Cold Spaghetti

Yesterday was a great day. I don’t really need to say much on this, since others have said so much so well. My concern is mostly that Jefferson’s crimes (although seemingly obvious and taken as fact by most of us here in SE Louisiana) will be highlighted in such a way that it (once again) turns discussion to a debate about whether New Orleans is “worthy” city. The media field-day with New Orleans as a flood-target, hurricane-prone, below-sea-level hive of drunkards and thieves who vote for criminals that take advantage of taxpayers is tiring (and misguided). Jefferson’s crimes help to promote this false image, may have the effect of keeping out good business, and possibly make it more difficult for legitimate organizations to get needed support (insert Abeona’s never-ending 1 1/2 years-and-still-going IRS-process for 501c3 status). The bottom line is that wrong-doing happened and this is upsetting because our city doesn’t need anymore black-eyes. But I digress; I said I wasn’t going to wax on.

What I DO want to do is point out this post by Schroeder. He is officially My New Hero. Schroeder saw a dapperly-dressed Jefferson while shopping at Whole Foods and asked him — for an explanation about the $90,000 in his freezer. I complete agree with him; taxpayers and voters deserve an explanation, particularly if the guy is going to keep asserting his innocence. (The story is part way through the post.) In my view, that alone is a bold act worthy of support for the title of ‘new radio station director‘. It’s worth a read.

At 12 months, Kate can:
— Run. Fast.
— Nod or shake her head to answer “yes” or “no” to questions, with full understanding
— Use the sign for “more” when she wants something… including food, to put on her shoes, to watch a video, to be read a book, or to nurse. She is quite good at being specific.
— Steal her brother’s cup while he’s not looking, run away, and laugh hysterically when he chases her for it.
— Ride a seated scooter-bike (pushing each leg independently, a skill I would not have believed any child her age could physically do until I saw her do it with my own eyes)
— Use (or try to use) a washcloth, hairbrush, toothbrush, and spoon… correctly.
— Climb stairs. Fast.
At 12 months, Kate is having a hard time with:
— Eating.
— Sleeping.

Our first major problem is eating. Although Kate is perfectly happy to sit in a high chair at school and eat everything and anything that comes her way, she will not do so at home. Let me be more clear, it’s more like she ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NOT ON YOUR LIFE WILL NOT NEVER NO WAY NOT IN THIS LIFETIME! sit in her high chair at home. To say she puts up a fight would be like saying that the fraud, corruption, and malice conducted by William Jefferson against the people of Louisiana were simple mistakes: in other words, it would be a gross underestimation. When Kate does not want to do something, she does not do it. And nothing can make her: Not Even Me.

At dinner time last night, as we contemplated an attempt of the high chair show-down, Paul had an idea. He put Kate in a normal, adult chair at the kitchen table. She sat happily for a Full Minute and ate about a half dozen spoonfuls from a spoon in someone else’s hand. We were mystified and delighted: the scale of which Watson and Crick must have felt when they discovered the double helix. Eureka! Kate just wants to sit at the table. The 12-month old who weighs less than some babies do at birth wants to sit at the table like her parents. Right.

We’re on the hunt for a booster seat. Hopefully, this will give us 60 seconds of dinnertime with Kate, which is about 50 seconds more than we usually get.

This sums up all of our challenges with Kate. She wants to do Everything. Right. Now. Eating and sleeping are optional in the face of exploring The World, or at least, Mommy and Daddy’s tupperware cabinet.

Sleep is more tricky. The current method is to (WARNING: sensitive parents, stop reading this right now) lock her up in her carseat so that she can’t move and try to rock her, squirming and fighting, to sleep. The alternative? Watching her turn into a crazy monster, flying around the house like a maniac, attacking random adults who try to pick her up with flailing limbs and unkept nails, running and laughing and destroying until, without warning, she falls dead asleep on her feet. To be fair, the display makes for great entertainment. But it doesn’t stop there: in her sleep, she flings herself around like a rag-doll, slamming into her crib sides, getting all manners of limbs stuck in between the slats. Because she joins me in bed to nurse, a good portion of the night is spent in a one-sided boxing match with tender parts of my body. Realizing how drastic my lack of sleep was getting made me realize how serious her lack of sleep was… so now I use the carseat. Kate must be physically held down and kept still in order to let herself relax enough to sleep. She’s that keyed up.
One of our friends reminded that babies often go through sleep problems when they are about to have a major developmental milestone. (Note: see the list above. What other milestone could this 12-month old have? Reciting verse? Driving? Swimming the English Channel?) So we are stymied with what else to do. Kate seems so in love with exploring the world that she will not stop long enough to take care of herself, tasks which then fall into our laps. Unfortunately, she is not so keen on anyone else taking care of her, either.

