RJ's 4th Birthday

In honor of RJ's Birthday, we threw him a Dinosaur Party (he requested the theme).  Last year, I thought I was screwed because I didn't think I could top the Lightning McQueen/Cars-themed birthday party. However, now I am truly and utterly 100% screwed.  It started simple enough.  He wanted a T-Rex cake. Sure, no problem.  I thought I had even seen a Dinosaur cake pan in Michael's.  Then this conversation happened.

RJ: "Mom, I want the T-Rex cake standing up"
Mom: "Can't it be flat?"
RJ: "Logan's Submarine cake wasn't flat"
Mom (silently): FUCK, he's absolutely right
RJ: "Actually, I want it sitting on a rock."
Mom: "Well, that's a little easier"

And then I started thinking about favors and I was getting bored of the little fabric bags from Michael's that we've purchased for the past few years of parties, and I didn't want to get the kids something that would just get thrown out, like a plastic bag, so I got dinosaur fabric and designed my own, vaguely in the shape of a Chinese food take-out container.  Perhaps I was craving Chinese food when I was drawing the pattern?  Anyway, they were cute filled with plastic dinosaurs, grow dinosaurs, dinosaur stickers, and any of the plastic bone-only dinosaurs that they unearthed from the sand table.

Then, two days before the party:

RJ: "Can we have dinosaur eggs with the T-rex-sitting-on-a-rock?"
Mom: "Can we just call the ice cream dinosaur eggs?"
RJ: "You have to make it look like dinosaur eggs"

The party was on June 18, one day before his birthday.  I'm not quite sure where we got the energy to pull it all off, but the house got clean, the favors were ready, the cake and ice cream was done, the food was prepared, and I managed to order a bounce house the week of the party. 

I think it was a fun party, RJ certainly seemed to think so. 

I think I did a better job planning party activities this year since a.) the activities worked (unlike the crappy plaster of paris cars from last year that fell apart and made a huge mess that I STILL have not cleaned up from the bucket - YES, I'm unfortunately serious.)  and b.) involved washable paint for a change.  You'd think that someone who used to run a child care center wouldn't have taken 3 years of parties to perfect the activities for the children, but it is what it is!

We got the dinosaur bounce house, which upon seeing it first set up, RJ exclaimed, "It's a diplodocus because it's eating our tree!"

The first activity was Make-Your-Own Volcanoes.  The children made play-doh volcanoes, using a huge batch of homemade "dirt colored" play-doh, and our random assortment of commercial play-doh for accents.  We then "set off" the volcanoes with red vinegar and baking soda.  [Note for anyone else out there trying this - I did think to put all the volcanoes inside a foil-lined cardboard box, but it still leaked after a few "eruptions"  Perhaps a shallow plastic box would be better!  Also, I had the children form the volcanoes around the small plastic play-doh containers (the party-favor sized ones), which made a great craters!]

Then we moved on to painting wooden dinosaurs.  Logan even wanted to get in on the fun, but committed a party foul in the first minute of painting by painting Maddie's eye.  Luckily we got the paint off and she was fine, but he was banned from painting after that.  The kids could also excavate plastic dinosaurs (those who looked like they only had bones) from the sand table.

I guess I wanted to make sure that everyone knew it was a dinosaur party with the food, so we had Salad Toppings arranged by Dinosaur Type and both Herbivore and Carnivore Dinosaur burgers and sandwiches. The burgers, cold cuts, and homemade bread (Pumpernickel, French, and Honey-Wheat) were all shaped like either a T-rex or a Stegosaurus, because those were the two dinosaur cookie cutters that I had.

Then there was the 8-layer T-rex cake with the dinosaur egg ice cream.  For those of you who want to know what was inside the cake, it was Strawberry, Chocolate, and Vanilla layers filled with dark chocolate truffle and fresh strawberry fillings, topped with vanilla and chocolate buttercream frosting.  It's eyes were chocolate chips and it's arms were solid chocolate that I molded in an aluminum foil homemade T-rex arm mold.  The "eggs" were scoops of homemade mint ice cream with dark chocolate shavings (RJ's flavor request), pre-scooped and rolled in rainbow sprinkles and refrozen.

RJ absolutely loved the party and we all had a great time!  Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated with us!

RJ's actual birthday, which was the day after the party, was a lot more low-key.  We took him to Toys R Us, presumably to buy him a two wheeler with training wheels since that was what we had been talking about.  However, he was so enthralled with his Skuut bike that he didn't want one (even the Red Lightning McQueen one), and wanted the (considerably cheaper) box of Cars 2 die cast cars and an ocean explorer set.  So, that's what he got.  And he picked out a Melissa and Doug learning clock for Logan since he decided that Logan needed a gift too.  We might still get him a bike to grow into, but maybe later in the summer or something.

