you care to read. Most of you come here to see pictures of Frances, not of me. But I felt like sharing. More pictures of Frances follow, so keep reading.

Virginia, more pics...

2009-06-21T22:19:00.006-04:00

And, here are some more pictures taken while we were in Virginia...it took a while to get these back from the photo place, because they were done on old-school black and white film, and it seems that nobody processes that anymore.

I like this picture, it reminds me why I persist in using film and shooting pictures with old cameras which nobody uses anymore. I took this while Frances was eating lunch in a restaurant near the children's museum in Lynchburg. I didn't use a flash, and relied on natural light, and it came out wonderfully.

Here are Suzanne's brother Andrew, and his 4 y.o. son, ACE, who live in Virginia Beach, but came to see us while we were in Lynchburg.

Here is Frances with her cousin ACE. I shouldn't have turned on the flash--it bleached out the picture, and you can tell the difference between this picture, and the ones taken in natural light.

Here she sits on a turn-of-the-century child's rocking chair which originally belonged to her namesake--my grandmother Frances-- who was born in 1901. I used the flash here because I am sure it would have been too dark, otherwise.

This is a picture of my father, being silly. We are on the rickety old elevator in his building.

Here is Frances, exploring her grandfather's antique store...

Looking around, checking out the merchandise--somehow, management didn't complain about her handling the breakables...

just look at that baby, acting like she own's the place!

She had fun running around...

She likes climbing onto furniture and sitting on it like she's a grown-up.

Ohio

2009-06-21T22:01:00.003-04:00

Late last month, on our way down to Virginia, we also stopped in Ohio to visit Suzanne's sister Catherine, and her children Rita and Dean, who live in one of the northern suburbs of Cincinatti. I didn't realize it at the time, but I shot all of the pictures I took on traditional black and white film (the kind that you can't process in one-hour labs) which I wasn't able to get back from the lab until recently. I love traditional black and white, but it takes a month of Sundays to get it back from the lab.

Here is Frances, on the playground equipment, with her Auntie Catherine and cousin Dean.

And here she is, having a grand time with cousin Rita.

And here she is, with Mom.

And again, with Mom.

This is one of the more interesting pictures I took--Frances was looking through the slats on a bridge over the pond, and I dangled the camera in front of her and clicked the shutter, and this is the result. That odd marking on top of her head is a cobweb.

And here is Frances exploring Auntie Catherine's backyard.

Mother's Day Pics

2009-06-21T21:26:00.003-04:00

I'm so behind on posting... first off, here are some more pics from Mother's Day. Because Mother's Day often falls on Suzanne's mother's birthday, we went to Lansing and Frances spent her first Mother's Day with her mother and grandparents. We had a lovely time walking around Michigan State University's campus. Because I'm a flim loyalist, and these were shot on traditional-process black and white film, it took a month of Sundays to get them back and scanned onto disc.
Oh--a humorous Frances story-- we went to pick out a present for Suzanne, and Frances picked out a glossy, bright orange wallet. I put it back and tried to direct her to something less obnoxious and more Suzanne, but Frances stuck to her guns, and now Suzanne resolutely uses a flashy, glossy, bright orange wallet.

Here are Suzanne's parents at lunch at the Qdoba on Mother's Day.

Here are Frances and her Grandmother, opening presents.

And here is Frances with her mother and Grandmother. They are sitting by the fountain in front of the library, and the MSU clock tower is in the background.

Here is Frances, sitting on a bench. She has taken to climbing up on benches.

And here I am with my favorite baby on my shoulders, in front of the tower.

Celebrating Adoption Photshoot

2009-06-04T00:10:00.004-04:00

Another mother from our travel group clued us in to the wonderful program called Celebrating Adoption. The purpose of the program is to celebrate adoptions, and what is so wonderful about it is that its free for adoptive families. Within one year of the finalization of the adoption, the family is entitled to one free sitting with any photographer in the program. These aren't like photographers who sit you in front of a background and snap a picture--these are real photographers who do custom shoots. And its free for the adoptive families. And all the adoptive families know, NOTHING is free in the adoption world. (That is another post for another time--am I the only one who gets profoundly irritated at having to pay for a birth certificate? That just infuriated me, every time we had to do a homestudy update for USCIS, and we did three, to have to purchase another one of my own birth certificates, as if they changed every six months....grr! to add insult to injury, they also charge for death certificates, but I don't have one of those just yet)
Anyway, from several different area photographers who participate in the program, we wound up choosing the fabulous Amy Carroll Photography, and we had our first session at her studio in mid-May. We are going to have another session with her in a few weeks, this one will be outdoors somewhere, likely in one of the city parks. The results were fabulous. I was thrilled. You can see the proofs by clicking here. Then choose Frances's gallery, and then our case-sensitive password is Wood0509
The images are just amazing... so very retro, and so very US. Its a wonderful program, and we're just thrilled to have these wonderful images to commemorate our adoption adventure. To the other adoptive families who follow this blog--check out Celebrating Adoption's website, and find a photographer near you. Participating photographers are available all over the country--

