Ellie the Elephant

Hippie the Hippo

Ellie and the Hippo and the Magic Treasure Box   

by Claire Elise  

1.  One day, Ellie the elephant went for a long walk.  She ended up by a lake.  There she found a treasure that belonged to Hippie the hippopotamus.  Ellie took the treasure and then placed it in her treasure box.  There was a magic crystal ball and rock in the treasure.

2.  Ellie took a magic crystal ball from her treasure box and placed it back at the lake and when the hippo came back, what happened?  He turned into a snake!

3. Ellie was sad that she turned him into a snake. , so she took the magic rock and turned him back into a hippo.  Hippie was so happy to get his treasure back and to be a hippo again that they were best friends for ever.

The triops and branchipus

The Triops and Branchipus 

by Ronin

1.  Once upon a time there was a triops who was very lonely.  He wanted to find a friend.  He looked all over, and he found a branchipus and they became best friends.

2.  Another day, the branchipus said, “Bye bye” and left to get some food and it was very quiet, so the triops read a story.  The branchipus came back.

3.  One time, they were trying to swim against a really strong current.  They thought they couldn’t at first, but they really could!  They jumped out of the water, and it was an island!  They came back on the other side and they had so much fun.

Mommy with Soren inside

Finally, I wanted to share this sweet little drawing that Claire made of me when I was pregnant with Soren.  It totally makes up for Ronin rubbing my belly the other night and saying, “Mommy, are all of these wrinkles on your tummy because of me and Claire and Soren?”  I might have a bit of loose skin there, but it was worth it. 

Soren’s birthday cupcake and a face coated with spaghetti and meatballs

The second birthday balloon

Soren did end up napping before his party, and everything turned out wonderfully except for a 20-degree difference between the projected weather and the actual weather.  We did not get the kiddie pool out, but it’s probably just as well that it was not sweltering.  Deno and Michael came and brought salmon mousse and watercress salad.  Ronin was eager to try both and piled them on his plate, but decided he didn’t like them all that much.  Dinah made deviled eggs after I begged for them.  I brought cold cuts, breads, and cheese and other sandwich fixings.  There was a cake, strawberry pie, fruit, nuts, and other munchies.  Mom decorated her house with balloons and streamers. Deno passed out cocktail umbrellas to all of the children.

Soren’s birthday cake

Soren and more balloons

This year I didn’t end up taking a Mother’s Day picture with me and my three kids, but we did take a picture for my mom to send to her mother, and my mom took one of the three kids for me.

My mom and her children

My children holding a sign I made when I was little

The children plastered to the window while Justin took the picture of us in the back yard

It was a nice party.  I think everyone had fun.  The children felt like it was a real celebration, and Soren knew that it was a party for him.   He’s hilarious, though.  I ask him how old he is, and he tells me different things all the time.  He sometimes says five, sometimes two, sometimes Sunday (because his party was on Sunday).

Happe Mommy Day card from Claire

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you out there!  We are celebrating Soren’s birthday today, so I’m getting ready for the small party that I cobbled together at the last minute and trying to get him to nap so he’ll be able to make it through the party without falling asleep at the end.  Right now he’s alternating singing and shouting at me over the baby monitor.  He’s been awake since 5:30 AM and it’s afternoon already.

Claire has been making me Mother’s Day cards, all on her own.  She has been writing a lot lately.  She spends a great deal of time writing little notes, either to herself or to other people.  I didn’t realize quite how remarkable it was for a 4-year-old to be writing, to be actually listening to words and making a reasonable approximation of them on paper, until I was picking her up at school one day and found a note she’d written to a classmate who’d just moved away.   She and her teacher were getting some pictures and drawings together to send to this girl, and I said, “Claire, did you write this note for Caley?”  She nodded yes, and it was pretty obvious what it said:  DEAR CALEY.  COM BAK SOON FRUM CLAIRE.  Her teacher grabbed the note, asked a couple of times if she wrote it all by herself, which of course she had, and then her teacher ran around to show it to all of the other teachers.  Up until that point, I had been excited about her writing, and I wanted to encourage it, but I also kept thinking about how I should get her to be a little less sloppy and how she needed to space her words a little better and use lower-case letters.   Now I realized that she was really doing something pretty exceptional.

Another Mommy Day card from Claire

I have to say, although the twins brought me some flowers in hand-decorated pots the other day for Mother’s Day, these charming little notes from Claire are just melting my heart.