Then he wanted to eat french fries and chicken strips for his birthday, so we took him to Red Tractor Cafe in Dublin (it was down the street from Toys R Us) for lunch.

RJ DEFINITELY had a Happy 4th Birthday!

For more party pictures, click here.

For the Love of Sully Bop

The "Lances" (as we are affectionately referred to by our dear friend Sully) were fortunate to get a visit from Sully in early June.

We picked Sully up from the airport on a Saturday morning and even though we had a plan for the day, had to abandon it because the weather was unseasonably wet and cold, which was unfortunate.  The plan was to go to our CSA farm in Watsonville (Live Earth Farms) for the U-pick strawberry event, and then head down to Santa Cruz for some fun on the Boardwalk and Beach.  Neither would be exceptionally fun in the constant rain and cold, so we decided to try the Aquarium of the Bay at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco instead.  RJ has been learning about the Ocean, so it was a nice field trip for him as well as being a fun indoor activity for the rest of us.

Then we had some lunch at the Sea Lion Cafe, which is on Super-Tourist-y Pier 39, but we all enjoyed watching the Sea Lions knock each other off the rafts as we ate.  After lunch, we decided to take RJ to the USS Pampanito, which is a World War II submarine docked at Pier 45.  RJ, despite his interest in submarines (we have had a homemade cardboard submarine in our living room for MONTHS) did his usual "I don't want to go in" fit after getting our tickets, but once we assured him that we wouldn't be diving in the submarine, he tentatively got on with us and by the end of the tour, he WANTED it to go under for real.  RJ even enjoyed talking to the volunteers on the sub, although I was a bit disappointed that he didn't have any insightful questions since normally he can't stop asking questions.

On Sunday, Lance was sick again and while our plan had been for Sully, Lance, and RJ to go to a SF Giants game, while I took Logan to the Bay Area Discovery Museum (Logan + 3 hours of bleachers = NOT FUN), Sully and I decided that Lance needed rest and we should go into the city and meet up with his friend Cory and his wife, Morgan instead.  So we headed to Japantown and Sully and I took the kids to Benihana to watch the chefs cook in front of us.  While RJ was initially a little scared (what else is new?), he ended up really liking our chef after he made him an steaming onion volcano that turned into a steam train!  There was also a playground just down the street (Hamilton Recreation Center playground) that was really nice.  The kids got to run around while Sully got to catch up with Cory and Morgan before we headed back to the Japantown mall for some crepes with ice cream!

On Monday, I had a dentist appointment in Redwood City.  You might start to see a pattern forming here because we had a plan that got changed, AGAIN.  We were planning on going to the dentist and then seeing Lance for lunch at DreamWorks, and then doing something else fun on the Peninsula before meeting Lance for dinner.  Unfortunately, Lance was still spiking fevers and was not up to going to work.  So, he stayed home and Sully bravely watched RJ and Logan in the waiting room while I got a cleaning.  He even supervised while RJ got his mini-appointment to prepare him for his first real appointment in July!  Sully deserves some sort of BEST.FRIEND.EVER award here, since he seemed to expertly entertain our two children whilst on vacation.  We ate some lunch at Max's in Redwood City, and then took the kids to the Shoreline Park in Mountain View before heading back to Lance.

Tuesday was a very low key day.  Lance went back to work, but I took RJ to preschool and Sully and I hung out mostly at home in Tracy.  We did take Logan to Lincoln Park and walked around the downtown area before having Lunch at El Castillo Cafe.  Then we spent Logan's nap time playing Beatles Rock Band.  Well, first we had to fix the TV because it stopped working for some weird reason - we weren't getting sound and picture together.  It eventually resolved itself though, so we could have some fun while both children were otherwise occupied! When Logan woke up, we went to pick up RJ and he was thrilled that Sully came to see his preschool!

I don't think I've made it clear thus far that both children idolize Sully.  He barely got a moment to breath because they both want to play with him and talk to him constantly - he was even a good sport and sat through the entire drawn out nighttime routine...even making up a story when Lance was sick in bed the one night! Anyway, RJ was elated that Sully came to pick him up and he couldn't wait to show Sully the sea creatures and dinosaurs that he drew and cut out.  My personal favorite is the one that looks kind of like the cock and balls that Grundle liked to draw everywhere in college.  Ah...memories.

