Esther, Elsa and Lainey

I have to tell you a little bit about my friend Esther who watches Josiah for us. She's great! One day I came to pick Josiah up and she looked at me with a dissapointment in her eye and said, "We had some bad milk today" (I've been freezing my breast milk and taking her bags of it to feed him while he's there).

"Oh no!" I said, "What happened?"

"Well, he ate about an ounce of it and then he didn't want anymore. I tested the temperature and it was fine - so I smelled it but there wasn't anything wrong so I tasted it and..."

"Esther you what?!!!!?"

"So I tasted it and it was bad."

"You tasted my breast milk!!?? - I don't even taste my breast milk!!"

Esther I just have to say - YOU ROCK!

Elsa, Josiah, Esther and Lainy (her daughters)

Ice Lake

So yesterday we decided to go hike to Ice Lake with Josiah. This has been our longest outing with him to date and it was great! Gab and I made this a backpacking trip last summer when I was three months pregnant and I call it his first backpacking trip, since, technically he was on board. It was special to go back there with him, now outside the womb.

Here's some pics...
watching Papa get ready

exploring my new carrier

Let's go!

Creek crossing

I told Pete it must be like an elephant ride for Josiah - he didn't like that analogy though - he thought a "gazelle ride" was a more appropriate description :)

Getting sleepy (Papa might be too!)

and gone!

awake again!

Isn't it great that Papa's carrying me up this steep hill :)

we came up from the valley just beyond the meadow

almost there

The last ascent really tuckered him out!

Cresting Ice Lake basin with Chloe leading the way (as usual)

we made it!

Wish you were here? We do.

Me 'n Mom

As you can see we had a wonderful day - Pete and I kept remarking how thankful we were that it didn't rain on us since at this time of year it's standard fare. Josiah was such a trooper - (actually Pete was the Trooper carrying Josiah from 8000 to 12,227 Ft) - he loved every minute of it and I think he only slept for a combined 30 minutes the whole day - boy was he pooped when we got home!

New ways of having fun

Today Josiah is trying out what it's like to scream at the top of his lungs. He's decided that this is definitely a skill worth honing as it brings such lovely faces to his mother. In order to accomplish the honing of this skill he has been doing it non stop during his awake time (except for a brief trip into my office where the strange faces gave him a case of the shys and he kept his mouth closed - do I need to say, whew).

It is actually very cute and I caught it on camera, along with the cute smile which would follow each bought of screaming.