Tale of Two Easters: Adult Edition

We got a babysitter so that us adults could head to San Francisco over nap time and have some adult entertainment.

Easter Parade

As we were walking down the street we remark -- are those cows? Are those dancing cows? Are those dancing cows on rollerblades? Then we realize it is either a regular weekend in San Francisco or the Easter parade complete with drag queens (yes you did read the sentence correctly).





Bring Your Own Big Wheels

Big People on Kids Toys going down the steepest/crookedest street in San Francisco IN COSTUME

Since the name of the event is Bring Your Own Big Wheel (which is an annual Easter Sunday event), and I don't keep a big wheel in my back pocket, I unfortunately was unprepared or I would've been in the fray myself, but 40? Schteve? Dave? Dawber? I'd like a souped up Big Wheel that could handle these curves for next year. Or better yet - we should ALL do it!! If a guy on a modified trash can can make it down alive, a souped up long axle big wheel should too. A word to the wise...bring your own helmet too. My favorite wipeout was when the dumb guy carrying his big wheel up the hill got taken out by a heat of big wheels thundering down the hill.

Here is the official video and a collection of pictures.

Mission Bars

What Easter Sunday would be complete without Happy Hour?

Organic Sushi

To finish out the evening, Lance found an organic sushi restaurant in the Mission. They had the largest rolls I've ever seen. Fabulous Easter dinner! It probably makes up for the fact that we ate Turkey on Good Friday...oops.

I think the only thing we missed that was Easter-related in SF was the "Hunky Jesus" contest that we heard about too late!

This Easter was much better than last Easter, which I spent grading papers!

Tale of Two Easters: Family Edition

Lance and I wake up to a smiling toddler in our bed. Thank goodness we have a King Sized Mattress now - RJ actually leaves us with some room to sleep when he gets upset randomly in the middle of the night (it luckily doesn't happen too often).

Easter Baskets

While the quiche was baking Otte (who was adjusting to West Coast time after flying in to see us Saturday) woke up and helped RJ find his Easter Basket. RJ's response to the colorful basket in the pantry = "Wow!" Thank you Grandpa for the Wahl's Orange Chocolate.



Then we sent Otte looking for his Easter basket. This was actually more entertaining than RJ looking for his Easter basket, particularly because Otte, who was still up when I was hiding it the night before and was TOLD where it was, thought that I had hid it in the dryer and went on a wild goose chase in the laundry room, when it was really in the sewing cabinet in the living room. We should probably give him some slack though since he WAS pretty tired!

Egg Decorating

RJ and Daddy colored a few eggs too. RJ's hands kept ending up in the dye, but he had fun. Then Daddy had fun putting the few pieces of (unsalvagable) burnt bacon in the dye to "see what would happen". (Yeah, nothing really happened except that the yellow turned brown).



Brunch

We all sat down to a big breakfast (Quiche, Sausage, and Belgian Waffles with Strawberries and Whipped Cream), got showered and took RJ to the park on a beautiful Easter Sunday morning in sunny Tracy, CA.

Thursday's Dinner

Toddlers are famous for being fickle about their food preferences. For dinner on a recent Thursday, RJ gobbled 3 of the following four foods available to him:

Vegetable Curry, Rice, Uncured Niman Ranch Hot Dogs, Banana

Which of these four things do you think RJ refused to eat?



If you chose the vegetable curry, you are confusing RJ with a "normal" toddler. The child actually refused the hot dogs. This seems to be a recurring theme. Teacher Kasie asked me a couple of weeks ago if RJ liked hot dogs, and I told her that I really didn't know because we don't really have them too often and the few times he's had them available he spit them right back out. Apparently, they had hot dogs and honeydew for a snack at school and all the other children gobbled up their hot dogs with abandon and most wouldn't touch the honeydew, whereas RJ ate all his honeydew, refused to eat the hot dogs and kept asking for more honeydew!

He consistently refuses meats of all kinds. Occasionally I can sneak a meatball in his spaghetti and he occasionally takes a bite of Ian's chicken or fish nuggets, but he's mostly vegetarian.

I've tried to ask him what his deal with meat was.
Mommy: "RJ, what's wrong with your meatball?"
RJ: "No like it!!"

This isn't really a problem, but I definitely have to think more about how he's getting his iron. Luckily, he'll eat beans and lentils!

