A couple of weeks ago, Ronin picked up on the sign for “milk.” We had been doing it at her when I nursed for the past few weeks or so and suddenly she just started doing it back. It’s really cute—she milks at me when she wants to nurse and then keeps on milking the entire time she eats. Of course, she now nurses about 50 times a day and when I put her down for naps or bedtime, she milks at me in desperation, “DON’T MAKE ME GO TO BED! HELP!” She does it so much that I’ve taken to pretending I didn’t see her at certain times, like if she’s just eaten and is feeling rambunctious and bitey. I’m sure I’m a terrible mother for it and she’ll require years of therapy.

She likes to roll her tongue now (like a Spanish R roll) and spends a great deal of her waking hours cruising around sounding like a motorboat. She is also all over the apartment lately—did I mention she is officially crawling? She is—and when I “chase” her, she shrieks with laughter and flees, checking behind her to see if I’m still coming to get her. Pretty hilarious.

She likes to turn the pages when you read books to her too; this makes reading to Ronin at bedtime a whole new scene. Before, reading was a near-constant struggle to keep her from tearing out the pages and turning them into soggy nubs. Now she’s somewhat interested in what’s next, often before you are done with the current page.

She’s been extra crabby lately again (we had, what, three or four days of pure happy normal baby) and is getting her left top tooth. I can see it as it’s just breaking the surface. She’s been biting everything she can get near. Today I was doing something in the bathroom sink and Ronin was doodling around on the bath mat and the next thing I know, I turn around and she has crawled over to the toilet and is BITING IT! ACK!!!

It should have happened months ago but finally tonight, Ronin is in her new crib, in her own “room.” Of course, by new, I mean a used Craigslist crib, and by own “room” I mean the hall/entry way of our apartment, which we have cleared of crap (i.e., stacked it in the hall outside the apartment) and placed said crib, a couple of butterflies I picked up off the ground in Central America and framed, and soon-to-be little dressers in which to store all her wee little shirts (IkEA, but we haven’t yet assembled them because all that crap I mentioned presses on the brain in such a way…).

And she is pretty much hating it. She sacked right out at 6:30 because that’s when she normally crashes but was up by 7, fussing and sitting up. Soon she was all out crying and we tried to get her to settle back down but within five minutes, she was hysterical. Anyway, it took until 9 to get her to fall asleep for more than 5 minutes in a row and we’re going on 20 minutes now and holding our breath and typing really quietly out here in the living room. And drinking (nigori).

Anyway, about the crib. We found one that wasn’t HORRIBLE on Craigslist and I emailed the person who was selling it and fine it was mine but then she emailed back saying she had to clean out her garage to get to the crib. Then when she cleaned the garage, she couldn’t find the hardware. So she was going to drop it by my place because the hardware was certainly just in the kitchen drawer and she’d find it in the morning. Then she had to go by Home Depot to get more hardware because she couldn’t find the old stuff (she knew what it took) but was still going to drop it by. Then a couple of weeks went by. Then we bought a different one that was really cheap because it was really ugly. BUT, painted, it would be really cute. A project! OH YEAH!

Well, anyone who has ever painted anything ever even once in their lives (this includes us) would have been able to tell us that not only would those spokes be a bitch to sand, but it would be a bitch times 54. Because that’s how many hard-to-sand-not-to-mention-paint-GAH spokes there were.

It took us over a month to get it done.

But it looks awesome.

[Looks almost like a “real” nursery.]

And Ronin so far hates it.

Sigh.

[Ronin in a spider mask made for a five year old.]

I got my yearly fix taken care of and subsequently Ronin had her first IKEA experience the other day. That store is a whole new experience with a child because that one section at the end I never paid attention to, that in fact I raced through at top speed to avoid all the screaming kids going apeshit over all the stuff to touch and throw and strew and trip passers by? That section is GREAT! I found myself wishing Ronin were five years old so that she would be able to play with THIS or, awwww, a fresh little newborn again who could snuggle in THAT. In the end, we got off relatively easy in that, as usual, IKEA was out of everything we wanted.