I am fairly certain that Ronin can read better than Claire can.  I think I’ve mentioned that before, and it’s hard to know for certain, but he seems to be able to read more words and he is better able to figure out words that he doesn’t already know.  I mentioned this to Justin, and he said he thought this was the basic difference between girls and boys.  He said Claire is driven to write because of a desire to communicate.  He added she is just one step away from posting updates on Facebook and passing notes in class.  As it is, most of the notes she writes are meant for someone, although sometimes we find checklists of items she needs to make her crown (sequins, check, glitter, check, tape, check, glue, check) or a reminder that she wants a diamond for her birthday.

Claire, with two french braids

When Claire heard my dad got a little bit of poison oak exposure during his last trip here, she ran immediately to the table and wrote a note and drew a couple of pictures to send him. She asked me for help with part of poison oak, but did the rest of it herself.

NUVR
NUVR
NUVR TUTH
POISON OAC
(Never touch poison oak)

My newly organized dining room arts & crafts area

I went to The Container Store the other day with Soren and got some divided shelves for some of our arts and crafts.  I actually have a whole bookshelf in a separate room with bins of paints and glues and pom-poms and glitter and popsicle sticks and many other supplies, but it’s nice to have this area in the dining room with drawing and writing materials right at hand. We have coloring books and workbooks in the magazine files.  The shelves have areas for plain paper, crepe paper, construction paper, stencils, magazines to cut up, and books about drawing.  There is a bin with stickers, stamps, and scissors.  We have dry-erase books and cards for practicing letters and numbers.  We have card stock and patterned paper.

Claire’s watercolor

Art project: cut tissue paper into shapes, seal in contact paper, outline with Sharpie, hang in window.

Drawing of a diplodocus

Looking up at the redwoods

We have had more than a week of very nice weather with a small rain shower in the middle.  Last weekend we drove out to the coast in Marin County to look at the giant redwoods in Muir Woods and to dip our feet into the Pacific Ocean, without that pesky Bay in the way.   We packed a day’s worth of water and milk (for Soren) and snacks and drove across the bridge.   It was incredibly crowded.  The weekend, the nice weather, and apparently a free day at the state parks all combined to create a massive traffic jam anywhere that was relatively pleasant, thus making it not pleasant.  There was nowhere to park anywhere near Muir Woods.  We skipped it and decided to go to the beach first.  By the time we got to the beach, we’d been in the car for several hours and Soren fell asleep right when we got there.  There was no parking at the beach, either.  I dropped Justin and the twins and the sand toys off, and drove off to look for parking with a sleeping Soren.

Reading a sign at Muir Woods

There was no parking anywhere.  I kept driving off the beach parking lot, up the hill, around the roads, coming back to the beach parking lot, circling around, and trying again.  There was no roadside parking, no parking in other parking lots, and I couldn’t pull off the road anywhere.  If I got far enough away, I lost cell phone reception and was worried that Justin would need me to come back and I wouldn’t be available.  Meanwhile, Soren was still sleeping, I had my lunch waiting for me, and I was still driving around.  After about an hour, on my 5th pass through the beach parking lot, I lucked into a spot as a car was pulling out.  I stayed there and ate my sandwich as Soren napped.  Everyone came back, sandy and frazzled after about two hours on the beach, and they changed clothes (I have a bin of spare clothes in the back) and we went back to the woods.  After only one try, we found a parking spot.

Inside the trunk of a redwood

There was a lot of running and shrieking.  Ronin is getting more and more frustrated with his activity restriction.  He and Claire have been fighting more, and the noise level in this house has been increasing dramatically lately.  They still play really nicely together, but there are times when I just want to tell them to stay in separate rooms because they can’t interact without hurting each other, each physically or emotionally.  On their kindergarten paperwork, I asked that they be put in the same classroom, since they seemed like they could be a support to each other while each being independent enough to develop their own friendships and individual styles, but I have been wondering lately if that was the right decision, considering how often they have been at each others’ throats lately.

They can be so sweet to each other

It’s interesting how being a mother really changes one’s perspective.   My sister and I fought a lot when we were growing up.  At the time, I know it was distressing to my mom, but that was secondary to the need to deal with whatever my sister was doing to me.  Now, as a mother, I can really see how painful it is to have children fighting.  It’s hard just to have conflict around, in general, but it’s that much worse when it’s people you love hurting other people you love.  We went to the rocket launch at Snow Ranch over the weekend and I pulled off the highway and put the entire car in time out until the screaming stopped.  I would not go again until the car was quiet.

