Another Sick Kid Update

He likes giving Daisy her toys, and he follows her around until she takes it.

He just gave her an empty baggie, and she took it just to get him to leave her alone.

Update on Sick Kid

Little Man was sent home Monday with a fever, which meant that he had to stay home Tuesday. I was planning to travel on Wednesday anyway, so that was fine. But Tuesday night he was still sick, so I moved my travels to Thursday. Last night I picked up my rental car and although grumpy, Little Man had no fever and was eating a little bit. But no, after his bath last night he got the chills then his temperature shot up.

So here we are. Sick Day #4. Working full-time and Momming full-time is for the birds.

He and Daisy are interacting more, which makes me very nervous. Right now he's hitting her in the face with a balloon.

We're also working on "Time Out." So far the message is not getting across.

I've seen this, his high-pitched whiny face, a lot.

A Giveaway: Pet Carrier

We have a winner! "Anonymous" (but she left her email address!) said: We know a chihuahua and a pug who would duel it out for this one. We won't let them. We'll decide for them if we win who gets it!

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Regular Readers: We'll be back to our regular posting after this week (but I just added a new one tonight, scroll down!). But last time there was a Bloggy Giveaways Carnival, I won two prizes, so it's time to give back. Plus as I pointed out before, my dog does not fit in this pet carrier, so I need to get it out of my home.

What I'm giving away: This Jeep pet carrier would be great for a small dog, a cat, or a little girl who wants to PRETEND she has a small dog or cat to carry around! It has a thick strap that you could wear as a messenger bag or over your shoulder. I won it from a contest that I don't remember entering. I can't actually imagine why I entered, because look at the size of my dog below.
How to enter: Leave a post on this blog entry and tell me what pet (or child) would be using this carrier. Make it up if you have to, I just don't want to see "Great giveaway, thanks!" for all the entries. Make sure there's some way for me to contact you. If you're not a blogger, leave your e-mail address.

I'll randomly pick and contact a winner on Sunday, August 3.

Man's Best Friend

More fun than throwing a ball? Throwing a ball at the dog who hates you.




I think he learned his lesson, as he is more wary of Daisy now.

Berry Picking

I decided to take Little Man berry picking this morning while Daddio is golfing. I pictured him running up and down the rows while I filled a bucket with blackberries.

This is not how it went down.

First of all, blackberries are just now coming into season, but since I like them better than blueberries, that's what I wanted to go for. So it wasn't easy pickin', it took some diligence and time to find the ripe ones.

Plus, the terrain was a little rough for short legs:So I decided to put him in the stroller. But since I hadn't brought our jogging stroller, this was rough going, and Little Man was still unhappy:Finally we found a compromise when he helped me by putting the berries I picked into our basket.Our harvest:Turns out Little Man doesn't even like blackberries, but he's still cute eating them:

Sufferin' Succotash!

Can you make succotash with zucchini?

I went out of town for 2 days and came home to 9, foot-long zucchini. Yikes. I'll make more zucchini bread, shred some for winter zucchini bread, give away what I can, and what else? Do any of you have good zucchini recipes?

My own compost pile is mocking me. It put up volunteer zucchini this year.

We had a storm while I was gone that drove the tomato cages into the ground, so now the tomatoes are all over the place and covering the green beans.

But in happy garden news, we have peppers! They're not ready for picking yet, but they're getting close. We also had enough green beans to serve 3 the other day. Last year we'd get like 12 green beans at a time. A good snack, but never enough for a meal.

Ice Cream is Important

Another post shamelessly enhancing my own quality of life. You see, there's this contest (remember I was telling you that there are giveaways on the internet all the time?) and the prize is ice cream. But in order to be entered to win I need to post my favorite flavor of ice cream here, as well as why I deserve to win.

Favorite flavor (of the moment): Chocolate Hazelnut (I can still taste it from our many gelato visits in San Francisco)

Why I deserve to win: Because ice cream makes me happy in a way that is indescribable with words. So happy that I have a happy ice cream dance that my legs do involuntarily when I eat ice cream. And I'm happy to report that Little Man has inherited my love for the cold stuff (he's also inherited my love for pizza). He doesn't yet have an ice cream dance, but he does have a sad face when the ice cream is taken away.

Elmo's Magical Powers

There's something suspicious about that Elmo character. Little Man has seen Sesame Street 3 times. He did get a Tickle Me Elmo for Christmas, and I just got it back out last night. As soon as I said "Elmo" just once, Little Man repeated with a perfect "Elmo." Are children born that way?