We spent hours in that store, trying to remember what it was we came for, got Swedish meatballs and mac-n-cheeze and gave Ronin bites of everything, and at last managed to escape one Poang, two Rasts, and a lot of miscellaneous Kalas-Leka-Titta-Prompt-Erslevs richer.

[The best thing we got were these six stacking plastic bowls. Ronin likes to stack them up (and knock them down) and put things in them.]

We got our big chance to see how sailing with a baby would go down in Maine when we met up with our friends Jenni and Cameron on their boat Velella^*. We met them originally in Baja when we were on the Time Machine, then sailed along with them in southern Mexico, meeting up again a year later in the Caribbean. The last time we saw them was actually a year ago in Oregon, when we went chanterelling.

In preparation, we bought Ronin an infant life vest (Pirates of the Caribbean theme!), which she hated the moment we tried it on her. While we went through all of the options in the Boat US store, the clerk poked his head around the corner to be sure we didn’t need help, or rather, to be sure he didn’t need to call Child Services on us for jabbing our poor child with hot pokers, which is what it sounded like we were doing. In any case, it was less than an auspicious start for Sailing With Our Little Monkey.

Jenni and Cameron use kayaks and never had a standard dinghy—a practice which has not only allowed them to save considerable space on their 30-foot sailboat, but made them a magnet for much unsolicited advice: “You’re going to want an inflatable with a motor—mark my words. 15hp at the very least!” Of course, they never needed or wanted a “proper” dinghy and so we took turns kayaking ourselves and the shocking amount of baggage we somehow had out to the boat, which was anchored near the jetty in Rockland. I perched delicately in the forward hatch while Jenni paddled, then Cameron ferried the empty kayak back and Joshua paddled out with Ronin in his lap. She pretty much screamed the whole way (starting the moment he put the life vest on; I doubt she even noticed she was in a boat). By the time Joshua neared the boat, she was sprawled stiffly across his arm and looking totally miserable. I of course ran about the deck snapping a bunch of blurry photos as they approached.

Once aboard, we took the hated life vest off and brought her down below to terrorize the resident kitty. She of course didn’t pay any attention to the cat whatsoever but her mere presence aboard was enough to put the cat totally out.

We left Rockland harbor and headed a little ways south to anchor out at a cluster of small islands—one inhabited by some commune folk, the other uninhabited but with an abandoned granite quarry and possibly some apple trees. Sailing in a monohull is VERY different from our lightweight little trimaran. Everything happens very slowly. At one point I dashed below to hold down the napping Ronin as we rode into a major tugboat wake; I fully expected the motion to launch her clear across the cabin but was amazed to discover that Velella only lolled drunkenly for a few seconds before coming to a dead stop, possibly sailing backwards for a bit, and then slowly continuing on course. Time Machine jerked and leapt at any and all wakes. Large swimmer? Hold on to your cocktail! Tugboat? We generally caught air. Crazy.

Ronin began to teeth in earnest pretty much the moment we set foot aboard and was more or less whiny and inconsolable the remainder of the trip. How wonderful for our friends! “She generally doesn’t just scream like this—well, except when she has to take a nap, or go to bed, or if we take something away from her that she wasn’t supposed to have, or if we try to feed her…” we told them and they nodded politely. We weren’t even sure she was teething really. For all we knew she was constipated, or still pissed about the life vest.

Anchoring was quick and once settled, we were nestled between three beautiful islands with the sun just setting and the sky turning red and drippy. I really miss this part of sailing. Arriving somewhere awesome, getting the sails and all the miscellaneous underway debris put away, and finally getting dinner started, maybe opening a bottle of wine. Decompressing after the sail, being still, relaxing where the wind isn’t pestering you, etc. Of course, our sail to the islands was neither long nor arduous so it wasn’t like we were in desperate need of decompression. But all the same, it was great to relax in the cockpit with our cranky child, sipping wine and basking in the luxury of having dinner made for us. We even coaxed Ronin into eating a few spoonfuls of pureed prunes.

Jenni and Cameron were so sweet and gave us the V-berth, which turned out to be GREAT with the baby. We stuck her in the middle and the V shape gave us plenty of room to lie clear of her flailing limbs. I slept better than I had the entire trip I think. I just had to hold onto her ankle to thwart any upward escape attempts. I highly recommend a V-berth for co-sleeping. Who would have thought?