10

RJ, how many states have you been to?

• CA
  
• NY
  
• PA
  
• MA
  
• RI
  
• SC
  
• NC
  
• GA
  
• IN
  

and now we can add CO to the list. More on that later.

Note: We don't count layover states, only states where we have actually done something (preferably fun).

Potty Update

We have had an exciting week since RJ started using the potty. Here are some updates in the potty department.



1.) He's ASKED to go to the potty several times when he's had to go and made it all the way there before peeing (3 nights this week after dinner, 1 morning after breakfast, and 3 or 4 times this weekend).

2.) He doesn't need to be naked to ask for the potty, although he does ask more consistently if he's not wearing a diaper.

3.) He has also gone POO on the potty for Tracy, his afternoon babysitter. This might have been precipitated by RJ having a potty buddy in his friend Daisy who was on the other potty at the time! However, Tracy did not take any pictures of the poo to share with you.

RJ's friend Allison also lent him "No More Diapers for Ducky", which is one of her big brother's potty books.

This weekend we bought another potty for the 2nd floor (it's a froggy potty for RJ's froggy bathroom) AND we bought some cute boxer briefs since RJ seems to be progressing pretty quickly and we might need them soon!

Recent Conversations with RJ

RJ: RJ push Hayden
RJ: Hayden cry
RJ: Hayden sad
RJ: RJ sad

Daddy: Are you ready to go get dressed?
RJ: No
Daddy: Could have predicted that one, you say no to everything. Do you want a million dollars?
RJ: Ya
Daddy: Figures.
RJ: [short pause] RJ dollars

RJ: what's this?
Mommy: that's an art sculpture
RJ: (points) taxicab
RJ: what's this?
Daddy: that's the golden gate bridge
RJ: what's this?
Mommy: that's a carousel in golden gate park
RJ: what's this?
(ongoing as we're interested in the S.F. tourbook lately)

Picture Day

Along with spring comes picture day at the Child Development Center.

RJ's Monday, Wednesday, Friday crowd:


RJ's Tuesday, Thursday crowd:

Fortune Cookie

We ordered Chinese food the other night and this was RJ's fortune. How fitting for a toddler!

Pee in the POTTY!!!!!

RJ actually made pee pee in the potty this evening (as opposed to just sitting on it)!! He was running around naked and started to pee on the floor. I said, "RJ, pee pee goes in the potty. Let's go to the potty." Then he sat down and made pee pee! And then he thought that Mommy and Daddy were nuts because of all the jumping up and down and dancing and cheering.

Of course we know there is a long road filled with quite a few more laundry loads of diapers, and probably even more loads of pee soaked pants until he is actually potty trained. After all, he's not even 2 yet! Nonetheless, he's starting to make the connection between the sensation of peeing and where the pee should go (and he was able to stop peeing on the floor to get to the potty), and that's super exciting!

Our Guitar Hero...

RJ has become obsessed with guitars lately. If the song on the radio doesn't have a strong guitar riff audible to him, he shouts "Geetar!! Geetar!! Geetar!! Pease!" until the station or the song changes.

Last weekend we had an opportunity to go out for dinner. One of Cheryl's coworkers, as a thank you for transporting her daughter, gave us a gift card to the restaurant at Wente Vineyard along with a free night of babysitting. It didn't take much convincing to get us to cash that in, but after our fancy dinner out, what were two parents to do? Go to Toys R Us and buy a guitar for their son of course.



We've been taking guitar lessons from youtube to practice.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Here's a picture of RJ eating his corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. True to form, he ate the potatoes, carrots and cabbage, but left most of the corned beef. I did manage to get a couple of bites in him, but only tiny pieces that were well hidden in the veggies.



We've also graduated to the "big boy" seats for dinner but still have breakfast in the high chair.

From the days of yore...

Some of you may remember a certain sitcom character who had a distaste for all things Pottery Barn because they lacked a unique story. Well, we searched the Internet, stopped in antique stores, flea markets but could never find a table like the one from the days of yore. You can't even buy them at Pottery Barn anymore. After two years of checking a craiglist search rss feed, we finally got not one but two matches in the same week. The drawers are fantastic places to hide treasures for RJ to find AND it's the perfect height for him to stack blocks on (which he can get to by opening one of the drawers). And since we didn't buy new, I get the satisfaction of saying that we were being green(er) by saving the table from taking up space in the landfill.