A quick trip down south

2009-05-27T16:21:00.005-04:00

We are just back from a quick road trip down south. I was just thinking, Frances has been here for six months, and she is pretty well-traveled. In her short life, in addition to China and Toky0, Frances has been in nine different states: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. That being said, the trip was stressful. When we arrived at my father's in Lynchburg, Frances was very congested and before long, she was running a fever. After a worrisome night, we brought her to the ER and found out she had another ear infection as well as a nasty bout of pneumonia. She was given shots and an antibiotic, and began feeling better quite quickly.
We went to a birthday party for my stepmother, Wilda.

And we visited with Suzanne's brother Andrew and his son ACE, who is in the Navy and stationed in Virginia Beach

And we went to the Children's Museum in Raleigh, NC and visited with one of the families from Suzanne's travel group, and Frances was able to be reunited with one of her China friends. Here are Frances and Liddie, having lunch in the sandwich shop near the museum.

Here they are, driving already...

Here we all are. Frances was about one second away from a meltdown in this picture.

And here are the girls, saying goodbye for now...

We also visited Suzanne's sister and her children in Cincinatti, but I don't have any pictures from Cincinatti yet, because I shot them on B&W film, which I need to get together and mail in for processing.

A few more pics...

2009-05-17T23:48:00.006-04:00

I have some more pictures to post--some are from our pre-Frances days. I had a camera sitting at the cottage with film in it from last summer. These pictures were taken on slide film, and then processed like print film, which creates these funky, super saturated colors. This first picture is of Suzanne and Frances, at our cottage. Frances loves standing on the seawall and watching the fishes.
The picture below has been cropped a bit, but it was taken last summer. I am holding my niece Morgan, from Wisconsin. We were at my sister-in-law's cottage in Pentwater.

On Tuesday we're leaving on a week's vacation. We will be heading down to Virginia, to see my father and Wilda. We will also be stopping in Cincinatti to see Suzanne's other sister and her family.

Polaroids and Mother's Day

2009-05-10T22:44:00.003-04:00

Remember Polaroids?
With digital cameras taking the wait out of photography, those Polaroid instant pictures seem decidedly retro. I am trying to remember where I bought six packs of Polaroid film--what possessed me to buy six packs of Polaroid film, but I can't. I vaguely remember that it seemed like a good idea at the time--I think they were on some sort of discount, at a store that was going out of business. Maybe I had a coupon or a gift certificate. Could it have been Whitmark's? Montgomery Ward? I used to work at a Montgomery Ward, back in the late nineties when I was student teaching. Maybe that was it. I don't know. I'm frugal, so it must have been a fantastic deal, one that appeared to be something I couldn't afford to pass up. Anyway, I bought six packs of Polaroid film, and set them aside for an important occasion. But because Polaroid film was so expensive, no occasion seemed momentous enough to warrant breaking out the Polaroid camera. So they sat, and sat, and sat. And the film expired in 2005. (I was thinking--2005, that was paperchase, that was when our niece Morgan was born, that was when we thought the adoption was going to take a year.... our original LID was Jan 4, 2006, and then they moved our dossier into the February stack when we got out of review. I remember being just despondent over that--a total mess--but now I think that, had we stayed with the Jan 4 LID, we would have some other child, and I can't imagine not having Frances, or having some other Frances, and so now, I guess I am glad things worked out the way they did.) Anyway, I forgot I had the film at all, until I found it last weekend. So I decided that, if I was going to use the stuff, I better get going. Shooting film that has been expired for four years is sort of fun, because there is a recklessness to it. The film is expired, whether the shot would turn out at all was a big unknown. Anyway, I shot one of the six packages over the past week, and I think they came out fairly well. The colors are a little off, but hey, the film is 4 years expired, so I can't complain. It was kind of fun .
Anyway, since it was Mother's Day, which is also Suzanne's mother's birthday, we went to Lansing and visited with her parents. Because MSU was bursting with springtime, and because we've all had enough of being cooped up with winter, we decided to enjoy being outdoors as much as possible, and went to some of the more picturesque places on campus and shot a bunch of pictures. Only some of them were polaroids--the rest were on film. I will get the film developed at some point and post the pictures here... it will be a while for some of them. You may wonder why I am shooting pictures on film--and here is my reason. I want to buy a digital SLR. Suzanne, however, has asked that, before I go and buy yet another camera, would I please use up the boxes and boxes of film we have cluttering up our basement freezer. It seems like a reasonable request--I have, over the years, bought a ton of Agfa film, which they don't make anymore. I love Agfa film for its color saturation--and so Im going to use it up. I also have a couple dozen rolls of good black and white film in that freezer, as well as medium format film, from when I was using a Yashica TLR, or, more recently, a Holga. So I am going to be shooting pictures on film this summer... trying to use up what I've got, before I move on to something new.
Anyway, regarding Mother's Day--my own mother died seven years ago, and since her death, and especially since the adoption process began, Mother's Day was a holiday we pretended didn't exist. So this year, it was fun to resurrect Mother's Day.
Anyway, on to the polaroids...