On Wednesday, Lance stayed home again and Sully and I met up with our friend Niru for lunch in Oakland at Zachary's Pizza.  Niru, Sully, and I did KDR buggy together in college.  This was awesome because I haven't seen Niru since 2003, even though she's been living in San Francisco for over a year now!  I think we totally have to get together more often now that we're both out here. After lunch our plans were thwarted once again since the Tilden Park steam trains don't open during the week until mid-June, which I did not know.  This is also true of the Carousel.  We were able to take the kids to Little Farm to see the animals, but I once again forgot to bring vegetables to feed the animals.  RJ was able to pick up scraps left by other children and was perfectly happy to feed that animals with that.  We were meeting Cory at La Penca Azul (VERY Yummy!) in Alameda for dinner, so we ended up hanging out at the Berkeley Aquatic Park Playground and then watched the Kiteboarders out in the bay off the coast of Alameda before dinner.

We were sad to see Sully go on Thursday morning, especially RJ, who started trying to convince Sully to move to California on Wednesday and continued to push the issue by asking me to text Sully his words.  It sucked that Lance was sick for most of his visit and didn't get to spend much time with him, but we were glad that the kids and I had a spectacular time with Sully.  He truly took what would've been a crappy week with Lance being sick and me being on solo kid duty, and made it into an awesome week!  Thanks Sully for all your help with the kids and for coming out to see us!  We miss you!

For more pictures of Sully's visit, visit our Picasa Album

Good-bye to the Sternods

 At the end of May, we had to say goodbye to one of RJ's best friends, Hayden, who moved to Washington State this month.  We are going to miss the whole Sternod family lots!

We set up a last playdate the week before they left.  The boys had a great playdate (actually, the mommies did too!) and I'm glad that RJ had a chance to say good-bye when we met up a few days later to celebrate Tisha's MA graduation with a quadruple chocolate cake despite Dylan being sick (poor kid!).   

We're so happy for them that they will be closer to family, since we know how hard it is to raise children so far away from any family, but we are also sad because they are such a great family to spend time with.  RJ has known Hayden since they were only 15 months old in the infant room at the CDC, and up until a year ago when I quit my job, they had spent much of their weekday time at the CDC together.

I have always enjoyed watching them play together because they are always so in sync with one another.  Their interests are well matched, and while they certainly have their fair share of mischief together (e.g., RJ had a streak where he would inexplicably throw Hayden's shoes and/or hat into the toilet at school and once egged Hayden on to throw his hat into the duck pond) and had the usual occasional disputes over sharing, they inspire each others' play and I think Hayden brings out the best in RJ.  We have tried to get together as much as we could this year, and perhaps our more sporadic meetings served as a good taper off for them moving away, since the day to day shock will not be there. 

I told RJ the day before his playdate so that he would understand why Hayden was packing up all his stuff.  I also wanted him to have some closure since we weren't going to see them for quite a while unless we make a trip up to Washington.  Telling him was probably one of the hardest things that I've had to tell him in his life, though.   On one hand, that's a good thing since in perspective, there are a lot of worse things out there that we haven't had to deal with, but it was also really sad, because he took it pretty hard and cried that he didn't want Hayden to go and that he wanted to drive to Washington with him.   

Maybe, we will finally have the push we need to finally take the (ridiculously expensive) Starlight Express up to Seattle!

May Highlights

By May, we finally recovered from our trip, but spent most of the month taking turns being sick, with Lance taking the brunt of it. RJ started the ball rolling getting a bit of a cold and pink eye in late April, which led to Lance getting pink eye and the sniffles, which were initially diagnosed as allergies and treated with allergy drops and allergy meds, which mostly failed to do anything other that perhaps let bacteria take over, which led Lance to spike fevers up into the 104 range. Logan also came down with pink eye and the head cold, but he was diagnosed with pink eye a few days BEFORE Lance and got the drops that cleared up the infection. The DreamWorks doctor (not his PCP) gave him some antibiotics and an eye gel to clear up the infection, but 3 days later, he was still spiking fevers in the 103 range ON ADVIL and TYLENOL and was not doing well at all! So he barely got himself to his PCP, who switched him to a different antibiotic, which finally started working. During this time, I was clearly fighting whatever germs were circulating, because I had a pretty steady low grade fever (never really went over 100), and was run down because I was taking care of everyone else. Luckily, my body never let me get pink eye or more than the sniffles. Lance finally started to feel better again and after 14 days of antibiotics, by the end of May we thought we were clear of illness.

