Mid Week Updates

This past weekend was pretty busy. We had some friends, Tony and Tara visiting from out of town, here for GDC and scoping out the area in hopes to maybe move here. We met them in the afternoon and went to a cool SciFi bookstore called Dark Carnival. After we went to down town Berkeley, walked around checked out a comic book store and got some Gelato.



Later we met some mutual friends. Mike, Diana, and little Otter over at our house and we had dinner in. Joel loves to cook for friends and it is so fun to have people over for dinner. Especially when they have a baby for Holly to play with! Earlier in the day Holly and I went shopping at Costco to get some dinner supplies. I found some fresh salmon for 12$ and it was enough to feed 6 people, large portions (normally in a restaurant for 12$ each) Joel had just read in his Cook's Illustrated magazine some tips on how to keep it from sticking to the grill, and it worked like a charm. Everyone loved it. He also made some potatoes and asparagus from our veggie box and threw on some chick for me and a few Garlic Chicken Sausages for everyone to snack on.



I love Costco, when you can buy in bulk for some things you get amazing prices, and while for just the two of us, it would have been a waist, for a small gathering it was perfect. We also get fresh chicken breasts in bulk there and Joel will prepare some dinners and freeze them, for easy access later in the week. I also picked up some wine, which was a good deal and everyone enjoyed that. Holly and Otter hung out for a bit. He is only 4 months old, but a hit of the visit was getting to weigh him on our scale. He was hear about 3 weeks ago and gained 1.5 lbs topping out at 16.5 lbs, only 2.5 lbs lighter then Holly and she is a year old. He liked hanging in her little nest, and we tried him in the little red chair which he liked last time, but with the added bulk of his cloth diaper, he is too big for it now.. Its amazing.On Sunday we ran some errands and cleaned the house and rested from the week.




Monday was crazy busy. Holly had Therapy in the morning with Katie, it had been almost 2 weeks since she had seen her do to some reschedules and illness. This session was to be video taped for her to share with her colleagues and it was fun to work the camera and watch them play.After that Paige and Amy came over. Paige is 3. It was amazing having her. We joke about Holly leaving a path of destruction in her wake "Hollzilla" but Paige, in ten minutes did what it would take Holly an entire day to do. Every bag of blocks and toy was dumped out and she had a blast running from new item to new item checking everything out. It was certainly a glimpse into my future, and while slightly overwhelming, it was so fun.



She and Holly played remarkably well. Holly would follow her around as fast as she could like a little puppy wanting to play with and touch everything Paige was playing with. Paige has seen video's of Holly in the ball pit, and she wanted to try. I posted these on Wednesday but they don;t really do the experience justice. Paige would hide and bury herself under the balls and Holly would look for her. Then she would press her face when she found her, and then push her own face into the net and make a funny face at her. They did this over and over. Then Paige would dump out ball and Holly would hold them up for her to grab and Holly was laughing hysterically. She was having so much fun, I don;t think I have ever seen her laugh so much, she was utterly mesmerized by Paige and how much fun Paige was having in the ball pit.Eventually we had to wind things down, Paige had to go home for dinner with her Dad, Amy was a former co-worker of mine, so while we mostly talked mommy stuff i did get a few updates on my old job which was fun too. We certainly will be getting together again soon.



Then I was off to pick up daddy for the last day of our parenting workshop. Holly exhausted fell fast asleep in the car and slept the first 30 or so minutes of the workshop. Once she woke and we fed and changed her she was very cuddly. She likes to wake up slow and stay in my arms for awhile. But then of course Seth came and she just had to go and play with him. She was so well behaved. Now that she was pretty familiar with the space and had done the rounds she was happy to stay in the general vicinity of Mom and Dad and play with Seth and her toys.





Lots of the other parents had coffee cups and the little ones kept trying to get into them, so we gave them a cup of there own to play with, Seth was showing Holly how it works. They are just about the same age, I think Holly might be 1-2 weeks older. It is amazing watching two kids of the almost exact same age play together, the similarities and differences are so neat. At the end of the class when it was time to go, Seth gave Holly a hug. It was so sweet.



Well other then this Chaos, I decided that I would hang low on Tuesday I originally had a play date at a Bunny Farm and an Eye Doctor Appt scheduled, but the Dr. Called to Cancel, so I figured lets stay in and rest we can go see Bunnies another time, these play dates happen Monthly. It was a nice relaxing day which i spent most of it playing with Holly and reading a parenting book for my Playgroup / Book Club on Thursday. I will post more about that later.