Above, you can see her ladyship, sound asleep, sucking on her blanket, as is her usual custom.

And here is her ladyship in the backyard, a few days ago.

Here is her ladyship, touring a bed of tulips near my office at MSU.

Here is her ladyship, with her mother, looking up at an airplane flying overhead.

And here I am, holding her ladyship.

Beautiful Michigan 1

2009-05-07T00:52:00.002-04:00

Yesterday at MSU I gave and graded my last final exam, and am now free for most of the summer (I go to Florida in mid-June for a week, to score AP Exams, but otherwise, I'm free...) Its an exhilarating feeling. I have decided that I want to devote some time to developing a sense of place. I am enthusiastic about Michigan... and want to spend the summer photographing Frances at some of our most beautiful places. Michigan is a unique state, in that we are made up of two peninsulas, and in that we are surrounded by 20% of the fresh water on the surface of the planet. We have more shoreline than the state of California, and in addition to our great lakes, we also have many, many inland lakes, rivers and streams. Michigan is one of the most beautiful states in the union (when its not buried in snow) and its also one of the best kept secrets. And so, this summer, it is my intention to do a photo series, with Frances as the star, entitled "Beautiful Michigan." Of course, I announce this and then we will find out that Frances's asthma is aggravated by something outdoors, and that we need to keep her inside if she's to survive... so if that happens, all bets are off.
Anyway, these pictures were shot quite close to home, at a park on the east side of town. The river in the background is the Thornapple River. I'm not posting them in any particular order.

The picture above was the last picture on the roll of film (yes, I shoot roll film--I have a freezer downstairs, full of expired Agfa film, and I am not buying a digital SLR until I've used up all the roll film I've bought)which is obvious because of the black lines showing where the processor cut the roll of film. Anyway, it shows something resembling Frances's naturally occuring smile.

Here's another one of her good, natural smile.

As opposed to her fake smile, shown in the above shot, which she puts on whenever I take her picture. At first, I thought this was super cute, but now I try to encourage her natural expressions.

Here she is, telling me something.

She wasn't thrilled to be standing on that rock, so she looks a bit anxious in this one. The Thornapple River is in the background... and the river was really high this time. We've had a ton of rain. There is a dock on the river available for fishing, but the water level was so high that most of the dock was submerged.

I think this one is especially cute, though.

Roid Rage

2009-04-26T22:47:00.003-04:00

OK, I am exaggerating, just a bit. But the truth is, poor Frances has not been feeling well lately, and she's getting crabby. The photograph above was taken this afternoon on a mall trip with her Grandma. Frances is throwing a fit because she drank all the milk in her sippy cup. The fact is, that Frances has a lot to be crabby about. She has a molar coming in, she has an ear infection, she is congested, and her breathing problems are flaring up again, which means she has to have treatments that aren't pleasant because she has to be held down and have a mask pressed to her face. If you were 14 months old, you wouldn't like having a mask pushed against your face either, even if it did look like a fishy.
Anyway, the weekend was very rainy, and we didn't get out much, aside from the doctor's office. We did, though, make it to Lansing to see Suzanne's sister Catherine, so Frances could meet her cousins Rita and Dean for the first time. Somehow, we didn't get any pictures with Rita and Dean, but I did take some pictures of Frances at the mall with her Grandmother.

Here she is, making that cheesy, toothy grin she makes whenever she sees a camera.

In the above photograph, Frances is teething on Grandma's walker.