We keep saying that we want to have her seen by the pediatrician, although I’m unsure of what to say. There is no pill that can make a child eat. So ultimately, I think that calling the pediatrician is an attempt at seeking medication. I want Ambien for babies. Is that on the market?

Will is our little sponge: he eagerly picks up on our phrases, learns the lyrics to songs, and will playfully parrot on request… or whenever he thinks a recitation might be funny.

Will was VERY excited to bring mementos from his Dad’s Grand Canyon Trip for today’s Show and Tell. Before school, he even drew a picture of the Grand Canyon to add to the collection of photographs, river guide, and floppy hat he had already gathered to share. (Extra plus: he wrote his name on the picture after finishing the drawing — first writing “M” for “Mommy,” then turning the paper around to make it a “W” and finishing it off with “I-L-L” to write his name. Genius, anyone?)

On the way to school, we asked Will what he was going to do at school today, thinking we’d catch a glimpse of how he was going to describe Paul’s trip. Instead, he surprised us by answering: “I’m going to tell Mrs. Emmy, ‘she’s a BRICK… HOOOWSE!'”

Hopefully, Paul will carve some time to post a few pictures and archive some of his memories of the experience in his blog. Until then, the shutterfly site has some selected pictures — (warning: the album starts with two of Kate… we needed to print a picture for school and I forgot to sort them out) — and only has 80 or so of the 3000+ they took. The pictures on the site are ones that I quickly chose to send with Will for show-and-tell on Monday, and as a result, they heavily feature Paul. Once the bulk are up, I’ll post the link.

At risk of leaving spoilers, here are a few of my favorite stories:
— Hiking up to the Granaries (the guides’ “test”) and the view
— Putting life jackets on like diapers to float down the Little Colorado River, which looked like Willy Wonka’s chocolate pool due to a recent flash flood
— Terrifying 40 or so feet of super narrow slick rock against a tumble-to-your-death chasm to get to upper Deer Creek (I think I would bow out of this one… yikes!)
— Rainbow at the waterfall at lower Deer Creek
— Seeing a “sun dog,” a huge rainbow in a circle around the sun. I never even knew there was such a thing!
— Finding out that the “swamper” (assistant to one of the guides… in this case, her husband) was a long-time flyer for FedEx and knows Melanie’s Dad.
— Hearing that Havasu Creek is really as bright blue and lush as the pictures… “it was like Fantasy Island”
— All three jumping off the high point (about 30′) above Pumpkin Springs, together, into the 55 degree water below
— Learning that my Dad did EVERY hike, waterfall jump, and whatever other activity there was to offer (go Dad!)
— Campfire stories and bonding with new and interesting people while floating down the river
— Hearing Paul say, “It was just how you describe being abroad when I’m not there: all I could think was how I wished you were there and how excited I was in thinking about when we could come back to share it all together.”

(spoken matter-of-factly, with nose scrunched up in thoughtful reflection)

“My PapPap loves me. He plays games with me. He tickles me. He makes me laugh. He’s my buddy.”

*TLM = The Little Man. TOM = The Old Man

1. The guys are BACK. Paul and Dad arrived on the red-eye this morning — sandy, dusty, tired, but in great spirits and so enthusiastic about sharing their adventures. We have been soaking up the stories of the sights, their wonderful crew (they lucked out with a great group of amazing people), and impressive guides. More on all of this as they continue to decompress. Fantastic photos!

2. MY NEW CAMERA ARRIVED!!! It is fantastic. It is wonderful to have a camera again!

Day Eight: 222 mile – Lake Mead take out.
They are camped at mile 222 tonight. I know this because they called! Twice! The conversations lasted a bit longer this time, but not much. First conversation was with my Dad, the second was with Paul.
— They visited Pumpkin Spring (no, they didn’t drink the water) but climbed up to a ledge and jumped, all three of them together, into the water below. They can’t wait to see the picture of it.— They wanted to know where the helicopter pad was that we landed on in 2004. [Backstory: one of my Dad’s Naval Academy classmates runs a helicopter company out of Las Vegas. In May of 2004, all seven of us (Mom, Dad, me, Paul, Skip, Emily, and a six-month old Will) flew out to Las Vegas and took an all day tour. We had lunch in the Grand Canyon, flew over Bryce, and then over Zion… including an incredible fly-over of the Narrows and right over Angel’s Landing. It was spectacular.] I’d plotted the helipad the night before and was able to look on Google Earth and figure out the location for them. They’ll pass it tomorrow.
— Tomorrow, they raft to Separation Canyon, then get picked up by speed boats who will fast-track them to Pearce Ferry, where they will get the bus back to Las Vegas. They will meet the speed boats around 9am and then have another 2 or so hours until Pearce Landing.