Justin thought that everyone was just feeling vulnerable and competing for attention, and we are so busy trying to deal with one crisis after another that it’s hard to give each one of them enough attention and affection, so we decided to try to spend all weekend lavishing them with attention and affection.  At the rocket launch, each of us was constantly holding or hugging or cuddling one or two children, or going for a little hike with someone, or giving someone a pep talk, or holding a hand.  We normally spend so much time saying “Don’t bite that!”  and “Don’t touch that!” and “Don’t put your pee there!” and “Don’t lick that!” and “Don’t stick your hand in the rattlesnake hole!” and we were determined to change the ratio of imperatives and have more conversation and less alarm, and have them feel useful and interesting and not like they were doing something wrong all the time.

Playing peek-a-boo through some posts

Operation Attention felt really good, for all of us.  Still, I can’t say it helped the screaming and the fighting.  It was on the way home that I had to put the whole car in time out.  We actually ate dinner in two separate restaurants because the children could not find any foods that they could agree on.  It was a more peaceful dinner this way, but obviously not ideal.  We’re still trying to pay more attention to each individual, and seize little moments for cuddling or for telling stories or for talking, and to make less of our daily actions about managing each little crisis that comes up.   This has always been our goal, but it gets kind of lost in the daily shuffle sometimes, and even though we shouldn’t need a to-do list for our families, sometimes it helps just to think about the priorities again in real life situations.

Ronin, battling his activity restriction

Mountain View Cemetery

I believe it was at Sophie’s birthday party last summer when I first heard about this cemetery.  One of the dads was talking about having either a date or a picnic there, and I raised my eyebrows.  At a cemetery?  He laughed.  “It’s not that kind of cemetery!”  He added that it was a lovely place, where people take walks and picnics and it’s very family friendly and I should really take the kids there some day.  It’s been on my list of places to visit for a while.  It was all of that and more.  The Mountain View Cemetery encourages people to walk around and visit, and even offers tours.  People were jogging and having picnics and lying on the grass.  It is a huge place, beautiful, with wonderful views from the top of the hill.

Soren in the cemetery

The children had me read some really sad notes that a mother had left at a child’s grave about how much she missed her son and how she thought about him every day, but the rest of the day was quite pleasant.  There were some very old gravestones, and some elaborate tombs.  It was fascinating, and we only saw a small corner of it.  I would love to go back.

Claire running over the hill

Last weekend we met one of Justin’s friends from work and his family at Cal Days, at the University of California, Berkeley.  It’s basically a huge open house on the campus, with a lot of the departments opening up their labs and providing demonstrations that are kid-friendly.  Claire and Ronin got to look at bats and snakes and fossils and they were able to identify things through microscopes.  They saw ‘physics is fun’ examples on the lawn.  They both got hugged by a robot.  That same robot demonstrated that it could fold laundry.  If only we could bring it home, and if only we could teach it to put laundry away.

Claire getting hugged by a robot at UC Berkeley

It was a really hot day, and we walked all over the big campus, and our children had a ton of fun with Rob’s three daughters.  Ronin was complimented on his advanced microscopy skills.

Claire and Ronin at Cal Days

Meanwhile, I feel I should mention what has been consuming Justin’s time and thoughts lately (besides work and children, of course).  He mentioned an idea he had for an invention a while back, and I told him if he thought he could do it, then he should go for it.  So he’s spent the past month learning how to create circuits and making intricate Arduino microcontrollers for this invention he has been developing. At night he takes over the dining room table with bits of wiring and circuits and his soldering iron, and he’s borrowed one of my cookie sheets to keep the little bits under control because they’re really tiny and they tend to get loose easily. He talks to me about potentiometers and nanocoulomb meters and I try to understand the intricacies as best I can, and I watch the lights turn on and off.

Justin's project

He did seem a little disappointed when I made cookies yesterday and I only made 12 cookies total, but I did only have one cookie sheet.

"I want to use the big potty!"

Soren has taken it upon himself to start potty-training, since apparently I’m being too slow.  He learned to open the baby gate that kept the bathroom off-limits to the likes of him, take his clothes and diaper off, scramble up to the toilet, and use it.  He also learned to unroll the entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet, which is why we have removed it and placed it out of his reach.  It sounds pleasant, to have a self-taught baby, but it’s not that easy.