We kayak-ferried ashore to both the uninhabited island and later to the commune island, which although privately owned, allows visitors to hike around provided they stick to the path (which is marked at every fork with a little sign, “Path.” I of course was on sharp lookout for The Commune Folk but they wisely stayed indoors. Better luck next time.

The uninhabited quarry island had an abandoned mining pit in the middle, filled with opaque orange-brown water. I believe I had my swimsuit on under my clothes, evidently I had something more along the lines of Jamie’s Pond. Ah well. One end of the island had stacks of enormous granite cubes stacked all over the place. It was pretty interesting and I wonder why they never ended up anywhere. We climbed on them and took pictures. On our way back to the kayaks, we found the apples, collected enough to make a pie, and then headed back to the boat.

I guess the boat trip drove home how awkward sailing can be with an infant. One of us would always have to tend to her so we would essentially always be single-handing, there isn’t really any really good place to put her down to just play on her own where we don’t have to worry about her falling or crawling into the engine compartment or something. It’s unlikely we would have an enormous boat where we could pad off one compartment for her to bounce around in. And the life jacket! Ugh. It obviously can and is done—and I even think we could figure out a system that worked for us—but I think it might be more fun to wait until she is old enough to actually enjoy it for herself.

The day we left, I noticed a pucker in Ronin’s gums. She was teething after all! We also learned the lesson of the prunes: it doesn’t take much, particularly if your baby was teething after all. We left Velella with a suspiciously clean spot on her cockpit cushion and Jenny and Cameron secure in their decision to never have children.

^*Velella is for sale. We will miss seeing that blue stripped sail on the horizon.

About three weeks ago, we went to Eugene to raid Joshua’s mom’s apple trees (and her plum tree, and her baby pear tree which yielded four delicious pears, and her rhubarb, and the volunteer basil, and the local blackberry bushes, etc.) and we returned with probably fifty pounds of produce. I washed and froze six quarts of berries, a couple quarts of plum/rhubarb pie filling, and so far, three quarts of apple pie filling. We still probably have 20 pounds to go.

[Deer hanging out under the plum tree.]

We have been making a lot of apple pies and here’s the recipe I’ve been using. I tend to prefer a spice-rich pie.

APPLE PIE

Crust (this makes a full top and bottom crust):
* 2.5 cups flour.
* 1 teaspoon salt.
* 2-3 tablespoons sugar.
* 1/4 teaspoon mace.
* 2 sticks butter.

Cut the butter into the flour mix (quickly), ball into two blobs and wrap them as flattened discs (quick! quick!) and get them into the refrigerator for an hour. Once I was lax on the speed and only refrigerated them for maybe 4 or 5 minutes. I was not in a pie waiting mood. The pie was good but the crust was a little tougher than usual.

Filling:
* Lot of apples. Enough for a pie.
* 1/2 cup sugar–half white, half brown (the recipe I looked at originally said one full cup, which seemed excessive and I made the first pie with maybe 3/4 cup total. It was too sweet and even 1/2 cup is maybe excessive depending upon how tart your apples are).
* 1/4 cup flour
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1/4 teaspoon each allspice, cloves, and mace
* 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
* 3 tablespoons lemon juice

Mix it all together until apples are coated. Some prefer to precook the apples first in order to avoid the gap under the top pie shell or to make the pectin do something to the apple which helps it hold its shape when baking (I read something somewhere once…). Whatev. Doesn’t matter if you do or don’t.

Has it been an hour yet? Get one of the pie crusts out of the fridge! Roll it out and plop it into the bottom of the pie pan, load with the apples and stick back in the fridge. Now roll out the top part of the crust and stick it over the pie. Crimp edges decoratively, cut holes in the top, decorate as usual, brush with milk or egg whites, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, etc. Whatever you do.

Bake in the oven at 400 for 1/2 hour, then turn it down to 350 for an additional 40 minutes. My oven is tweaky–as a matter of fact, I’ve NEVER had an oven that worked properly–and so I have to do a lot of checking toward the end.

[Perhaps a little overdone; I did not precook the filling in this one and had a gap under the crust.]

[More pie! This one possibly a tad underdone but no less tasty.]