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kids

Provisioning

Jan 4th, 2011
by Sara.
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Just in case you were starting to think I was making life on a boat sound all easypeasy, I wanted to share what it’s like to perform one of the most basic of family duties: getting groceries into the cupboards. Just the other week, I collapsed on the floor in exhaustion after the hours-long process of loading food onto Wondertime with two small children in tow was finally complete. I wondered why I was so tired after completing such a menial task, but then I began to mentally replay the morning spent gathering foodstuffs at Costco:

fix breakfast for two small giddy children
clean up breakfast mess
get kids dressed
brush their teeth
gather raincoats and boots
put them on the children
get myself dressed
brush my teeth, wash face, moisturize, clip hair up
find and put on my coat
gather the raincoats and boots back up that the children have shed already
re-coat and re-boot children
turn off all lights and turn down heaters
help everyone up the companionway and into the cockpit
fetch boot that has fallen off the smallest child’s foot on her way up the ladder
go back below to find my own shoes and put them on
put lifejacket on each girl
go back below to find the umbrella
once back outside, search cockpit for hatch padlocks
lock hatches
notice cat sitting next to hatch
unlock hatch
drop cat inside
re-lock hatch
help girls onto the dock
trek up the dock and ramp to parking lot
find car
take off lifejackets and stow in back of station wagon
load both girls into car
take off sopping wet raincoats
fasten Holly in her carseat
tighten Leah in her carseat
run the car for 3 minutes to defog windows
argue compromise with Leah over which album to play on ipod
drive car in direction of Costco
hand out mints to children pleading for them in the backseat
arrive at Costco
search for spot close to doors to minimize walk in the rain
release girls from carseats
help them put raincoats and boots back on
help them out of car
run to cart storage area in rain
select cart
fasten Holly in and lift Leah into main cart to ride
enter store and commence gathering food
make trip to the restroom
gather food
checkout
run back to car in the rain
load both girls into car
take off sopping wet raincoats
fasten Holly in her carseat
tighten Leah in her carseat
load food into car, stacking items around all passengers because back of station wagon is full of boat stuff
run shopping cart to cart depository
run back to car and jump in
drive back to marina
listen to complaints about hunger pains from the backseat
reach for and open package of goldfish and hand it back
find parking spot in marina parking lot
run to the gate and grab a dock cart
run back to car
load groceries into cart
release girls from carseats
help them put raincoats and boots back on
help them out of car
run holding on to both girls and cart to dock gate
unlock gate and shove girls and overloaded cart inside under cover
put lifejacket back on each girl
walk down ramp, hanging on to dock cart for dear life since it’s the lowest tide in weeks
back at boat, help girls into cockpit
take off lifejackets
unlock hatches
put girls down below where they shed raincoats, boots, sweaters, pants and socks
turn lights on and heaters back up
go back outside and load food from dock cart into cockpit
dash the cart back up the dock and up the ramp to the storage area by the gate
dash back to boat and quickly check below to make sure girls are not torturing the cat
load food down into the boat
pile perishables into the refrigerator box
unload perishables from refrigerator box as still is a pile on the floor and the box is full
reload perishables into the refrigerator box carefully so it all fits with not an inch to spare
toss rest of perishables into the cockpit since it’s winter thankfully and cold enough outside for the rest
remove cans, boxes and bags from growing pile of excess Costco packaging
load cans, boxes and bags beneath and behind settee cushions, moving children and cat as needed
toss recyclable packaging into cockpit
collapse
…but only for 5 seconds as the children are now standing overhead begging for lunch.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Dec 5th, 2010
by Sara.
1 comment

Leah asked us a few days ago if we were going to the same Christmas tree farm this year as last, the one where we would get to feed the goats and ride in the red wagon out into the fields to cut our tree down. She was a little disappointed when we told her, sorry, we were just driving over to the storage unit to dig out our plastic tree. We returned to the boat with the little fake tree that we’ve been carting around for over 10 years and our two boxes of our most prized Christmas ornaments and decorations. The excitement of decorating for Christmas took over and she quickly forgot about the towering, fragrant trees of years past.

“This is our best tree ever!” Leah declared when she saw it adorned with colorful lights and our favorite ornaments.

We agree. It always is.

Life is the same as always…but a little bit different

Nov 16th, 2010
by Sara.
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Leah, off to school

I was walking out of the library the other day after picking up a couple of books I’d had on hold.  One of the books was my favorite book of children’s knitting patterns. It was then that I realized that now that we’ve settled into life aboard it’s pretty much back to the same old for the time being: Michael walks to work in the early morning light as I wake up with a hot cup of coffee. The girls soon wake also and I fix them breakfast; then we dress, brush teeth and are off to do errands or drive Leah to preschool or go to library storytime or to the park if the rain has taken a break.