In December we bought a new couch that is a pretty good match with the new coffee table. We still have to get a rug to match, but retiring the 20 year old couch that *I* grew up with was an accomplishment. The couch is not at all a green choice, it's blue and a la-z-boy and super comfy. After searching around for information, these couches were recommended as being pretty toddler indestructible and stain resistant.

It's nice to finally feel like a "real" adult by owning stuff that we picked out ourselves because we wanted it, not because it was the better stuff from the mishmosh of hand-me-downs!

Why kids don't know colors

Recently we mentioned that to RJ everything is "yellow" though last Sunday he had a moment of clarity when he pointed to a painting and said "red flowers" (and they *were* red... and flowers). It turns out some of his friends have similar dilemmas, Jace thinks everything is "blue" and Daisy thinks everything is "green". I pondered why that was and think I have an idea on why that is -- Eric Carle.



Come now, how is that a "blue" horse? It's mostly PURPLE!!! No wonder kids don't know colors.

Image taken without permission from "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" which is currently RJ's favorite book.

RJ goes to the potty

Before you get excited, he went *to* the potty, not *in* the potty.



At home RJ has asked to sit on his potty if we were going to the potty ourselves, but he had a first this week at school -- he asked his teachers if he could go potty. Being the excellent teachers they are they took him to the potty just like the other big kids. He didn't produce anything, but it is a first step. You can see on his daily report a record of this attempt.

RJ the Meteorologist

San Francisco has the reputation for its fog, but for those of you that don't live in the Golden State's Central Valley we get quite a lot as well. In fact, the fog where I work is thought by some to be even worse and is known as tule fog.



I always get questions about how I like driving in the fog on my long commute, but I don't see the big deal as it's about 10 times better than driving in a blizzard. The visibility is the same, but you don't have the additional worry about sliding on ice! So it's foggy a lot this time of year (rainy season) and RJ is in my car a lot and a few times I'd have to explain to him why he couldn't see the cows and horses and goats that we typically pass on the way to school.

So last week, we were driving (through fog) to school and RJ spoke up from the back seat saying, "Mommy, Foggy, Outside". To which I responded by telling him, "Yes RJ, it IS foggy outside. That's why we can't see a whole lot."

Then he said something even more remarkable.

He said, "foggy...outside" then paused for a second or two and then said, "fRRoggy...bathtub" (he has a frog-themed bathroom).

I found this remarkable because it was showing that he could recognize the similarities between the two words as well as differentiating them for meaning (and location!). I love how he can communicate with us!



This picture was taken by Lance on his iphone on his way to work. Once the fog lifts, the rain slows, and the sun comes out it can be quite beautiful.

RJ Goes to the Library

A couple of weeks ago, when I was on a break between Winter and Spring semester that was far too short, RJ and I went to the Tracy library to meet up with my good friend Sara and his good friend Madeline. While there, RJ was pretty much in heaven, running around picking up random books and sitting on my lap to read them and then run around some more. He picked out his very own books to take home with us.

Airplanes: This was a book that was far too advanced for him on Airplanes (it was from the big kid non-fiction section, but he spotted it and became instantly obsessed with it). He loved going through it saying airplane, airplane, airplane, airplane, etc...

A Sandra Boynton board book that involves counting Hippos going to a party: This book gave him a new word to add to the "list" that I can no longer keep up with - wagon.

Trucks: A nice little book that talks about different kinds of trucks on the road. His favorite pages in the book were the page that had the bulldozer (or "digger" in RJ speak) on it and the page with the ice cream truck.

Mi Cuarto: A spanish board book that labels household items. I've been trying to expose RJ to a little Spanish, even though I don't speak it really. I remember some of the vocab from high school, but that's about it. Anyway, I would label the items in Spanish and RJ would correct me by using the English. But it did what I wanted it to do - it exposed him to it.

And finally, the book that I think RJ was using to try and send a message:



Here comes Grandma!: He was instantly obsessed with this book and he found it and picked it up all by himself. It's a cute little book where a Grandma is on her way to see a grandkid and does so by walking, bicycling, driving a bright red hot rod, riding a horse, flying an airplane, skiing, taking a hot air balloon, swimming, and riding as a stowaway on a train until she finally sees her grandkid at the end. RJ has a Grandma (Lance's mom) and a Grammie (my mom) and on about half of the readings, RJ would point to the Grandma and say "Grammie" and on about half he would say, "Grandma". I found this pretty cool that he was relating the book to his own life. He also labeled the child in the book as RJ every single time we read it! I think that RJ was trying to tell Grandma and Grammie something by picking out this book!