He doesn’t go consistently, so he will sometimes still pee when he’s not in the bathroom, and sometimes when he’s not wearing a diaper, and if we don’t get to him in time he will flop down into the puddle and kick around in it for a minute.  Unfettered access to the bathroom is kind of frightening.  I keep having flashbacks to Ronin flushing the fairy down the toilet.  If I can’t make Soren understand that an entire roll of toilet paper doesn’t belong in there, how am I going to keep other objects out of the toilet?  He doesn’t seem to fully understand or listen to me when he is fixated on the bathroom.

He goes into the bathroom as often as every three minutes, sometimes.  I keep trying to encourage him to use the small portable potty in the living room (so I can keep an eye on him when I’m doing other things), but his decided preference is for the big potty.  He can use both, one after the other.  I think he just goes a little bit and saves the rest in order to be able to use the potty more often.  If I try to put a pull-up or underwear on him afterward and he’s not ready for it, it can be a battle of epic proportions.  He is very strong and very determined.

The other day when I was putting the bedding and the trundle away, since I slept on it a couple of nights in a row after Ronin’s surgery to make sure he didn’t need anything during the night, I came out of the twins’ bedroom to find that Soren had left his pajamas and night-time diaper in a pile in the bathroom and had pooped in the toilet and then was running all over the house naked, without having wiped himself.

It’s very time-consuming.  I’ve been late leaving the house a couple of times this past week because of Soren needing to go to the bathroom over and over again for half an hour at a time.  He is requiring a lot of attention and he gets very upset when he does not get what he wants.  I’m half pleased and half unhappy by this new phase in his life.  I had hoped to do our next Santa Barbara road trip before he was potty-training, since I do not look forward to stopping every half hour for potty breaks.  Hopefully he will get used to the demands and sensations a little more by then.

Dressed up and ready to go

Before you get too alarmed, this was a planned, outpatient surgery that we have been thinking about for six months or so.   Ronin had a hydrocele that was found after his four-year-old check-up.  It’s similar to a hernia.  It wasn’t causing him any pain, but it was getting bigger and it would not go away on its own and it would have the potential to some time become a medical emergency.  We opted to take care of it now, while that area was still just another body part to him and while he was young enough to possibly not have all or any of it become a long-term memory that could last into adulthood.

He is out of school for the week for recovery, and I have the whole week off.  I got him a Lego set to play with, since he needs to be on activity restrictions for a while and he has been having so much fun building stuff lately.  The night before his surgery I talked to him about what to expect, from arrival to discharge, including the arm bracelet and the Versed to make him relax and all the doctors and nurses coming in and out of the room asking questions and talking to him and to us, and needing to put on hospital clothes and getting his vital signs taken.  He had to be on a clear liquid diet all day until four hours before his 4 PM surgery, at which point he could have nothing by mouth.  He was very excited about having Jell-O and Popsicles.  I told him he could have chicken broth for when he got sick of Jell-O, but he didn’t believe that was possible, until he actually did get sick of it.

Showing how calm he can be with vital signs

The nurses were very impressed with how well he did, and how much he understood.   They didn’t even think he’d be able to hold still for the blood pressure cuff.   It was a long two hours in the intake area, and although we were happy with the doctors, it was not reassuring how often nurses came in with the wrong treatment or the wrong chart.

The surgery was only about an hour, and then we were able to go see him in the recovery room.  We sat with him for a long time until he woke up, at which point he was just miserable and uncomfortable and wanted to go home right away.  We hustled him out of there after giving him some of the pain medicine we had picked up, and he went right to sleep when we got home.  I slept on the trundle next to him all night, gave him more medicine when he woke up in the middle of the night, and he is doing much better today.  He is still uncomfortable, and says the operation wasn’t as good as he thought it would be.  He is walking a little funny.  He still needs pain medicine, and it’s obvious when it’s wearing off, but supposedly after another day he should be able to be okay with just Tylenol.  I had appointments all day today, so Justin stayed home and built Legos with him and my mom entertained Soren and kept him from tackling him.  Claire was at school.

After this, the biggest challenges are going to be keeping him from being too active, and keeping Claire and Soren from jumping on him.

Ronin, you are such a trooper!  Great job.

