It’s special having Ravenna Park here in Seattle and so close to home. These long evenings nearby to Summer Solstice lend themselves to outdoor adventures, to exploring our own neighborhood, to reveling joyfully in new experiences. It’s the salmon berries that catch my attention. These woods here are a bit of the woods from back home on the [Olympic] peninsula. The salmon berries show me that I am in my native land. I felt it my duty as a mother and a native Pacific Northwesterner. I must introduce Lake to the tart, bitter, watery, and yet sometimes plump, flavorful and slightly sweet, always alluring bold orange berries that are the hallmark gems of the coastal lowland forest. He ate them up! Lake loved it as I told him the story of their native origins and he wanted to keep eating those late spring early summer jewels of the forest.

This is the question that our family is constantly considering… How tall will your adult baby be? How tall will Lake grow up to be? We’re fairly obsessed with this question in our house. Since Michael is 6 1/2 feet tall, he’s always enjoyed the benefits of height. He’s anxious to pass that along to Lake. Lake has always pleasantly hovered around 75-80 percentile for height, however according to our pediatrician, that is not a strong correlation for adult height. It turns out that the best predictor for adult height is the toddler height at 30 months (1 1/2 years old).simply double the height at 30 months. Voila, you’ve got a pretty good estimate of your baby’s fully grown adult stature. “You’ve got to keep feeding him, you know”, our friend gently reminded us. Well that, and we’re grateful for his health and joy too, no matter what his size.

“Lake is so long” says Grandma Annie. Long and tall like Daddy? Six more months until we can do the 30 month maths!