RJ GPS

My commute is longer than average at about 50 minutes, but more scenic than most too since we get to ride alongside the coastal range that borders Tracy on the south and west, and then drive through some of the best farmland in California as we pass vineyards, orchards and dairy farms before hitting a short piece of freeway to get to school. Yes, RJ and I do see quite a few of the "Happy Cows" of California.

Anyway, on the ride in, once we pass the farm animals, RJ is usually occupied by either begging to see a digger or a bus or chanting his current favorite teachers' and/or friends' names over and over as if that would make us get there faster (at least we know he likes school!). But on the way home, he is a little more willing to have a conversation and as we get close to home, he gets a little antsy about being in his car seat, and starts asking to get out. So when this happens I usually tell him that we're getting close and tell him which road or route # we're on and I'll give him updates when we turn. Also, RJ seems to enjoy my driving, as he says, "Whheeeee" every time I make a turn - even when it's a normal everyday turn and not the kind of turn that I'd take in a buggy or anything!

Just last week, it seems as though he's internalized these direction and can now tell you that we live on Calaveras and, while he's in the car, he will pretend he's the GPS and give the last three directions to get to our house.
Here's a little demonstration since I don't have the video camera on while I'm driving.




Now we're working on colors: red light = stop (which he pretty much has down) and green light = go, which is a little more inconsistent. He may not even be able to see the lights anyway, but he doesn't recognize the colors himself yet - he only responds to, "RJ we're at a red light, what do we do?". If you're interested in his color recognition, it's still developing. Right now, everything is yellow.

RJ the Delivery Boy

Here is another post from the archives. I can't believe that I'm still 6 months behind in editing all the videos we've taken on the video camera!

From August 2008 (14.5 months):
RJ has hit a very very very exciting milestone. He can follow simple directions. I could elaborate, but really, just watch the self-explanatory video.



We kept him busy for about 20 minutes with this "game".

Bad News for Yahoo...

This is another video from when RJ was 15 months, part of the reason why we think RJ's one in a googolplex!

The beginning of the end of the boobie era....

When RJ was just over a year old, we started dropping nursing sessions one by one. I led this process because I knew that come fall semester, I was going to need business hours free of nursing so that I could actually do my work at work and not both at work and at home in between nursing sessions (last year, I'd just about get focused and then it would be time to nurse or pump again and it was exhausting). This was pretty easy for the most part because he was getting to the point where he didn't want to stop playing to nurse, and he loved sippy cups of cows milk. But he loved his morning and evening nursing, so we kept them both and I made the decision that once the middle of the day sessions were cut, the weaning process was going to be solely in RJ's court. Around October or November, RJ decided one morning that he didn't want to nurse. I asked him, "RJ do you want the boobies?" and he simply replied, "no" and went on with his playing. From that day, he pretty much dropped the morning session (which means we can get to school earlier, which helps me get more work done when I have child care and less on the weekend!).

The evening nursing was a completely different story - he would be frantically asking for boobies as early as our commute home sometimes! I was still loving it and he was clearly still loving it! So we had a don't offer, don't refuse policy, where RJ would ask for boobies and I would nurse. Then, a couple of weeks ago, on a Friday (the 20th of February maybe), Lance got home just as I was getting RJ into his PJs and the distraction seemed to make him forget to ask and he simply went through the rest of the routine without asking. Since that day, he's been asking for them on average of every 4-5th day or so. It's actually been kind of nice to still be able to nurse him from time to time, but not HAVE to every day. Plus, it seems to be a nice gradual wean for me - I haven't had any pain or fullness or anything. I'm sure the absolute end is near, and I'm looking forward to having my body 100% back, but it's been an absolutely fantastic almost 21 months - both RJ and I have really enjoyed nursing and I am so happy that we've been able to keep it up so long. It was great for bonding and health and even the environment! Now I just hope that he doesn't suddenly start catching every little cold at school as a result! The kiddo really is growing up now!