He is a little suspicious of Elmo, and mostly was concerned with standing Elmo back up after he fell down laughing.



Hello beautiful, what is your name?It's chocolate zucchini bread, and I plan to have the recipe memorized by the end of the summer. I made 4 loaves today, and it's SO delicious. I used this recipe except I decided that it was too light and substituted (re-substituted?) butter for half of the applesauce. I also used half whole wheat flour which TOTALLY makes up for adding extra fat to the recipe.

The 4 loaves took me not even one (very large) zucchini. I wish I had an extra freezer so I could make a year's supply of zucchini bread.

Summer Day

On Saturday we had our little friends M. and I. over to play in the sprinkler. M. said, "Mommy, it's a summer day?!" Yes, M., it's a beautiful summer day. We finished the day with sandwiches and bacon cheese fries from one of our favorite local restaurants. Yum.

When Pop was here for T's birthday he accidentally left a sprinkler that Abi sent for the kids. We got that and a sprinkler I got last summer out for a nice hot day. I only got pictures of Little Man before M. and I. got here.

Little Man stood on the deck waiting for the action to begin. But when I turned on Abi and Pop's crazy sprinkler, he disappeared. I found him here:He couldn't get any further away. Later when I turned the crazy sprinkler on for the very polite M., he said, "No thank you. NO thank you! NO THANK YOU!!!"

Yes, this sprinkler is much better when it's turned off:
Ah yes, the beach ball sprinkler is more toddler speed. When I turned this one on for M. and I., M. said, "I LOVE THIS SPRINKLER!"
And how great does our lawn look? Thank you, Daddio. Things are growing well this year. Check out a zucchini leaf (that's my hand, not Little Man's hand)Little Man continues to love beans. And T's cousin had Ritz Crackers ("Crackoos!") on hand in California, so that's a new favorite around our house, too!

Monterey Aquarium and Heading Home

*** See below for most of the Monterey pictures***

Saturday morning we all went to the Monterey Aquarium. This was a little tough on Little Man as it overlapped a bit with naptime, but luckily I had a lot of backup and Aunt L. and Uncle J. took Little Man for a while. The aquarium is smart, too, it has several areas for toddlers to play. Slides, blocks, etc.
I have a picture of Debbie, who we saw on Thursday (see lemon tree picture), and I in this oyster shell from our cross-country trip in 2000.

Saturday night we celebrated T.'s 30th Birthday and said our goodbyes. This was a long goodbye to Mimi and Grandpa J., as they soon headed back to their missionary assignment overseas.

The three of us had an early flight from San Francisco on Sunday, so we stayed Saturday night at at hotel near the airport. The flight home was much easier than the flight out, thank goodness.

Bye Bye, California:

Monterey

The third and final part of our CA trip was a weekend in Monterey with T.'s Mom's side of the family. There are 12 adults and 2 little guys. There are so many good pictures, I hardly know what to do with myself. We stayed here. It was fantastic:The 2 little guys, Little Man and J., enjoyed playing together. Much energy was devoted to getting pictures of the two together:
Friday night Little Man suggested that he and I leave dinner early, so we went to the beach and I took one or two pictures.

(I don't think I meant to take this one, but I kinda like it)

Later, most of the rest of the group joined us (Little J. wasn't feeling well so he and his parents stayed back)

Papa Bob and Little Man:
With Mama and Mimi:
With Mama:Trying to catch up with this dog (saying, "Oof oof oof"):Hanging out:The group (minus one family), composed. I wish Little J. and his family were in this one, but still it's priceless:
I'll conclude Monterey in a separate post.

San Francsico: Thursday

*** Scroll down for the other days of our San Francisco vacation. To see Monday's post, you're actually going to have to scroll past the 4th of July post, 'cause I started it before I did the 4th of July and I can't get it to move up***

Thursday morning we hit a few more touristy destinations, before heading to the South Bay area to visit some college friends for the afternoon.

We rode the cable cars! Although I've been to SF several times, I've never done that. Smile, the camera works again!
Little Man looking at Lombard St.:

We walked around a took some pics at the end of the line:

Then we got down to business with a brunch of ice cream sundaes at Ghirardelli Square (in case you had any doubt who planned this trip, it was me).

"Give me that sundae!! I want to put my hands in it!!"
Thursday afternoon Uncle J. and Aunt L. picked us up at our hotel and we drove down to South Bay to visit friends from college. Weather was lovely and their little town was lovely. We chatted, walked, and went to dinner. Here we are under their lemon tree:

Eventually we said our goodbyes and the three of us took the train back to SF.

