Camping in the Jemez

Last weekend we camped overnight in the Jemez Mountains.... or at least we meant to. One of Quinn's co-workers invited his group to stay at his place. I was planning on being a good sport about sleeping in the tent.  The night before Quinn made sure that one of our air mattresses actually held air. I just got my sciatica under control.  I was all set.

setting up the tent

But when we got there our hosts were showing us around the cabins and pointing out all the beds, particularly the king sized bed in the loft upstairs. Then it started to rain.  It was almost two o'clock and Calvin was starting to run around in his pre-nap grouchy frenzy, and I was chasing him with a murderous glint in my eyes (which is a sign that we both need a nap immediately). Quinn got the tent up but the air mattress wasn't quite filled.  I said, "Don't worry, I'll just take a nap upstairs."

Quinn said OK and I pretty much had to put Calvin in a headlock to get him to fall asleep. He wanted to see the tent, run out in the rain, look at the lake and "sit in the car and listen to Here Comes Science." (by They Might be Giants). Once asleep we were out for almost four hours! Then Quinn came in and fell asleep too.

   It was a sleepy afternoon.  The other families arrived and the rain let up.  But as soon as the guys got the charcoal ready for burgers, it started to downpour again, and we all had to huddle underneath a little tent.


My wheels were spinning.  I'm not usually an anti-outdoorsy person, really I'm not.  But I knew that that air mattress wasn't blown up and all of our warm clothes for sleeping in the tent were soaking wet - because we were wearing them. All we had left were regular pajamas, which would be the perfect thing to wear if we were cozied up in king-sized bed upstairs.

On top of that, all week Quinn's mom has been telling me stories about the terrible things that happen to curious little boys when they go camping - like disappear forever into the woods, or get found after they've been mostly eaten by a bear. I couldn't help looking around the camp site and wondering what Calvin would do if he managed to let himself out of the tent without waking us up first. It's like the first few pages of a horror novel.

You get the picture.  Eventually I was able to convince Quinn to come upstairs and thwart his camping dreams. Oops. Oh well, I'm pregnant. 

Why leave home when these guys are right across the street?

This happens a lot... whole herds of deer like to hang out across the street from our house, and sometimes jump through the backyard. 

My first visit to the acupuncturist

This afternoon I let someone stick fifteen needles in my rear-end, put little tufts of Chinese herbal fuzz on the tips and light each one on fire. Now I feel fantastic!  Who knew?

I have had the worst sciatica this pregnancy. When I go to bed, my hips hurt so much that I get stuck, and can't get out of bed.  I hobble like an old lady to the bathroom.  I get an acute nervy zing every time I sit down, and I can barely lift Calvin. 

But after the first visit to the acupuncturist, I don't feel any pain. Hallelujah.

Does this baby make my butt look big?

At the beginning of the year I had kind of a this-or-that resolution.  I wanted to (a) lose twenty pounds or (b) get pregnant. I could have achieved maximum levels of personal smugness by losing twenty pounds and then getting pregnant, but it didn't work out that way (because whenever I decide to get pregnant it happens so fast, as if just thinking the word will result in a child....).

So this time around, even though it's my God-given right and duty to gain weight, I feel super self-conscious about it. Do I look more pregnant that I really am? Am I gaining weight too fast (the answer, according to the skinny bitches at www.babycenter.com, is yes!)? Am I actually carrying twins (I was just explaining to the lady at the dry-cleaner that I am not - I saw only one baby in the ultrasound!)?

I feel a lot better about it all, though, now that I can really feel the baby kicking.  Because I can get a sense of how much space he or she is taking up. The baby, again, according to www.babycenter.com, is 13.5 inches long and a pound and a half! It's grown a lot last month.... but so has my butt.

I'm sure you've heard enough of my whining. Last week I brought my food journal to my midwife, who gave me some useful advice.  She said that every time I sit down to eat, I need to ask myself, "Where's the protein?" The baby's brain is being built, now, out of protein, and I need to supply it. So if I want a piece of cake or a cookie, I can't have it until I've eaten some chicken. And if I eat a muffin, it had better be covered in almond butter.  The baby needs a little protein every 2 hours. So I should think of foods that have a lot of protein, but are still healthy, like hard boiled eggs, cottage cheese and cantaloupe, yogurt and turkey and avocado rolls.

It's a lot like being on a diet, except I eat a heck of a lot more food. Since I started to make a point of doing this, I feel less food obsessed, less munchy. And I've made a point of exercising for 30 minutes every day. Before I was too liberal with what I consider to be be "exercise." Now I'll walk Calvin to preschool, go to the pool and actually do laps, or something.

As long as I know that I'm being as healthy as I can, hopefully I'll be able to keep my self esteem in tact when people talk about the size of the soccer ball under my shirt.

Puye Cliffs

On Sunday we visited the Puye Cliffs, in Santa Clara.
They have one or two hour guided hikes, and if you want to go you have to buy the tickets ($20/person) ahead of time at the Puye Welcome Center, which is part of the Valero gas station on the corner of NM 30 and Santa Clara Canyon Road, on the way to Espanola, NM.

From there it's about a ten minute drive to the trail.

The trail begins at the visitor's center.  This building is the building that the Fred Harvey Company used when they gave tours to people from the East Coast who wanted to see what Indian Life was like in the early 1900's.

The caves we saw in the cliffs were where people stayed in the winter. You can see where they built their fires, because there are little ventilation holes in the walls.  Every winter there is at least three feet of snow at the top of the cliffs, but the sun hit the side of the mountain where the caves are, keeping them snow free.

Our tour guide showed us some little shelves in the cave walls where people stored their pottery full of seeds and food. They plastered over these shelves to protect the stored food from rats, coyotes and other critters.

The trail had pottery shards all over the place, like these. (Don't take them home!) Hikers who see them on the trail like to put them on the rocks on the side, because they feel bad about walking all over ancient works of art. The tour guides, who are all descendants of the original potters, feel differently. First of all, it's not like they can bring these shards to a museum.  They're basically worthless unless you can reconstruct the entire pot. They think that, since everything comes from the earth and everything returns to the earth, it is OK to walk on the shards and let them disintegrate into the dust. That is how their ancestors will be able to rest.

We showed Calvin a piece of pottery, and he said, "It's a rock." Well put, I guess.

Here he is looking at a piece of volcanic tuff.

From the cliffs you can see the dry patch of land where the Cerro Grand Fire burned the Jemez Mountains, and part of Los Alamos. The Santa Clara elders were afraid they would lose their entire  mesa to the fire, and when they came to see the fire they saw that it was so hot that trees were exploding. But, just before it reached the caves the winds changed direction just in time.  They say it was the ancestors protecting the ruins.

Here we go.... Calvin got another chance to show off his ladder climbing skills.

At the top of the ladder was a hand and foot trail that was worn into the rock, and probably also used to collect rain water.

Here's the face we were treated to when we wouldn't let Calvin climb the ladder a second time. What an abused toddler!

Big awesome fountain

This fountain was just a block south of The Bean.  we all felt sorry for the security guards, whose job it was to tell little kids not to run in the water. I mean, who can resist, even after falling on  your butt ten times? 

The Bean

The Bean is a huge reflective blob, a tourist magnet, that our kids loved. 

You know....I wasn't in charge of where we were going, but I want to say how to get there. From Marshall Fields we walked west until we were right next to that new outdoor bandstand - the place President Obama was the night he was elected. 

It was one of those days where you find something fun to do, and they want to keep on doing it for hours nonstop.  So every time we left one activity it was like the world was ending, until we found the next big thing (a "family fun" tent full of hula hoops and blocks).