And here she is, checking out something.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T21:17:00.003-04:00

We had an awful week, but a great Easter. The whole household was down with an awful bug for the first part of the week. We think it was a norovirus--whatever it was, it closed down the whole infant room at Frances' daycare. Frances was the first to get sick with it, but a few hours later, Suzanne was sick with it, and a few hours after Suzanne was sick, I fell prey to it. We all missed several days of work and daycare this week, but seem to be on the mend.
Easter was nice. We went to church, and I ushered. They had an Easter Egg hunt afterwards, and Frances enjoyed that. Though she's just 14 months old, we think she often channels her inner-two year old, because she has started having tantrums. Sometimes, usually when she's overstimulated or tired, if she wants something and doesn't get it immediately, she goes limp and throws a screaming fit. Maybe the oatmeal is too hot for her to eat, maybe I'm filling the sippy cup too slowly, maybe she can't get at something she wants... whatever it is... she just shuts down. She'll roll around on the floor and bang her head, if she can. Its sort of comical to watch. When that happens, we just step back and let her scream and thrash around until she wears herself down. Eventually she'll stop and want a hug.
After the Easter Egg Hunt, we went over to have Easter dinner with our friends Dave and Kay and their daughter Beth. Dave is a colleague of mine at GV, and has been a friend for a long time. Dave and Kay are captivated by Frances. She had a lot of fun playing in a shelf they emptied out of things they didn't want Frances touching.

In the church basement, before the Easter Egg hunt. Frances now has this toothy, cheesy smile she flashes whenever she sees a camera...it looks like something between a smile and a grimace.

They put the Easter Eggs for the children under five years old in the columbarium area at church. Here is Frances, with her egg bucket, picking up eggs.

Here she is, flashing that toothy grin.

And here she is with her mother, in the midst of a tantrum over something.

Here she is with her godmother Carol, after Easter mass.

I always laugh at how Frances makes toys out of the most interesting things. Dave and Kay emptied out this shelf (Dave usually keeps musical instruments there) because they thought the instruments might be tempting for Frances... and she had the most fun playing in the empty shelves.

All worn out. She is asleep here, though at first glance it might look like there needs to be a chalk outline around her.

Not much new news

2009-04-05T17:13:00.002-04:00

I know, its been a while since I've posted an update. I haven't taken a picture in two weeks--but we're still here. The weather is getting better (though they are predicting snow tonight, ugh!) but its been kind of gloomy at the same time. I'll take gloomy in the 50s over subzero and sunny--I think. Frances is teething again, she has eight teeth and seems to be working on a ninth. We have been down at the cottage the past two weekends, but the house needs to be cleaned up, and the yard is a disaster, and we've just had things to deal with, so there hasn't been a lot of time for fun. I am trying to get paperwork filed to make Frances a US citizen (because I didn't travel with Suzanne, we need to file the N600) and it seems more complicated than I can finagle. I am waiting to hear from USCIS, but I think Suzanne, Frances and I will need to appear in person in Detroit armed with birth and marriage certificates for Frances and ourselves, as well as a bunch of other paperwork, and a large certified check. Getting to Detroit on a weekday during daytime hours involves Suzanne taking a day off from work, so if it turns out we do need to go to Detroit, then it won't happen until school gets out in mid-May.
Anyway, thats the news. Once I get some new pictures, I will post them. I suspect we will take some on Easter--Frances has the perfect Easter dress. Its a shame that she won't be wearing 18month clothes longer--we've gotten so many adorable outfits in the 18 month size... I don't know if she'll get to wear them all before she outgrows them.

Wisconsin

2009-03-17T13:13:00.008-04:00

Here we are in Kenosha, which is dubbed by Wikipedia "The Gateway to Wisconsin." We're standing next to a Chicago Bear, hung if effigy:

Here is a picture I took in a mirror, I take lots of pictures in mirrors:

And here we are in front of the Cheese Castle in Kenosha, where they sell cheese and cheese curd in a wide variety of flavors like peppercorn ranch, dill and garlic and even chocolate. Who knew you could do so much with cheese?

Frances, after learning that the brat she'd just eaten was boiled in beer. (j/k)

Who put a cow in a gift shop?

We love Wisconsin! And we say that not just because Suzanne's sister lives there with her husband and their two adorable children. How can anybody not love a state where you can buy fresh cheese curds in a gas station mini-mart? How can anybody not love a state where they have whole restaurants devoted exclusively to serving brats?
We also like Wisconsin because our annual sojourn from Michigan to Wisconsin also allows us access to many wonderful outlet shops, especially those located at Michigan City, Indiana; Gurney Mills, Illinois; and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I think I buy most of my clothes for the year at the outlets in Oshkosh. The Izod outlet was going out of business, so I had an especially fun time there where everything was 60% off already-reduced prices. Then there was Eddie Bauer, Jansport, Wilson's Leather, which was having liquidation sales, where I was able to pick up an all black wool pea coat for a song... so, like I said, we look forward to our annual sojourn to Wisconsin. And this time, we also were able to reap the benefits of the Children's Place and Oshkosh B'gosh outlets, shopping for you-know-who.
Anyway, that being said, it was a special trip because Frances was able to celebrate her cousin Morgan's fourth birthday with her, at a Princess Party held at the YMCA in Appleton. Frances didn't have enough hair for a tiara, but she got an excuse to wear a poufy polka dot dress...
Here is a picture of Morgan opening her birthday presents:

