Monterey, CA

On Saturday we returned from a very exhausting but fun beach vacation in Monterey (and San Francisco and Sacramento).  Thanks to our expert travel agent (my dad) and an expert money-manager (my Grandma) for taking us on this adventure.

Some highlights and photos!

• Eating pizza in our dark hotel room after Ivy went to bed.
• Listening to the San Francisco street musician make up songs on the fly about the Fourth of July.
• Seeing Ivy in her hilarious beach hat and swimsuit.
• Listening to our traditional vacation CD (this time was Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head).
• Seeing Ivy pretend to call people on the phone with random objects (credit cards, remotes, my camera lens cap, a pack of pills...)
• Seeing Sean write down our dinner orders for Papa Chevo's in the beach guest book and then trying to cover it up by turning it into a restaurant review.
• Watching Ivy obsess over every bird.
• Eating Chinese takeout with a baby spoon one night because we had no utensils.
• Playing with Ivy in our bed every morning at 5:30 AM.
• Feeding Ivy her mini avocados every day.
• Driving through strawberry fields.
• Playing Mormon Bridge.
• Busting Bekah for her $140 seafood meal.

Ivy's First Birthday Bash

This post is brought to you by Ivy's first birthday party.

I feel like there are a lot of parents who are strongly against having a birthday party for their baby.  I do not understand these people.  (A) Of course, the baby will not remember this party, but by that stretch of logic, I hope you don't throw a party for your child before they turn about 17.  (B) Why...would you turn down a party of any kind...?  I'm happy to celebrate it being a Wednesday, so why not celebrate surviving a hard year?  The real question is, why am I not having 4 parties?  Anyway, of course I will live and let live, but I think my living will involve more parties.

The Babysitter

After 11 months of being a simultaneous full-time parent and full-time employee, we decided this was not the most sustainable lifestyle and looked at getting a nanny for a few hours per week.  I feel like in most circumstances, this wouldn't be that weird or difficult, but when you're the parent of Ivy G, you have concerns.

Since Ivy doesn't like people in general (unless you're a child and willing to let her pull your hair and claw your eyes), this kind of limits the pool of people who are able and willing to spend time with her.  But!  I figured that this babysitting arrangement could help with Ivy's people probs, and maybe it'd get me some more sanity sleep as well.  Win, win.

After talking with some old neighborhood babysitters about pricing, and noticing how confident they sounded in their ability to manage my child for such little pay, I thought, "Maybe these babysitters could give me some pointers.  Maybe I'm paying for some childcare and some training."  By the way, bless those babysitters' hearts.  I've been in the business world too long, because $5 per hour sounds like pure service.

Anyway, I rounded up some young ladies in the new ward to give this a shot, and I haven't been so nervous in quite some time.  I wasn't nervous about Ivy's well-being.  I was nervous that the babysitter would run away and never come back.

This was pretty much my expectation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dQpFu8uRP0

The first few tries went about as expected, but then today I heard Ivy laughing like a maniac downstairs and I couldn't have smiled bigger.  Things just got a little bit more awesome around here.