Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Corny


He discovered corn on the cob. 

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Demanding




On Demand on the iPhone changes everything. Doesn't even have to be Saturday!

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Avery's Birthday



The trip to Sac was worth it. They have their own bouncy house. 


And Vansen got a lolipop. 

Friday, January 23, 2015

Skyline





Liz has worked with the same group as long as she's been out of college.  With a scenery like this, who would want to leave?  The expansive view sweeps from the Golden Gate to the west, across the entire northern part of the city and the bay, including Transamerica, Coit, North Beach, Alcatraz, Angel Island, Treasure Island, and finally the new spire of the Bay Bridge and the East Bay. 

Sometimes, it's mostly fog.  Sometimes, it's the bay churning up whitecaps and driving rain. Sometimes, it's clear as a bell and it feels like you can see all the way to Napa.  Sometimes, it's Fleet Week and the Blue Angels are buzzing the tower in tight formation. Too frequently, it's one of the three Giants victory parades at her doorstep and down Market Street.  What it's mostly been, though, is 17 years of everything and everyone, with too many changes and milestones and 5:30AM hangovers to enumerate, in the one single place where she's spent more time than anywhere else, where she's known the people longer than she's known me.

So I took Huelan out of school before her naptime, and went to visit Liz one last time in this office. The new one's not far, just about a block away, but the change will be significant (and not just the view).  Here's to the next chapter!

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Convincing



One of the (many) thing about kids is that they constantly need to be convinced. I believe that a good 98% of all the fairy tales, myths and legends are a direct result of parents trying to convince their kids to eat their veggies and not hit one another. 

Convincing is different than reminding. Reminding is, "Please turn off the light." She's knows and understands this, just forgets. Convincing is, "You need to eat because otherwise you'll starve. And we'll go to jail."

This one, for example, needs to be convinced every evening that she can get something from her room by herself. And that she needs to brush her teeth (still trying to convince her while she's standing at the sink).  And that she needs to get dressed after bath time instead of dancing around like a jay bird and freezing. 

The photo above is from dinnertime, which is usually the beginning of the our nightly trials. Lately, she's been running around like crazy at dinner, resulting in spilled drinks and plates full of food on the floor.  So we tried to convince her that big girls sit at the table and eat dinner in their seats. This particular solution started as a threat- basically, "We'll strap you down."  But as you can see, the threat was unconvincing. 

Skipping

So I, Christmas and New Year's Eve did happen, and I even have the pics and stories to prove it. But the thought of going through all our exploits for the blog was just weighing me down and preventing me from blogging In The Moment. So I'm just skipping. (I'll do some kind of bullet point post later?)

Here's stuff from this weekend, which was a three-day that we really appreciated. Saturday was chill- garage saling with Huelan, smokin a bunch of meat, local oark playing, and eating Overnight Chili. Makin bacon:


Selfie:


Sunday was only slightly different, in that went mixed in some shopping (mostly returning, actually). 


During which Huelan gets bored and goes around the store with the camera phone. 

And Monday was a bonus day! So we went to Golden Gate park to let Huelan ride around on her new-ish bike (it's been in the basement for about 6 months. It was supposed to be a reward to earning stars on her chart, but we kind of lost the thread on that one). She jams on that thing, though because she doesn't really know how to use it or have any conception of the rules of the road, she almost got creamed by this mean old couple on wearing neon green on a tandem. Whatever screw them. And she'll stop abruptly to collect a leaf or pick a flower. When she's actually pedalling, she jams and looks like this:


GG park was followed by a large dimsum lunch to celebrate Tommy's promotion. Then a visit to Vern and Jake's new sunset house which I think is super nice cozy. And they got a dog, Sadie, who finally lost patience with Vansen bugging her and head butted him, resulting in this:


Being 2 hrs late for nap time was also contributed to the wide-mouthed crying. 

Also- we stayed up til 3am watching season 4 of Homeland. Only three episodes left. And Vansen on his first skate. Good weekend!