Portland
After Arizona we stopped back at home to pack up our bags for Thailand, then headed up to Portland. Since Riley is over 2 now, technically she has to sit in her own seat with her seatbelt on. We’d somehow avoided it on the Arizona flights, but the flight attendant on the Portland flight was VERY insistent about the rules. We were taxiing out to the runway and about to take off. Riley was on my lap looking out the window when the flight attendant found us out. She insisted Riley sit alone, and Riley of course panicked and started crying. The woman said loudly “The plane cannot take off until THIS BABY puts on her seatbelt.” (don’t make me turn this plane around…) I managed to slip my leg under her so she was sitting on my lap, while in her own seat with her seatbelt on, and then luckily there was plenty of really interesting things to see out the window (“hey look at that little plane! look at that big truck! look at that train of trucks!”) to distract her, and she did okay. After that we made a big deal out of Riley being “a really big girl” and sitting in a big girl seat and how she gets to put on the seatbelt all by herself, and after that it was never an issue again. She also likes it when we pretend we don’t know how the seatbelt works and she has to show us how it’s done. It’s all a matter of presentation I guess…
In Portland we visited Cheyenne and Joshua and their new baby Ronin. She’s so tiny! Riley looks like a giant next to her. Highlights for Riley included tasting all the spices with Joshua (at home she loves to open all the spice jars and smell them). She seemed to really like them… oregano, cumin, parsley seed, cardamom… some of them are really strong tasting, but Riley kept asking for more. She ate some dried wild mushrooms (yuck) too. Another highlight was going to see the snow! We drove seemingly forever all crammed in the car (poor Cheyenne squished between 2 carseats in the back, Sage and I sharing the front seat) but it was totally worth it. We parked on a little off road, then went for a little walk, made a snowman, left tracks in the snow… good
times.
One night in Portland Riley apparently had a nightmare… she woke up crying so I went over to ask her what was wrong. she said something bit her. I asked what bit her and she replied, “the potomus.” (that’s hippopotumus). So random! She calmed down pretty quickly though and slept the rest of the night.
More Portland pictures here.
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