Friday began the third and final portion of our trip. We have lots and lots of pictures of Monterey, so they will be at least one other post, at a later time.

San Francisco: Wednesday

Wednesday Morning we had tickets for Alcatraz! We were up and ready to leave early enough that we decided to walk to Pier 33 where our boat departed.

So, we looked at the map and chose Montgomery St. Looked like a straight shot from Market St. to Pier 33. When we turned onto Montgomery, we realized that it was another extremely vertical street. We knew we could handle it so we stayed the course and walked straight up. To what we later realized was Telegraph Hill. Then, the road ended. And yes, sure enough Pier 33 was straight ahead of us, but it was straight down.

I consulted a nice construction worker who showed us the stairs. Daddio picked up Little Man, stroller and all, and we hiked down the hill. Here they are at the bottom:
We barely made it to the Alcatraz ferry. Luckily they had Peet's Coffee on board, so we didn't have to deal with a grumpy Daddio.

Once again transportation was Little Man's favorite part of our journey (he also loved the Muni busses on Tuesday).

And, we were on "The Rock:
Seagull chicks are not cute, but they are preserved on Alcatraz so one of the trails that's supposed to be pretty was closed. There was poo everywhere, and Little Man was quite skilled in finding the dirtiest corners to drop his Nuk into:This would not be a pleasant place to live, although we learned that both as an army base and later as a prison, there were families living on Alcatraz. Not here, though:

The self-guiding audio tour of the cell house is great. Unfortunately Little Man was not great. When I finally figured out that there was an elevator and went to get our stroller, he fell asleep instantly, but until that point he whined, dove out of my arms, and when I put him down he walked the tour backwards. He was headed to solitary confinement. Unfortunately our camera battery died (more on that later) so we weren't able to get a photo of him screaming inside a jail cell.

Before the dead battery:
(Clearly we picked the wrong fellow-tourist to take this picture, as a third of it is wall. But click to expand this picture to see the look on LM's face and see just how he felt about being there.)

We all avoided buying "I escaped from Alcatraz" shirts at the gift shop, and I barely talked myself away from buying a sign displaying Alcatraz's rule #5 from its prison days:

"You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Anything else you receive is a privilege."

Back on dry land we headed up Fisherman's Wharf for some seafood, then back to the hotel for naps.

That evening we headed back into Chinatown for dinner. First we stopped at several of the many electronic shops at the entrance. I'd realized that our camera charger wasn't charging the battery. It probably was never meant to be de-coupled from the base, but it fit into the camera so I figured it would work. Well it didn't, so we bought a charger that worked for our camera battery, and were back in business.

Our tour book had a suggested walking tour of Chinatown which took us off the beaten path. We saw a fortune cookie company, a temple (where we could hear music), a statue of a Chinese emperor, and the square where CA was declared a state and where the first school in CA once stood.

We took a break to play before dinner. If you look for my purple jacket, you can see LM and I on the playground at the bottom of the photo:Our Chinese food was delicious. Little Man finally got his appetite back in full-force at this meal. Even when he's healthy he doesn't usually eat meat, but he was chowing down the barbequed pork. And we know he loves noodles:
The (blurry) gates to Chinatown:

San Francisco: Tuesday

My apologies, but we have no pictures from Tuesday. But here's what we did:

Tuesday a.m., we walked down Market Street towards the wharf. One of my main goals when in CA is to eat as much fresh produce, bread, and cheese as possible. So after a brief stop at Peet's Coffee and See's Candy (I know they have mail order now, but it's more special to stock up when in CA), we headed down there.

Oh! We do have a couple of pictures! Before the market opened:We had to wait for the market to open so we walked all along the piers. We made our brief, only stop on Pier 39 'cause Mama was hungry and the crepes looked to good to pass up. We also looked at the sea lions. Little Man "woofed" at them. "Oof Oof Oof" is the sound he thinks all animals make.

Then, the goal of the day, we went here:
Oh farmer's market, I love you. This is actually a view of the inside of the building where they have cheese, wine, bread, and some other shops. Outside is where the farmers set up shop:
After much sampling we stocked up on apricots, nectarines, blueberries, raspberries and from inside, sourdough bread and 2 kinds of cheeses. Then we stopped for burgers and garlic fries from here:
It's Taylor's Refresher, also in the market building. At this point our fantastic guide book,was 3-for-3 on food recommendations.