Soren on Dad's lap at Ardenwood

Coincidentally, the Scottish Fair was going on at Ardenwood this year, same as during Dad’s visit last year.  We went down to see it.   Claire begged to learn how to play the bagpipes.  I told her it was a good goal, but our house was not soundproofed enough.  She loved watching the dancing.  There were lots of baby animals.  Ronin and I got to pet a baby goat.  Soren saw lambs gamboling in the fields.  We heard a peacock shriek.  Ronin and I practiced carding wool.  Dad spent a lot of time off with Claire.  At one point he called me and asked what to do, since she had gotten into an ice cream line and seemed determined to get to the front of it.  I reminded him she didn’t have any money.  Dinah cuddled a kitty and held Soren a bunch.  We saw Scottish dancers.  The kids played in piles of logs and threw fake bolos and axes and claymores and did marble art and I thought about how cute they would look in kilts if we did this next year.

Claire and Bruce walking backwards in Redwood

Soren went without his nap for four days in a row, or maybe five?  It was a lot.  He didn’t nap on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and then he refused his nap on Tuesday only to fall asleep in the car in the late afternoon on our way to errands after a playground expedition.  I carried him into Target on my hip, sound asleep, and then finally put him in a cart but held his head up with one hand.  One sales associate remarked, “I wish my baby would sleep like that!”  I told her that she probably would not want her baby to sleep the way my baby sleeps.  He has been going to bed generally earlier, without his typical three hours of yelling and jumping around.

Family get-together at Mom's house

We had a family get-together at my mom’s on Sunday.  The children love dressing up for parties.   My cousin Annabelle is going to college at Mills now, so she is going to be more a part of our gatherings now and in the future.  Justin and I had a wonderful time, and I think our children did too.  This was probably the first time ever that we both felt able to converse with people without having to maintain constant vigilance over our children.  It has happened to one or the other of us occasionally, but the other person was totally occupied at the time.   At my mom’s house, there are toys for the children and plenty of people that they know and not too many hazards.  Ronin would play with legos in the living room while Claire and Soren were in the back yard sweeping, and Justin and I could talk to people while they were doing those things, and keep only half an eye on them.  It was so relaxing!

Claire and Soren cleaning up the back yard

Ronin in his party clothes

Claire and Dinah and Charlene all taking pictures at the same time

Grandpa Bruce reading a story about coal miners to Claire

Justin and Ronin making silly faces

FUNcle Gilbert and Ronin

Justin, exhausted from all the fun, taking a nap with Alice the doll

Ronin and Grandma Jan

Claire and Grandma Jan in their Easter bonnets

The most excellent news about Easter was that Deno’s butcher did not get the rabbit in time and we did not have to explain to our children why we were eating bunny for Easter.  I didn’t think too much about it until a few nights before the party, when Claire asked if the Easter Bunny would be coming to Dinah’s house instead of our house.  Justin and I talked privately about how to explain that maybe it was a very slow, naughty Easter Bunny, but instead I asked Dinah if there was any way the main dish could be changed.  No, she said, it was already ordered, and Deno was very good with kids so maybe he could make it an adventure for them.

Claire, Ronin, and Soren, doing "the bump" down the stairs

Fortunately there was no explaining to do.  They had a metric ton of candy and some lamb and turkey and pasta and crackers and lemon bars and cookies and more candy.  Dinah and Manuel thoughtfully provided an egg hunt and treats for our children and some others at their house, along with an Easter party.  We also got lovely Easter baskets and treats from Omie and Grandma Jan and our friend Chris, so it was a sugarfest.  I somehow managed to talk Claire into eating a carrot stick in between every cookie at the party, so she’d run grab a carrot, chomp it down, and then alternate it with a cookie.  After a while, we put their Easter baskets away and have been doling out their treats in small portions.

First thing in the morning, Easter baskets from Omie

Deno had suggested having an Easter bonnet contest, so my mom made sure that everyone had hats at the party.  She made bonnets for the girls, and got train hats for the boys.  Everyone loved them.

Ronin eating a sugar egg

We experimented again with having Soren skip his nap for this social event.  Things did not go so well the last time I deliberately had Soren skip his nap, but he remained in good humor throughout the day (although a little manic) and we just left in the mid-afternoon and tried to keep the late afternoon and evening calm until an early bedtime.  That was mostly okay.

Soren finding eggs during the egg hunt

We had an early and light dinner to make up for the over-consumption at noon, and then went for an after-dinner stroll around the neighborhood.  Claire and Ronin ran off down the block.  Soren would not stand up, and then when we let go of him, he ran off down the hill after them and promptly skidded down the sidewalk on his face.   He cried.  We expected to see blood and half his face scraped off.  It was not, but he had a big bump on his forehead.  When he woke up screaming in the middle of the night, that bump was much bigger, and it was hard to tell if it was his normal middle-of-the-night screaming or if he was screaming because he had a serious head injury that required medical attention and possibly an ER visit.   I spent a lot of time checking on him that night, but he was okay, and his bump was much better by the next day.