Paul said that he’d missed the kids, badly, since about Day 3 or 4. I mentioned that Kate had just thrown up and Will had just had an accident… “do you still miss them?” This information didn’t deter his desire to be back here with them, though. Good thing, because I think my Mom and I are hopping on a cruise once we pick up Paul and Dad from the airport.

Last night, our floating fellas camped out beneath the overlook at Toroweap. I know, because at 10:12pm (our time; 8:12 their time) my Dad called and told us so. It was just about the only thing he told us before the satellite connection gave out. That beach in the picture below? We’re pretty sure that is where they camped.If you’ve been to my parents house and seen THE POSTERS, you’ve seen Toroweap. A huge photographic poster of Toroweap overlook hangs among the 7 million or so other National Park posters of all sizes hung in an incredible mosaic style within an inch of each other, filling every inch of wall, all the way up to the peaked, raised ceiling on two sides of the room. How they hung the posters is a marvel so impressive, it sits right up there with the building of the Hoover Dam. Delicate Arch, my Dad’s most favorite monument, holds the crown position at the top. But Toroweap is there, too, and hard to miss. Even in pictures, it’s a striking view.When my parents visited the North Rim (their words: “if you can only go once, skip the South Rim and see the North”) they hiked to Toroweap Point and hung around playing chicken with the canyon edge. (I’ve seen the pictures. They were crazy. One strong gust would have been very unlucky for them on that day.) At some point, they noticed rafts coming down the river and hiked down the side of Toroweap to watch the rafts at Lava Falls. They noticed the camps on the river and watched the leaders pull over the scout the rapids. My Mom says that you could hear Lava Falls from Toroweap, growing louder as they descended. Here is another account:

I looked over an edge and down into a 3,000-foot-deep chasm. I had never seen anything so large or so deep, and in my joy began dancing atop a slab of rock, inches from perdition. It was the happiest brush with death I’ll ever have.

At the overlook there, the Grand Canyon simplifies itself. Instead of the busy look the canyon has upstream, with dozens of tributaries cutting down to the Colorado River, and a tumult of mesas crowding around the inner gorge, here the canyon is a simple cut in the earth with some mesas and buttes back from the edge. The river flows between vertical walls that are twice the height of the Sears Tower in Chicago, and you can look straight down upon it. Depending on the wind and the day, you can hear the river, usually as a distant whisper. The irony of that soft sound isn’t lost on you: The Colorado at this point has Class 5 rapids, the toughest ones rafters can face. They flow over the remnants of a 600-foot-high natural dam created by a volcanic eruption thousands of years before. The dam backed the Colorado up and created a vast lake that lasted for years. But the Colorado eventually tore down the dam, eroding and wedging it apart, and slamming big boulders into it during floods. Yet from a vantage 3,000 feet above it, this ferocious natural force seemed placid and purring.

With nothing to obstruct your view into the inner gorge, Toroweap is probably the best place in the national park to get a sense of how big the Grand Canyon is. Further east at South or North Rim, you can sense its vastness in a more panoramic manner. The canyon sprawls before you, impressing with its horizontal size, but it never quite gives you an adequate sense of its vertical scale. At Toroweap, the drop is so deep and dramatic that you finally “get it.” There are bigger places on earth than Toroweap – the glaciers of Alaska come to mind, as well as the enormous mass of Mt. McKinley – but none can give a stronger impression of sheer immensity.

My Mom’s take is similar, although in her words, the sound of Lava Falls is a roar: “and I mean, hear the ROAR.” Last night, I imagine that Dad, Paul, and Skip fell asleep to that sound.

So, their day’s itinerary: “Day 7: 178-222 mile. Lava falls, last night.”This is a geologic explanation of Lava Falls:

Prospect Canyon is of particular interest. It has been filled several times with lava flows and is only just starting to erode a new canyon down to the river. Also, these lava flows sit right on the fault line, and each time the fault moves, it shatters some of the old lava. The watershed for the canyon extends some 20 miles further south, which means a large amount of water can come down the canyon during a flash flood. The combination of large amounts of water, shattered rock, and a steep drop to the bottom of the Grand Canyon allows large volumes of debris to pile up where it meets the Colorado River. The result is Lava Falls Rapid.