And here is Mo, all dressed up in her princess gear:

Here is Morgan, surveying her pink birthday cake:

Here is a picture of Frances and her cousin Morgan, in matching dresses:

Here is Morgan with Auntie Suzanne, and Frances with Auntie Char:

A weekend trip

2009-03-09T11:24:00.005-04:00

Last year I had a whole week off for spring break, and I was able to go to New York and visit people and get much-needed a change of scenery. This year I was not so lucky. GVSU had spring break last week, and MSU has spring break this week, so this year I get two half-breaks, and because of that, any real travel was out of the question.
We did, however, take some time and head up north to visit Suzanne's grandparents in Indian River, Michigan. Its three hours north of Grand Rapids, above the 45th parallel, and I think we last visited Suzanne's grandparents in 2002 (it was in that short stretch of time after our wedding and before my mother died and before we bought our house--we had just put in an offer on a house, which was the one we didn't get... we loved that house...) Anyway, so we brought Frances up to Indian River to meet her great grandparents. It went well.
Now, Michigan is divided into two peninsulas, and I think Suzanne and I both can count on one hand, the nights we've spent in the upper Peninsula. We're what the "Yoopers" (people from the Upper Peninsula or "U.P") call "Trolls" (because we live below the bridge, like trolls). So we decided to drive over the Mackinac Bridge and spend the night in St. Ignace. One thing different about northern Michigan is that the weather there is much colder than it is in central Michigan, where we live. Suzanne's grandparents' yard was still covered in multiple feet of snow. Lake Michigan and Lake Huron were completely frozen over. When we drove up into the upper peninsula, (which is even colder than northern lower Michigan) and were looking for a hotel, we were surprised to see how many hotels, shops and restaurants had just closed down for the winter--their parking lots were not plowed, they were banked and buried with snow. The same can be said for roads... if the roads are accessed mainly by tourists and summer people, they don't bother plowing them. Snow mobiles access the area, but cars don't. We wound up staying in the Days Inn in St. Ignace, and got a room which would have, during the peak tourist season, been prime because it was on the beach with gorgeous views of Lake Huron. But in early March, it was frozen and snow covered, and we had a balcony looking out over frozen desolation.
We also had a misadventure. Troll tourist that I am, I just had to take a picture of us with the big Mackinac Bridge in the background, so I drove into this plowed area which was designated as a tourist photo spot. Fine and good. Anyway...it was only plowed to a certain extent, and I don't like having to drive in reverse for any length of time, so I thought I would drive down the Boulevard, which borders Lake Michigan and accesses summer cottages, to find a place where I could turn around. I think I assumed there would be a plowed driveway where I could turn around. The Boulevard, however, was not plowed, though snow mobilers had been on it and packed it down to some extent. It LOOKED like I could handle the road, but as I drove down it, I quickly realized that I had no business driving my car over that terrain. I attempted to turn around in the road, and that was where I made my mistake. I got stuck. Very stuck. And I didn't have a snow shovel with me, because there is no snow left in my part of Michigan. So I had to call a tow truck (thank God I had my cellphone with me, and thank God Sprint has towers up there) and wait for them to tow us out. Frances slept through the whole thing--even the tow, which was effected by a yooper in a rusted out mid nineties Jeep Cherokee, who had a chain and a toe strap and a trailer hitch, and who unceremoniously dragged us out of the snow and charged us $125 for the service because it was a Sunday. We were soon on our way, and we made it back to Indian River in time to have lunch with the grandparents, and then we drove back down to Grand Rapids through a humdinger of a snow storm, which turned to rain about 30 miles north of Grand Rapids, but which, Grandma reported in her email to me this morning, dumped another 12 inches of snow on the folks up north. Ugh.
These days, Suzanne and I spend a lot of time thinking about expatriating to teach English someplace that doesn't have winter...or at least not Michigan winter.

Here is Frances, patiently sitting in the chair in the hotel room on Sunday morning, watching us pack our stuff back up, probably wondering why we're not paying attention to her.

Here I am with Frances in the hotel room, with our view of frozen, snow-covered Lake Huron in the background.

Here is one of the pictures of us with the Mackinac Bridge in the distance. We are on the west side of the bridge, with frozen, snow-covered Lake Michigan in the distance behind us. Frances is moments away from going down from her nap, and this was taken moments before we got stuck on the Boulevard, because I mistook snow-mobile tracks for tire tracks and thought I could drive on the road....

And this is my poor car, stuck on Boulevard. Frances was sound asleep in her car seat, and slept through the whole thing.

Here is Suzanne and Frances with Grandpa and Grandma.