Finally the weekend also had some sucky parts too. On Friday it seemed we may have forgotten to lock our car door, and when I went down to go shopping everything had been riffled through. I had about 20$ in change that was taken and sadly my GPS and cell phone charger were also missing. I was mostly mad that I lost all my addresses I had about 50 in there from all the stuff we had been doing, so it was annoying. It was hidden from view inside a compartment, so a passer by would not see it, I thought this would be good enough, even though Joel always tells me to bring it upstairs. But I guess with someone actually going through everything its not safe. Thank god though that my stroller, fast track, and Garage Door Opened were not taken, and nothing was missing from the garage. When I got to Costco I got a new GPS, so I am out 20$ Plus 169$ for the replacement, and a Pair of Sunglasses.

Sadly, however we are dumb, and the next night our other car got broken into. That is my "sports car" and the battery has been dead. When the grannies were visiting we had triple A jump it and i drove around for over an hour, then the next day they went to drive it and it was dead. We haven't even looked at it since, I haven't had time to deal with it. Well we aren't quite sure if it was too left unlocked, or if the person crawled in through the truck, which i can;t seem to lock when the battery is dead, but this time, it looks as if someone was "living" in my car. I heard noises about 1:00 Am and Joel had woken up, we looked out and saw something in the street that later we discovered were my floor maps. When he went to investigate and discovered it was torn up we called the cops. I made a report on both cars at this time. But inside we found a bag of leftover pizza, a sweat shirt and dress and shoes and even a wig. We don;t know if they had been there for several days or just that night, since we hadn't looked into the car for a few weeks, and the windows are tinted. I didn't have anything of value that I recall in there, so nothing seemed to be missing.

The next morning Joel cleaned all the stuff out. Then tonight, we were shocked when a woman knocked on our door and admitted she was sleeping in the car and she was so sorry and please don;t call the cops on her but can she have her stuff back. Joel told her it was in bags in the trash and she could go and get it. He said she didn't even look like she was homeless, but was very skinny and tired looking. it made me so sad. and in all honesty, I don;t think this was related to the theft from the night before, but then again, I am a very trusting person. Crazy Isn't it!

Sunshine

Sunshine
Originally uploaded by vczdavis

The title of this post is quite optimistic I had a pretty bad day, but it was good in the middle and ended well.. So lessons learned. It started off with me being very tired and waking up and sitting on the couch and hearing a loud noise and suddenly remembering it was street sweeping and realizing this meant two.. yes two 35$ tickets. It was already 10:00 Holly woke up late and the sweepers usually come earlier so we didn’t even bother to go and look.

Then I check my email and see that my neighbor had send a message that he came over and knocked and rang the bell to remind us but didn’t know if we were asleep or out but perhaps the email would reach us in time. Alas, no I thought. Strike two. How did I not hear my obnoxious door bell this morning?? So then I hear something and look outside and don’t see the tickets. Well on Joel’s way out he wanted to put a sweater in the car so I just assumed he grabbed the tickets off the windshield. Yes… Strike 3. 20 minutes later I hear a very loud noise and it is the street sweeper coming by at 11:00 and there are two shiny tickets on the dash.. What are they doing coming at 11:00 when for the last 4 years they almost always get her before 9 AM? I actually had 3 opportunities to move my car this morning and was either too dumb or too tired to realize it at the cost of 70$ lesson 1 learned.

Well my afternoon got better. Not before Holly took an only 30 minute laugh giving Mommy no respite this afternoon we headed out to SadieDey Café.. I am trying to get into the habit of Calling Tumble and tea this, as that is the new name. I don’t like it but I guess it is sticking and I have to get used to it. We were meeting an old colleague of mine for lunch and she agreed that a Play café would be ok. I figured we would have much more of a chance to talk if I could let Holly run around and play instead of trying to constrain her in a high chair at a real restaurant.

We had a great lunch and I we had lots of time to catch up. When I first arrived I was the only person in the Café which is a little eerie since it normally has a ton of gremlins running in every direction but alas it was like 80 degrees outside and the workers said that sunshine is there enemy, on a nice day everyone goes to the park. They were even thinking about closing early. I suppose I could have taken Holly to the park, but later the other moms agreed that she is too little, I mean not too little to go on walks and play “some” at the park, but I am not ready for her to be crawling around in the sand and dirt on all fours and put it in her mouth, whereas the Café was a safe place for her to let out all of her energy and explore.

By the time my lunch was over there were many other kids there, three specific babies Max, Zia and another little girl all had fun with Holly. I admit with my friend as a distraction I was a bit neglectful and told the other moms that Holly is very social and friendly and they could feel free to move her is she gets too “in their face” when playing. They were all very excited to have their babies play with her though and from my seat at the table I watched as she touched their faces and arms and they all crawled on top of each other and it was great. Without me hovering the babies were able to work things out on their own, I supposed I am a bit extra careful afraid she might scratch or accidently hit someone. She actually did “hit” one little girl with a toy, but she was ok and it was more like she put the toy down on her and she didn’t like that.