Most of the Prospect Canyon debris fan was deposited in a huge debris flow about 3,000 years ago. This river blockage is responsible for Lava Falls Rapid and also backed up the Colorado River for at least 20 miles. River gradient is still relatively low for 20 miles upstream.

Prior to 1939 it was debatable whether Lava Falls or Hance Rapid was the “baddest” on the river. Then another debris flow (estimated at 35,000 cu. ft. per sec.) down Prospect added to the debris fan and settled the issue. In 1966 a major debris flow down Crystal Creek created Crystal Rapid and once again there is a “baddest” debate. Prospect Canyon had another debris flow on March 6, 1995 that constricted Lava Falls Rapid again, but not enough to settle the issue. As to which rapid will become the worst – stay tuned. It might happen just as you start a future raft trip.

I have never rafted in white water so I really don’t have a strong sense of the experience. I do however, have a hefty amount of respect for what could happen, and enough fear to keep me in line. To me, all the pictures and stories just make it sound like a seriously good time. Reading this — riding with the same company Dad-n-Sons are with! — helped.

Saturday: Lakeside Mall for errands. Realized that we really don’t go to the Mall very often when Will asked what “MALL” meant. After the mall, we took Mom to late lunch at Marina Grill as a belated Mom’s Day treat. Then we took the kids to the Amusement area at City Park, where a parent got up in Will’s face (with no cause), causing an attendant to make him go to the back of the line, and me to morph into Momma Bear. Rather than cause a scene, I took Will away (okay… I caused a little scene) and followed up with management. The attendant apologized and we got several tickets back as compensation.

Sunday: The kids and I went to the Zoo for a playdate with Ana and Elliot. In that beautiful way of New Orleans, we ran into about half of Abeona House and hung out with Gabby and Alex, too. Multiple adults and enough kids to entertain each other… complete win-win. The kids had a BLAST running up and down Monkey Hill… Emmy became the waterfall climber (read: watchful parent) with them and suffered a back injury as a result. Despite the pain, she was able to come to my rescue when Will had a tough time leaving the ‘falls, making a great learning moment for me and helping me when I was running out of tricks. My Mom enjoyed a quiet morning, which included scrubbing my pots cleaner than they have ever been and washing every piece of clothing, linen, cloth, and cotton in the house. Have I mentioned how great it is to have a Mom in the house?

Monday: Morning. My Mom admits that school is a fantastic thing; much better than staying at home. I feel validated. And tired. We take the kids to the Aquarium, after finding the Children’s Museum Closed. Late afternoon trip to Target, where Will snatches a Lighting McQueen bubble bath off a shelf (despite knowing better) and I get frustrated when my Mom wants to get it for him. End story: I take it away, let him cry, explaining that I have to do it so that he doesn’t grow up to be a self-entitled jerk. We have a longer talk later about store etiquette and how we ask for things.

The weekend’s biggest shocker: I could not WAIT for this three-day weekend to END!

Day Six: Mile 140-178. Havasu Canyon hike.
Some notes about today’s river ride, starting at about mile 144:

The inner canyon becomes precipitous for the next 25 river miles as the strata containing the slope-forming Bright Angel Shale dips below river level. This brings the Redwall/Muav Limestone layers down to river level, and this combination produces a massive cliff. Another factor contributing to the steep inner gorge is the river’s canyon-cutting that has propagated upstream from the Toroweap Fault.

Havasu is well-known, and for good reason. Here’s a brief description of Havasu Canyon:

Havasu Creek is another popular hike for rafting groups. The canyon itself is somewhat like a green oasis sandwiched between vertical cliffs. Havasu Creek is usually a light blue color due to dissolved limestone.

A much more in-depth and beautiful description of the Canyon, the Havasupai People, and the marvelous jewels within is located here. What is most well-known are Havasu Falls, situated much further up the Canyon on the reservation of the Havasupai Indians. This is not a place easy to access: you cannot drive there and if on foot, must hike two days to reach the village. There is a helipad, if you’ve access to a chartered ‘copter. Once there, you can enjoy the falls. My Dad is already talking about hiking out to Havasu — maybe next year? — and I will not miss this one. Although I don’t know who we’ll be able to get to come watch the kids!?