bad haircut hills

Since Maple was born, I think Sean and I have been on three dates. The first was in November or December of last year, when we went to a musical. The second was in Pittsburgh, and we toured my old stomping grounds while my parents entertained the baby. And the third was today. It was a gorgeous day, and we went for a motorcycle ride and left Maple with Hillary and Garret and the rest of their clan.

We started out on I-5, heading south towards Oregon. Our destination was the Iron Creek Campground in Gifford Pinchot National Forest, where our friends Wynnae and Jacob were finishing up a weekend of camping with their (cooler) friends. Once I got over leaving Maple behind, and the potential thoughts of leaving her parentless when we inevitably got run over by a semi, it was quite a lot of fun.

The new bike runs really well. Even though it's "just" a 650, it is a great bike and seems as hardy and strong as its owner. The skys were cloudless, the temperature was fair, and all the hills had bad haircuts, as is always the case in the northwest.

We traveled east on Rt. 12, past Mossy Creek and Morton, and turned south at Randle on Forest Road 25, which was gorgeous and green and smelled dank and lovely. We arrived at the campground and met our friends around 11am, and then took a walk down either the Cispus River or Iron Creek. I talked at length about my very annoying allergy attack, which soon annoyed everyone else by proxy. We played in the water with Bigsby and wished Phoenix was there too. I saw some babies and missed Maple.

After our walk, Wynnae and Jacob packed up their stuff, and we headed for home. Our drive back was slower and more scenic. We were driving north on Rt 7 between Morton and Elbe when I saw a man in the distance with a fancy camera and tripod. He was facing east, but from our approach angle I couldn't see his subject. We came out from behind a stand of trees and Mt. Rainier appeared like a monolith on our right. So that's what it was!

We got home and drove over to the Zych's house, to have dinner and pick up Maple. She had been happy all day, and I remembered my superstition about our pseudo-attachment parenting -- that it makes her feel safe and sure when we're not around, because we always take care of her when we are around. We don't let her cry herself to sleep, we don't send her to day care, and we don't stick her in front of Baby Einstein videos to "self-soothe."

I like that we got to have a "date day," but I like even better how we're raising our kid. It's not to say that those who do it differently are doing anything wrong. But so far, I'm proud of our decisions, and they're working for us.