In addition to May being the month of illness, RJ also started preschool. He goes for two full days a week - currently Tuesday and Thursday, but we will be switching to Tuesday, Wednesday when a Wednesday slot opens up because I want him to attend on two consecutive days rather than separated days since he often misses out on activities that are finished the next day and consecutive days of attendance is generally better for children who thrive on consistent routines. If/when we can afford a third day, I'd like to add Thursdays too, so that he could have more consecutive days to prepare for kindergarten (maybe we will a month or so before Kindergarten next year just to get him ready).  I really love his preschool - it's an engaging program where he is challenged in a developmentally appropriate way, and his teachers are incredibly responsive and kind. 

He has started to make tons of things out of paper recently.  For example, when he didn't have his sharks to play with at school, he made giant sharks out of paper.  This has carried over at home as he has started making paper creations like the paper squid after reading about it in a book.  This is entirely his design and mostly his execution (tape requires a little help). 

Logan has really blossomed with RJ being at preschool since I can now focus on him alone and actually have an uninterrupted conversation with him or read some of the toddler books to him (again without interruption).  He started talking more after the first week of RJ being at preschool!  It might have been a coincidence, but it was quite a dramatic shift in his vocalizations!  He is very talkative when RJ isn't around, and my favorite phrase was after his nap when he walked over with his shoes and said, "Ah-Day.  Dooz", which translated from baby --> English means RJ, shoes, which I further took to mean, "Mom, it's time to get RJ, put on my shoes", which was appropriate for what time it was.  He is still a great eater, often eating more than RJ at each sitting!  Luckily he eats a good percentage of the veggies from our weekly CSA share.  And he is definitely in a climbing phase.  This is my personal favorite picture of him both climbing where he shouldn't and exposing himself to the whole neighborhood!

RJ started gymnastics up again, and still enjoys it - he was fortunate to have Coach Ashley again (she was also the coach in March, and he loves her!). I love watching him learn to do different things with his body and I like how they work with the young children at Classic Gymnastics, so that they are building skills and continually engaged. Enjoy this video to see what I mean (he's in the red t-shirt):

We also had to say Good-bye to some very good friends who moved away, which I'll write about in the next post.

More May pictures here.  Here's hoping June is a better month!

Easter 2011: A Tale of Two Easters

Easter Friday & Saturday:

We got home from our whirlwind trip a few days before Easter and instead of preparing for Easter by buying stuff for the kids' Easter baskets, buying a ham and polish sausage, and making pastries for breakfast, I bought a Big Wheel on Amazon the day after returning home (after taking Logan to the Doctor first thing to make sure his leg was all healed up-which it was) and spent Easter Sunday morning assembling it so that I could race it down a crooked road that afternoon.



Although we did kick off Easter week with an Easter Egg Hunt at DreamWorks on Friday (which included Lunch with Daddy) and Madeline's 4th Birthday party on Saturday, which featured another Easter Egg Hunt and RJ taking on a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude when the girls at the party were all playing dress up with the princess dresses. I know I'm killing his chances at a future run for POTUS here, but I just have to share pictures of him. Someday the video will make its way on screen as well. Easter Sunday:
For 11 years now, there has been an event in San Francisco on Easter Sunday (other than the Easter Parade including drag queens and rollerblading cows and the Hunky Jesus Contest) called the Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race (BYOBW). It started with a bunch of people on big wheels skidding down the famously crooked portion of Lombard Street. Since its inception, it has been moved to a similarly crooked portion of Vermont Street. Interestingly, while Vermont Street is not famous, it is actually the "crookedest street in San Francisco", not the famous Lombard street. Anyway, the event is basically a flash mob of people wearing funny costumes and driving children's toys down a very steep set of switchbacks. I've wanted to do it every year since we moved to California and I heard about it, but this year is really the first year that I could participate.

Lets recap our Easters out here:

Easter 2007 - Pregnant with RJ
Easter 2008 - Overloaded with classes/directing the CDC/conferencing/raising a 9-10 month old and I don't think we even acknowledged Easter
Easter 2009 - Attended BYOBW to see what it was all about, but didn't participate, mostly because I didn't get a big wheel soon enough
Easter 2010 - Celebrated Easter in South Carolina with Amy & Luke
Easter 2011 - Finally went down the hill in a big wheel!
I didn't have a lot of time to put together a really fabulous costume, but I unearthed an old superbuddy costume (which I'm still not quite sure how I acquired, since the costumes first made an appearance at Challenge camp and I didn't take one), which made me look like a pink power ranger and figured that was wacky enough for the event, particularly with knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, and a helmet. You're probably thinking I was being overly cautious, but my knee would've been shredded had I not been wearing knee pads. The pads have the scratches to prove it!

Riding the big wheel was challenging because I didn't do any modifications. I'm pretty small, but I do not have the ass of a 5 year old - so that was a bit uncomfortable, which made it difficult to steer because I was too close to the steering wheel. But really, I shouldn't complain, I was riding a child's toy down some crazy switchbacks trying to avoid the masses of other people doing the same thing, and it was a crazy good time!