And last but not least, Suzanne's Grandfather, in front of the snow piles in front of his house, no doubt wondering what got into Suzanne when she married this silly husband who photographs old piles of snow...

At dinner with the family...

2009-03-01T22:24:00.004-05:00

We had a nice dinner at Brann's with my relatives--my cousin Michelle and her husband Matt came in from Ohio, and it was great being able to see them, along with everyone else. I decided to test the limits of my new digital camera, and learned that using the ISO 1600 setting with no flash makes the pictures very grainy. I was warned about this, but I've now learned my lesson. Anyway, I used Picassa to tweak the pictures, and using the "filtered black and white" setting and applying a red filter minimized the grain in the pictures.

Some recent pictures

2009-02-21T19:38:00.004-05:00

Frances with her Grandpa Gary, blowing bubbles

and with her Grandma Sue

me taking a self portrait

Frances with her mother

She's up and around and walking like a pro

and playing with her toys at Aunt Mae's

I love this picture

And look at her, walking around like a pro

Daddy thinks this is the best picture he's taken in a while

And here she is, reading with her Aunt Mae

Breathing

2009-02-14T17:13:00.005-05:00

I went and bought a new digital camera earlier this week, and snapped these pictures of Frances sitting on my lap--this was a few hours after the breathing treatments started working, and she was just up from a nap:

This past Thursday night was very hard. Frances came home from daycare with a slight wheeze. We had noticed it happening before--but it always went away within a few minutes. Frances has been teething with a vengeance, so her nose was running constantly and she was congested...so we dismissed the wheezing as a product of the congestion from teething.

As the night progressed, things got bad. Things got scary. Frances began struggling to breathe. None of us slept much all night---we kept her in bed between us, and she woke up frequently. Her breaths were loud and raspy. On Friday morning, I called the doctor's office the minute they opened, and they were able to see us at 9. By that time, Frances was exhausted, and every muscle in her body was struggling to breathe. It was scary for me--my mother died of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis--which she had assumed was a resurgence of her childhood asthma, and for years, treated it with over the counter inhalers. She died just three months after being diagnosed, when she'd had the disease for four years. Seeing Frances' lungs acting up like that put me in a place I didn't want to be.

The doctor said Frances was in the "red" zone in terms of struggling for breath--which means she couldn't walk or talk or do anything other than focus on breathing and coughing. Right in the office, they gave her a breathing treatment with a nebulizer, and a dose of an oral sterroid. They sent us home with a nebulizer and mask, and prescriptions for a fast-acting inhaled sterroid, a slow-acting inhaled sterroid, an oral sterroid, and a nasty, expensive, hard-to-find antibiotic. What they think happened is that the ear infection Frances had/has was not fixed by the amoxicillin, and that it caused a secondary infection in her lungs, which caused "Reactive Pulmonary Disease." At this stage of the game, they are not diagnosing her with asthma, though she is on some heavy asthma meds. We give her nebulizer treatments every 4-6 hours, in addition to inhaled and oral sterroids and the antibiotic. And her breathing is better. Her sleeping is much better, and today, her appetite came back. We were in Costco getting diapers and formula, and Suzanne took a pierogi sample and Frances seemed very interested in it, and ate it quite willingly. She did the same with some sort of Chicken Ravioli. Frances wasn't at all interested in the chocolate cake, but she has been eating much better, and is acting like her old self.

The nebulizer treatments aren't easy. Frances freaks out. She doesn't understand why she has to wear the mask and inhale the vapors and why her mother and I have to hold her down. She screams bloody murder, and kicks and struggles and has fits. By the end of the treatments, she is exhausted and sweaty. She is strong as an ox. But we do it because they are helping her breathing.
Seeing the nebulizer was very upsetting for me. The mask and the tubing looked to me like the apparatus of death--My mother and I didn't get along all that well, and while I had heard from different people that she was very ill, all she would admit to me was that she was having a bit of trouble breathing, and that she occaisonally had to use oxygen. When she died, quite suddenly from my perspective, Suzanne and I arrived in her apartment and found it full of breathing apparatus, including that same clear tubing. The thought of using that sort of equipment on Frances, who is so small and young--it was traumatic. My mind started going in places it didn't need to. Its a fortunate thing that Suzanne has, for the last ten years, worked for the Pediatric Pulmonary Specialists at the Children's Hospital, so she has a better perspective and has easy access to the best Pediatric Pulmonologists on this side of the state, because she works for them. Its an odd thing, but it never occured to us to actually call any of the doctors Suzanne works for during that night--we still thought it had to be related to teething, and that once Frances went to sleep, it would go away. We know better now.