Also Holly was a very good eater. For lunch she had ½ a container of green beans and a whole container of banana orange. So my friend was getting ready to leave and I sit over by Holly and the other Moms and one asks if my bag is in the Cubby. I say that it is, it’s the yellow one, and they report that the woman by the door was just rummaging through it. I jump up, run towards the door, check my purse, see all my cash is missing and block her from leaving while I call over the employees.

She is immediately confrontational and whips out a wad of cash with 50’s and 100’s and says I have all my own Money, why do I need to take yours.. Is this your money? And then accuses me of racial profiling. Sigh…. All I know is that the cash was gone and someone said they saw her in my bag, so while the staff try to detain her and call the cops I go and talk to the witness (other mom). She said that when she went out to put her money in the meter she saw her standing by the cubby looking into the bags (plural) and that her purse was also in the same cubby as mine. She assumed both her hers but thought it was fishy when she was still standing there when she came back. Then when the woman went to go she only took one bag, so then she realized she must have been looking through someone else’s.

I checked and my Credit Cards and IPod and other stuff were all still in my purse, so it was only my cash. Sadly I don’t even know how much it was.. It may have been as little as 30$ but as much as 80$ I had a lot of 1’s like 15 and some 5’s and 10’s. I don’t think I had any 20’s. I had planned on putting more money in my purse before leaving the house but didn’t, so I am grateful of that. So the thing is, she was smart. Only taking cash there was no way to prove if it was mine or hers and the staff couldn’t force her to stay though they tried. It took like 20 minutes to even get through to the cops and she was gone by then, and it was maybe 90 minutes before I left and they had not shown up, so I wrote down my contact information and my statement and left it for them to give to there local beat cop when he came by the next day. The guy who works there said he has seen her before, but as far as he knows she has never done anything like that before. The sad thing was she had her little boy with her, which is why no one though anything of it, but he looked like 8 which is a bit old for the place. She said she was there picking up the local free parenting magazines and there is a sign that clearly states to keep your valuables with you, so it was my bad. I am too trusting and should have known better. I am there so often and leave my stuff there all the time, but I guess I have learned better. It ultimately just makes me sad.. Less angry about losing 30ish dollars but Angry that I have to worry now every time I am there about my stuff.

So today was a BAD money day for me. But I tried to brush it off and not make it ruin the rest of my day. Later I went to pick up Joel and we went to Baby Brigade. Holly was zonked in the car after playing for like 5 hours but by the time the movie started she woke up with a vengeance. I actually fed her pears and some more green beans while watching the movie, while she sat in my lap, which I think is impressive. She is starting to out grow baby brigade… So I know why the age limit is 1. That doesn’t mean Joel will get out of going again during the next two months, But I am second guessing letting her sleep on the way. I guess I hoped she would sleep longer, like half the movie. But she wanted to be the center of attention so instead of crying like the other babies she just wanted to talk through the whole movie squealing during all the most inappropriate times I just had to laugh.

Oh and we saw 7 Pounds. It wasn’t good, but I enjoyed it, so it wasn’t bad. I had the heartfelt reaction it was hoping for. It was a very good premise, but I felt like with a better writer and maybe a more Indy feel it could have been much much better. I think I lost my brain for the day, or maybe this heat is just getting to me, but I ordered a small pizza for dinner so I was still really hungry and filled up on Popcorn instead of real food, but Joel said he was full so that was good. Holly’s energy didn’t diminish when we got home and she played and played. She then got very cranky very quickly and cried a lot when Joel tried to put her to bed. She drank 1 bottle but it didn’t make her fall asleep, and she just kept crying so I had Joel make another and that did the trick, she drank ½ of it but then woke up like 3 more times, so I had to hold her and rock her for a little bit before she was really down for the night. She was so sweet though that I didn’t mind, but I think her agitation really got to Joel, she hasn’t been this cranky for a while. I think it might just be growing pains. She ate almost 3 containers of food, and a yogurt today, But I think that if we hadn’t gone to the movie she would have gotten a bigger “food” dinner and it might have made a difference, but she has to learn to adapt, and we need to practice filling her needs when we do things like go out, so I didn’t mind practicing feeding her at the movie.

One cool thing that happened is we ran into this couple that we had met several months ago, and they remembered us as the little girl with the triangle toy. It was the toy that taught Holly how to sit up on her own, and I had brought it to the movie once and told them about it and explained how it would help their little guy learn to sit, and they reported back that it actually worked like a charm and they have told like 3 other friends to get that toy. So thanks to Tracey who got it for Holly to begin with. It’s great, she still plays with it.

Alas, it is late and I must go to bed. Tomorrow … Well today.. is a new day. Let’s hope for winter to last more than 3 weeks and for a cold front to hit us. Anyone who thinks global warming is a myth can come visit me.