RJ also enjoyed watching his Mommy ride what is now his big wheel down a big hill.

Because we were all in San Francisco for the Big Wheel Race, we decided to wait a week to celebrate Easter. That also gave me more time to bake and buy Easter chocolate at a discount.

Easter Week Observed:
RJ and I dyed eggs, and then tried to make a tie dyed shirt out of the leftover dye. The damned stuff washed out except for a tiny bit of the red! Then Logan found the dye (he woke up from nap in the middle of the activity) on the kitchen table and dumped it all over the floor! Yep, that was fun to clean up.

Easter Sunday Observed:
The next Sunday, the kids looked for their Easter Baskets (I hid RJ's inside his carboard yellow submarine, and we put Logan's under the kids' table - of course after I took the picture of both baskets in the submarine) and we ate our Swieconka (sh-vee-en-soon-kah), which is the traditional Polish Easter Breakfast. The funny thing is that I never knew how to spell it as I had only heard it until I googled "Polish Easter Breakfast". However, it was sort of a half-assed bialy barszcz because the only Polish delis are in the Bay Area, and even though I had a week, I was not about to drive to the Bay JUST to get Fresh Polish Sausage. Grocery Stores only have smoked kielbasa, rather than fresh, which annoys me, but maybe next year I'll get a meat grinder and stuffer attachment for my kitchen aid and get the old family recipe to make my own. But that didn't help for this year and for some reason (perhaps because we had already postponed Easter) I decided that I still had to make the sausage soup, so I made ground pork meatballs that I seasoned to be similar to traditional polish sausage, and made the soup with that. It wasn't bad, but it was not quite the same. We also feasted on hardboiled decorated eggs, homemade babka (sweet raisin-y yeast bread with icing), homemade placek (coffee cake), and a sort of homemade almond apple pastry (I say "almost" because I took puff pastry and put almond paste and apples inside and drizzled it with icing. It seems like cheating when I use ready-made ingredients.)

That evening we had friends over for margaritas and ham with twice baked potatoes. I made a vegetable too, but I don't remember what it was (thank you margaritas!).

So it was a little bit of tradition and a little bit of unconventionality, but A LOT of fun.

More pictures from Easter week here.

DeLancey Family Spring Travels Volume VII: Buffalo, NY

Accommodations: Mom's House

Sunday April 17:
We drove from Pittsburgh to Buffalo and settled in for the evening.

Monday April 18:
My grandfather was in the hospital, so Grammie watched the kiddos while I went to visit with him. It's hard seeing someone you love sick, but at least I was in town and could hand deliver the Get Well drawings RJ and Logan (with Grammie's help) made for him. A few days after we returned to California, he was released, and then ended up back in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer, and last I heard, he was transferred to a nursing facility to rehabilitate after his illness and the cauterization of the ulcer. So he is thankfully on the mend!
We also took Gramma Ho! Ho! out to Red Lobster that night for what turned out to be RJ's third lobster of the trip. There is certainly no denying that he is my child - his insistence on getting that lobster was incredible. Then there was the disappointment that I "only" got him a lobster tail instead of the whole damned thing.

Tuesday April 19:
I am seriously under the impression that Tuesday is positively the WORST day to be in Buffalo with children. I had been wanting to take the kids to the Explore and More museum in East Aurora. It is only open Wednesday through Sunday and we were only in town Monday and Tuesday. Then Mom and I thought that the Herschell Carousel Factory museum would be cool for the kids. Guess what? During the Spring, they are also closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. We thought about driving to Rochester to take the kids to the Strong National Museum of Play again, which is tons of fun, but the kids were already worn out from all the driving and traveling. I really didn't want to mess with them any more than I had to since I was going to have a full 12 hours of travelling with them solo on Wednesday. So we ended up hitting the Niagara Factory Outlet Mall and they got to ride the coin-operated mall rides and eat frozen yogurt.

Wednesday April 20:
While it would've been nice to stay with family a little longer and perhaps stay for Easter, we were so travel weary, I was relieved to be going home. I was done living out of a suitcase and carting the kids around, and they were done with being carted around and not having time to just play like normal. Sure, they got to do some exciting things and see family and friends, but there is a limit to how much of that a 3.75 year old and a 14.5 month old can take! Three weeks of the break neck pace we were on was definitely stretching the limit quite a bit. Luckily, our trip home wasn't too bad, though we all could've done without the delay in Cleveland. It was nice to sleep in our own beds that night!

A few more pictures are here.