Back to the hotel for naptime. We had the zoo penciled into the afternoon, but slept through that time. Then we caught the bus to Golden Gate Park. I saw online that on Tuesday nights they have salsa music with tacos and margaritas. Unfortunately I didn't understand the vastness of the park, so we got off the bus a few miles from our intended destination. It was also cold and windy. We got to see the de Young museum (which was closed) but decided not to walk the length of the park to try to find tacos. It would've been dark by the time we had to try to find our bus route back.

We got our money's worth on our $3 bus fare because you can use it for unlimited rides within 90 minutes of purchase. We found our way back to North Beach. I ordered Italian take out while T. and Little Man played on the steep sidewalks and Little Man greeted all the streetcars with "Hi!". Back to the hotel for pasta and bed.

4th of July

Before I get back to the California posting, I'm going to stay somewhat up-t0-date with our 4th of July festivities.

We had a full house this weekend with two couples we're friends with, plus both of my parents in town. It was a good time.

Friday night we celebrated the 4th of July and T's 30th birthday. We had 14-15 adults and 4 little guys. We didn't take too many pictures but here are a few:


Little Man and I got T. a Nintendo Wii for his birthday. JG has the mad skills at playing Wii while sitting down and drinking a beer.And of course, we had fireworks of both varieties: do-it-yourself and professional. Little Man was not a fan.

Sorry to say, that's about all the pics from the weekend. There was much golf, napping, and river time. T. took care of Little Man on Sunday so I could go out on the river with the gang. I had a highly qualified canoeist guiding my boat, so other than one little rescue mission for our other two boats, I had a delightfully un-eventful time.

On to more routine activities. Little Man was not enjoying the grits we had with dinner tonight, so I thought eating them with a spoon might make them more desirable. (Apologies to the grandparents, I do not know what is on his forehead, he woke up that way this morning. I promise it is not a curling iron burn, although T. keeps telling me it looks like a burn.)

San Francisco: Monday

On Monday we left Sacramento and headed to San Francisco. I had enough Marriott points for a free room in a good location near Union Square. There was also a Hertz place near our hotel, so we dropped our rental car off so we wouldn't have to deal with it in the city.

T. had some work to do and Little Man needed a nap, so T. brought home Japanese food for a late lunch. I won't lie, most of our SF vacation was planned around meals.
Unfortunately that left us with no appetite for dinner, so we just walked up through Chinatown into North Beach, the Italian area. Lots of great restaurants and strip clubs. Well, what made the strip clubs great is the signs. They looked like they were straight out of the 50's. Or 30's. I don't know, but they were cool. We had gelato instead of dinner.

Then, T. said "California Street, can't lose with California." Which meant that we walked up and up and up until we were on the top of Nob Hill. It was so high and so steep that we each held a handle of Little Man's stroller on the way down. We spent a little time at a park at the top of the hill. It was very cold, but Little Man can swing for ages.

Weekend 1: Sacramento

Before we forget the trip, I really want to get these pictures and stories posted. I'm going to do it in increments.

The first weekend of our trip we stayed in Sacramento (No, I'm not going to report on the flight out. I'm trying to forget it.) with Daddio's Uncle Scott and Aunt Sherry. We also got to see Grandma Helen and her husband Peter, and Daddio's Uncle Rob.

Scott and Sherry live on a ranch with their two teenage daughters, A. and G. It would be a great place to grow up. Saturday night before dinner we went to feed the cows. But we discovered that the gate was broken and the cows were out. In order to get them in their pen, Scott honks the truck horn and yells, "Here Kids! Here Kids!" They follow the truck home.How Now, Brown Cow.
Right now they have several babies, and several very protective mothers. At one point G., Little Man, and I got between two mamas and the babies (and the food) and we were severely reprimanded by one of the mama cows. A. told her she'd be hamburger next week.

Feeding frenzy:

LM and I watch:They have a very green pond filled with big green frogs. Nobody caught one that night to show the camera, but there was stone skipping. Uncle Scott demonstrated that a true skipping master skips cow pies:
Sunday Little Man took a marathon nap (6 hours!). Sherry watched him while the rest of us went to the river. We also took a driving tour of Sutter's Mill where gold was first found in California. There's gold in them thar hills!

Our tour guides:T. demonstrates proper stone-skipping form and follow-through:

Sunday night Grandma Helen's church choir had the CD release concert for their annual CD. We got to go, meet her husband Peter, and join a group at dinner for Chinese food.
Some bonus shots from the weekend:

Monday morning we loaded up and headed to San Francisco. But that will have to be another post.