And yet. I realized walking out of the library that life is still a little bit different than our life on land had been.

For starters, I have been itching to knit the girls some mittens now that the weather has gotten noticeably chillier. It will be my last chance for a couple of years after all. In our storage unit, tucked away underneath stacks of crates is my box stuffed full with my favorite books and in them this book that contains the perfect knitting pattern for children’s mittens. I knew it would be far too much work to dig out just this one book so I checked the library and lo and behold! It was on the shelf waiting for me to reserve. Easy peasy. And now I had the library’s copy tucked under my arm because actually finding my own was not worth an afternoon.

A few days ago Leah got out her markers to do a little doodling when I noticed that she was having trouble keeping them next to her. It wasn’t that she was dropping them on the floor (well, she was but that always happens), it was that the markers kept rolling across the table to the other side. The downward side. Wondertime has two 100-gallon water tanks; ideally these heavy tanks would be deep in the keel but in order to accommodate such roomy tanks on our small boat the two tanks lie outboard, a port and a starboard tank. What happens is that when one tank is full and we’re draining the other tank, the boat heels over quite noticeably to the side with the fuller tank. When we catch ourselves gripping on when walking down the hallway or markers rolling across the table it’s time to switch to the other tank for a day or two. Which is what I did.

And then just this morning I stuck my head into our refrigerated box to grab a carton of soy milk out for Holly to drink with breakfast when I saw that there wasn’t any in there. So I walked up forward into the head and reached into the shower where we store our Costco carton of soy milk boxes and grabbed a fresh one. It was just because I’d been thinking about ways that our life was a little different that I realized that we didn’t used to store soy milk in our shower.

We’ve truly enjoyed adapting to our new (again) way of life. While much of what is different is not so great (hauling laundry up the dock in the rain to the laundry room, hauling ourselves up the dock in the rain to the showers, hauling two cranky girls in the rain up the dock to the car….you get the idea) much of what is different truly just makes life interesting right now.

Happy Halloween!

Nov 1st, 2010
by Sara.
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Happy Halloween from s/v Wondertime!

A Visitor From the Deep

Oct 16th, 2010
by Sara.
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“Mom! Mom! Dad! Dad! Come quick! Hurry! Hurry!” We heard Leah exclaim from outside the boat on the dock where she had been laying quietly watching the water. She was squealing with excitement. “You have GOT to see this! Something is swimming under the boat with many legs!”

Now we were intrigued. We had got to see this.

We stepped onto the dock and peered under the boat. And indeed we saw the beautiful creature too, a translucent sea animal swimming, no, undulating peacefully through the murky marina water. It had countless soft spines, each with a dark brown tip that looked a little ominous. “Get the bucket!” our budding biologist commanded and Michael grabbed the white bucket that has now held many a sea creature. He gently scooped up the 6″ long animal with some sea water and set the bucket on the dock for all to view.

“What is it??” Leah asked us. We were certainly stumped. While we’ve had hundreds of jellyfish swim past our boat, thousands of teeny, tiny fish and there’s a handful of healthy sea anemones on our pier this fascinating animal was a mystery. It definitely seemed out of place and we wondered how it had gotten stuck in our marina.

We grabbed our Audubon Field Guide to North American Seashore Creatures and identified it as some type of nudibranch. None of the species in our book seemed to match, but a quick check on Google (oh how we are going to miss the internet when we are cruising!) identified it as a Giant Nudibranch. It turns out that these are quite a sight to see while diving in Puget Sound, especially if you get to view one feeding on an anemone; we felt very fortunate to get to watch one from our nice dry dock.

Leah just had to share her new discovery so she ran a few boats down and told the girls from Pearl what she had found. They were intrigued and came over for a look and were fascinated too. Turns out it was their first marina nudibranch sighting as well.

For a number of minutes the creature did not move at all, clearly terrified. You know, that playing dead trick. Then it must have realized it was not actually dead yet and started to swim around our bucket. We observed our unique visitor for another 10 minutes then gently set the creature back into the sea where it quickly undulated away. Leah was tearful but it was yet another chance for us to explain how we can look at the sea creatures we find for a short time but, no, they are not going to become our pets. They must be returned back to their home, the sea. She understood and was grateful, as were we, for the chance to have this beautiful creature visit us for a while.

Which just goes to show that if you lay on your stomach on the dock peering in to the depths of the sea for long enough you never know what will come swimming by.

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