Frances does not necessarily have asthma--right now, they are writing this off as a nasty middle ear infection that didn't respond fully to amoxicillin (I pointed out that the fever went away within 24 hours of starting the amoxicillin, but apparently that doesn't mean anything...and Frances was pulling at her ears, but again, that can be attributed to teething, which she is actively doing) and then caused a secondary infection of the lungs. In a month, they will reevaluate, and it is very possible we will be able to take that dratted nebulizer machine and donate it to some charity.

While the whole experience has been a bit overwhelming, I am tremendously grateful that Frances is responding well to the treatments.

This and that...

2009-02-07T22:57:00.004-05:00

This weekend has been interesting in its ups and downs. Frances got sent home from daycare with a 101.4 temp on Thursday, and was feverish all day Friday (when she wasn't on Motrin and acting as if she was on top of the world) and today we finally broke down and brought her in to the doctor. We weren't going to--from what I hear these days, doctors don't give out antibiotics anymore, there is some new push to not use antibiotics, and to let the crud just run its course. A friend was telling me her son was home sick for 11 days before the doc would give him anything, so we were resolved to tough out whatever she had, and figured why on Earth would we want to pay a doctor to tell us to tough it out? Anyway, Suzanne became concerned that Frances had an ear infection when she was walking like a drunk, so we called and got her in, and were utterly surprised when the doc gave her a scrip for antibiotics. We have a sturdy little stoic--we had no idea she was as sick as she was...and when she has Motrin, she acts perfectly fine--you wouldn't know she was sick. I had no idea she was sick when I brought her to daycare on Thursday, and she had a fever of 101.4. It never occurred to me, to check her temp.
Anyway, today has been a wonderful day in terms of weather--it was above freezing. I think it got into the low forties. They call that a warm-up! It was wonderful. We were down at the cottage this afternoon, and we decided to put Frances in her hoodie and in a windbreaker, and walked her around the block in her stroller. We hadn't done that since the say after Suzanne and Frances came back from China. I remember taking a jetlagged wife and a groggy baby out, and it was November 15, which is the opening day of deer hunting season, and hearing the rifles going off in the distance as we walked around England Point.
Luckily, I found the second roll of film I shot during Frances' birthday weekend, so I am going to post a few more pictures...

Look who's walking like a pro!

Look at how nicely her hair is coming in...

Here are two more pictures of Frances with her grandparents, at the botannical gardens.

This is why I still shoot film

2009-02-03T22:42:00.003-05:00

I still shoot pictures on film, because I think the digital cameras I have access to don't capture the color, mood and detail of regular film. Look at these pictures and see what I mean.
With my digital camera, it always takes the picture a second after I hit the button, and with a baby, often the whole expression changes in that split second.

There is a depth of field present in pictures shot on film that I could only capture with a digital SLR, which is out of my price range right now.
The tone and shadowing of this picture would have been completely different if taken with a digital camera, which would likely have drastically altered the mood of the picture.
And no, I'm not going bald, though it sure looks like I am in this picture. It was just a bad hair day, really, it was...

Birthdays and Busted Lips

2009-02-02T09:16:00.004-05:00

Today is Frances' first birthday. Its also a very busy day for her parents, so we spent the weekend celebrating. Her grandparents from Virginia came up for a weekend visit, and she got to see her Nai-Nai (grandmother) Wilda for the first time since they came back from China. It was a good visit. On Friday we went to the CCCGR's Chinese New Year party at a restaurant, and were able to watch performances and dancing by children from the "Chinese Village" school. There were many Chinese adoptees at the party, and it was great fun.
We had a small party for Frances at the cottage on Saturday. Here are pictures of Frances' first encounter with birthday cake. Truth be told, she didn't much care for it. The cake was a family endeavour--Nai Nai baked and frosted it, her Grandfather stirred (I didn't realize we didn't have a mixer down at the cottage) the concoction, Daddy wrote "Happy Birthday Frances" with the food coloring pens, and Mom put the sprinkles on it. Daddy doesn't do sugar and flour, so he didn't eat the cake, but the assembled company attested to the cake's adequacy.

Blogger seems to upload these pictures in reverse order... oh well. I don't have the time to go back and re-0rder them chronologically.
Anyway... the weekend went pretty well, though there was an unfortunate accident. Frances is becoming quite good at walking, though she walks a bit like Frankenstein. The problem came when she fell during one of her walking endeavours, and in her descent, her mouth hit the leg of the dining room table, and her little teeth busted open her lower lip, so she had a bloody lip... which was a mini-calamity. She wanted to be held, but she didn't care for a cold wet washcloth being pushed against her sore mouth, so she voiced some significant indignation. Twenty minutes after the fall, the situation had de-escalated to the level of a mere fat lip. This morning it was barely noticeable (which is a good thing--F's daycare has a photographer coming to take pictures of the kids, and since its her birthday, we figured we would dress F in one of her Chinese silks and make the most of the usually awful getcha gimmick studio portraits.) I felt awful at the time, but feel slightly ammused at Frances' fat lip now. You see, on Thursday I was changing her diaper, and our precious baby kicked her daddy in the face (squeaky shoes can hurt) and gave me a bloody fat lip. There's nothing dainty about those little legs of hers... no sir. And at least, as she gets these bumps and bruises from running into things, she's learning about limits and edges and how the world works.