Soren throwing a ball at the Easter party

We did not do a whole lot of serious egg decorating projects this year.   Easter kind of snuck up on me, and I have been feeling kind of busy and overscheduled this Spring.  My mom has left me a couple of blown eggs, some of which the twins colored with markers and two of which I spray-painted incidentally while I was painting rockets.   Some of the other ones we did hard-boiled as a family while the eggs were still warm, with crayon shavings melted over the them, and you can see one that Ronin dyed at school, and a few leftover ones that I colored myself with markers.  I really liked the crayon bits.

Decorated eggs

The children dyed eggs, had an egg hunt, and got their faces painted like bunnies at school.  They have brought in signs of Spring for show and tell.  They ate jellybeans.

Ronin the bunny

And Claire drew a bunny and everyone spent a lot of time making Easter cards for everyone, but nobody told me about it and I just piled all of their papers in a pile on the sideboard like I always do, not realizing they were cards for people.  I apologize if you were due a card and did not get one.

Bunny by Claire

Happy Easter, everyone!

Ronin making bubbles at the Children's Discovery Museum

My mom did keep Soren up later than usual, and she said that he stayed up for hours in his crib, shouting “Mommy Mommy Mommy.”   It’s not just us.  I felt sorry for her, giving her a baby to watch who is such a difficult sleeper.  Apparently the motor on our heater broke as well, so she had a noisy baby and a heater that sounded like a generator every time it turned on.

Claire likes to write "Mommy" and "Claire" on most of her drawings

We got accepted to our first-choice kindergarten, which was a big relief.  Kindergarten is not easy here.   There is a lottery system.  There is no guarantee of getting into the most local, neighborhood school.  There is no guarantee that siblings will get into the same school.  The application process is complicated, and open houses for schools start in Fall the year before school starts.  We went to one open house, at our neighborhood school.   Twice as many families were there for kindergarten information night as there were open enrollment spots.   Our local school is rated pretty well.  We are supposed to put our top six choices down on the application, turn it in by the end of December, and hope for the best.  When I turned ours in, the secretary at the school told me, “When you don’t get in, this is the process you follow….”

"Look what I made!"

Anyway, I had been worried for a while about the possibility of Claire getting into one school and Ronin getting into another, and then I decided to not worry about anything until I got the school assignments.  Luckily, they are both in the same school and it seems to be one that is pretty good.  Now I am starting to worry about how to get all of them to school and what to do with them after school five days a week, when I work three random days a week.  They have after-school care but I think you have to pick which days they go, or pay for five days a week.  I thought child care was supposed to get easier once they were in school, but I think it might be harder.

I spent two hours the other night filling out kindergarten paperwork, and I have had to have their dentist fill out forms and I had to schedule a hurried school physical so their doctor can fill out forms as well.  Everything needs to be turned in within a month.

Claire at Joaquin Miller

Claire told me the other day that she’s too old to play with her baby dolls and she needs to have Barbies now.  I was not prepared for this conversation.  I reminded her that Ronin gave her Baby Violet and he put a lot of thought into her gift and she loves that doll.

It’s continued to rain here.  Everyone has been out of sorts off and on and at least one of the children is staying up past my bedtime every night.  Usually it is Soren, and sometimes it is Soren and someone else.  It is hard to sleep with him yelling.  I experimented with skipping his nap one day, and all he did was tell me he was tired during the day, but he still stayed up and yelled.  It makes no difference if we are there or not.  It is worse if we hold him.  I tried to let him sleep in the lower bunk of the bunk bed, and he ended up cuddling too fiercely with Ronin and it ended in bloodshed.   I’m thinking his two-year-molars are coming in, but also driving home from Monterey yesterday he had sort of a panic attack in his car seat instead of falling asleep, so I wonder if he’s starting to get scared of the dark as well.

Feeling groovy at the new jelly exhibit in the Monterey Aquarium

Yesterday we went to Monterey and played at the playground and went to the Aquarium and ate at a restaurant and came back around bedtime.  It was pouring rain on the way there and back, but sunny while we were there.   There were gigantic puddles in the sand in the playground, and the train was fenced off.  The aquarium was so busy it was hard to keep track of the children at some of the exhibits, and they squirmed in front of people to try to see the sharks and jellies.  It was a pretty nice outing, and even the dinner out was decent.

Claire and Ronin in the wave room