A lazy winter weekend at the cottage...

2009-01-26T09:47:00.002-05:00

We don't always get down to the cottage in the winter, but this weekend we had to get down there, to get things ready for next weekend, when we will have visitors for Frances' first birthday.
Suzanne and Frances were exhausted on Friday night, and fell asleep on the couch.

It has been so cold since we got her here, that we realized we'd only taken her outdoors for the sake of being outdoors, once, and that was on the afternoon after Suzanne arrived back home from China. (This is not to say she hasn't left the house, she has technically been outdoors, its just been a matter of moving Frances from the house to the car to the mall or whatever) So on Saturday, I put Frances in her carrier and we took her outdoors, just for the sake of being outdoors. It is bloody cold here. Lots of snow. We have had 89 inches of snow this season, all since Frances arrived in mid-November. A normal winter brings our part of Michigan an average of 72 inches of snow for the whole season, and we're still in January, so I don't doubt that we will break 100 inches of snow for the year before alls said and done. Anyway, these are pictures around the cottage.
You can see here that the snow is up to the bottom of the Obama sign I left out by the dock.
This is walking on the private road leading off the main road to our cottage. We don't have it plowed regularly.
Here we are in front of the cottage.

some videos...

2009-01-18T23:45:00.002-05:00

I brought Flip with me to the baptism and had intended on taking more videos than I did, but by the time the baptism part of the mass came around, I had a squirmy baby in my arms that made me re-prioritize. Anyway, I took two videos the morning of Frances' baptism at church. One is of the procession, and the other is of the recession. In the first video, of the procession (like most Episcopalians, I love a good liturgical procession... let the Evangelical Fundies have their stripped-down, minimalist services, I want pageantry...) Frances, during her last few minutes as a Buddhist, was still awake as the service began, and in this video her godfather, Father Bob from New Jersey, is holding her.

The next time it occured to me to pick up Flip was when they started the closing hymn. By this time, the newly-sacramented baby was sound asleep in her godmother's arms.

Baptism

2009-01-12T10:25:00.003-05:00

Yesterday morning we got up and dressed Frances in one of the silk outfits her mother bought for her in Guangzhou, and the silver bracelet engraved with her Chinese name, which was given to her by the director of her orphanage, and took her to church to be baptized. Here are pictures of the event:

Here is Frances with her godfather, Father Bob, who drove all the way to Michigan from his church in New Jersey, through a nasty snowstorm, just to be with us for the baptism.

They baptized several babies that day, in alphabetical order. Being that we are W's, we were last. It was, of course, nap time, so Frances was very squirmy and didn't much want to be held.

Like I said, she was very squirmy.

I eventually handed her off to her mother.

And her mother handed her off to her godmother Carol, who is a pro at this.

One minute she was a Buddhist, the next, an Episcopalian. Its interesting how so many things in life change in a fleeting moment...

When they finally got to us, Frances was not best pleased to have Fr. Zachariah pouring water on her head. She made a grab for this clam shell thingy, but he, having a small child himself, was on to her and got the deed done.

"There now, its over, was it that bad? Ooh, see the pretty candle? No, you don't get to hold the pretty candle..."

Here we are with a sleeping, newly-baptized Frances and her godparents.

And here we are with all the assembled company, including a sleeping Frances, Suzanne and I, Frances's godparents, two uncles, one auntie, one grandmother and two cousins. A grandfather was also present, but he seemed to be off in search of coffee anytime anyone took pictures.

She got a very brief nap after the baptism, but then she was crabby afterwards, and not very photogenic. She finally fell asleep in the car, on the way to the party. Suzanne sat in the car with her for a half hour, while she slept, just so she could get in one decent nap, she was so overstimulated.

We had a party later in the afternoon, and here is a picture of the obligatory sheet cake. I was too busy talking to people to take many pictures at the party, where Frances had a good time showing off the pretty pink silk outfit that her Nay-Nay in Virginia sent for Christmas, as well as her newly discovered walking ability to her guests. I think my cousin took some, so I'll have to have a word with her.

I did have time to get one last shot of us with Father Bob before he ventured back out into this extreme Michigan winter we seem to be having this year. This pink silk outfit Frances is wearing was a Christmas gift from her Nay-Nay in Virginia who understandably didn't want to venture out into the frozen abyss that is Michigan at this time of year.