On the ferry to San Francisco

I wanted to make it a memorable day.  Ronin loves different modes of transportation, so I thought I’d incorporate a few different ways to travel.  The Bay Bridge was closed over President’s Day Weekend, so the ferry schedule was increased to make up for the heavier traffic.  It was not overcrowded, and with only one child, we were able to explore the entire boat during the transit.

Ronin on the second level of the Ferry Building

The Ferry Building was incredibly crowded.  The lines for the bathrooms stretched around corners.  We walked around shops and through the building and had lunch at a sit-down restaurant because that seemed like the easiest place to be.

My lunch date with Ronin

Without two other children to egg him on and be distracting, his table manners were quite excellent.  I was very pleased.  It is so much easier having one child, even in a chaotic environment.  He was thrilled.  He asked a ton of questions, and when we were on the move, he was either bouncing up and down or running circles around me.

Ronin on the Vaillancourt Fountain at Justin Herman Plaza

After lunch, we went across the street from the Ferry Building and Ronin played on this structure which I found out is actually a fountain.  Then we went inside Embarcadero Center and he rode up and down on the escalators a number of times before running down the circular ramp.  I thought about trying to coax him along to the next transportation mode, but then I realized if this day was for him, and he wanted to ride up and down on the escalators (and the Center was nearly empty so it’s not like we were interfering with shoppers), then why not?

On the curved ramp at Embarcadero Center

He really liked posing for pictures.  He kept stopping and asking me to take a picture of him in various places.  He also had a small camera with him and he took about 20 shots of a “totally cool rusty crane” on our first leg, but then he put it away and forgot about it.

We took a trolley to Pier 39

We got on an old-fashioned streetcar, the F line, and I let Ronin choose where to get off.   He choose Pier 39 and I thought at first he was drawn to the Hard Rock Cafe, but apparently he’d spotted the Aquarium of the Bay from a distance.  I bought tickets, and we went inside for a tour.  It was quite crowded, and much smaller than some of the other aquariums we’ve visited, but it did have some things to recommend it.  It has some long tunnel aquariums with moving walkways, which are pretty neat.  It also has a giant octopus and a little tunnel underneath for children to go and stick their heads up inside a bubble in the aquarium.  Ronin went in and was essentially surrounded by octopus.  It must have been a great view.

Ronin looking at sea nettles

We took a brief look around the pier, and then decided it was getting late, so we went across the street to wait for the trolley.  We waited.  Ronin ran in circles around me, talking excitedly about all kinds of things.  I could see adoring glances from most people, which was nice.  We waited some more.

Ronin picked out his favorite boat from Pier 39

Eventually a streetcar showed up, and it was completely packed. The driver came out, and shouted at the by-now huge line of people waiting.  He told everyone to go hike a few blocks and take a bus down to Market Street and there they would be able to get transportation to wherever they needed to go.  This car was full, the next car wouldn’t be there for another half an hour, and that one would probably be full, too.  I knew that if we went downtown and then back to the Ferry Building, that would take a long time, too.  (Little did I know this whole time that the ferry actually docked at Pier 39 as well!)  Just then we saw a pedicab pull up.  I asked about the price and was told we’d get a discount because Ronin obviously didn’t weigh as much as an adult.  And YAY!  Another form of transportation!

Ronin riding in the pedicab

He loved it, and what was most wonderful about it was that it didn’t require a car seat.  We made it back to the ferry building and had to wait another 20 minutes before the ferry came.  Ronin hopped the whole time.  I could not believe that he was still hopping, after such a full day.

Taking the ferry back home

We made it back just in the nick of time to pick up some milk at the store and get home in time for dinner.   Ronin fell asleep quickly and happily that night.  Justin decided that he had to do something spectacular with Claire the next day on their solo outing just because he didn’t want to be outdone, and started looking up blimp rides and helicopter tours, but luckily common sense won out once he saw the prices.  They did end up finding a beach with hundreds of sand dollars, and collected enough to share with all of the children at school on show-and-tell day.

After triage, before intervention, playing dot-to-dot on my phone

It was bedtime, and Claire was kneeling inside a box on the floor when Soren pushed the box over.  She hit chin-first on the hardwood floor.  Five sutures in the ER and a very late bedtime.  She was hysterical for the first part of it, and had to be wrapped up in a sheet (they called it a cocoon) and were short-staffed so I had to help hold her down during the lidocaine.  First they put some numbing gel on it and she hated that too.  She actually tolerated the sutures pretty well, although I think she almost made the ER doctor cry when she said that when she got out of the cocoon she just wanted to fly away.  I held her and swooped her across the street to the parking garage after it was all over so she would feel like she was flying on the way out.

Claire's chin wound

Justin and Soren and Ronin had come with us, but they didn’t let them back in the treatment room, so eventually they went home (luckily we’d thought ahead and had two cars).

I had spent the afternoon at the hospital with Ronin having a surgical consultation and scheduling his surgery for a communicating hydrocele, so it felt like I was there all day, and that in the past two weeks, one thing after another has been happening.  Luckily, so far everything appears to be fixable.

We had discussed some options before this day.  My mom had also come over on Sunday (our anniversary) and we went out to coffee and dessert for another wonderful bit of time alone.  Justin thought that maybe we shouldn’t spend one date talking about what to do on our other date, but it didn’t take up that much time, and we didn’t want to be stuck that morning with no plans, wondering what to do.  I talked about how the Aquarium by the Bay had discount tickets on Valentine’s Day, but we both decided we didn’t want to be anywhere that would be popular with small children on our date day.  We also talked about going to a museum again, or on a walk, or maybe to someplace interesting and secretive like the Bay Area’s own ghost town.  Justin mentioned he would be happy sitting at a bus stop all day as long as it was peaceful and quiet and not filled with shrieking.

A Valentine collage from Ronin (although this was done in November)

With a couple of sick kids, it had been a pretty challenging week.  Claire had been continuing with her testy phase, and Ronin completely turned around his good behavior.  Right before my birthday, he looked at me and said, “Mommy, I want to tell you something.  I love Daddy more than you.”  Then later on he said he wished everyone else would die.  We realize this is probably because he’s been having a wonderful time on his one-on-one outings with Justin, and thinks that he would probably have more of them if everyone else went away, but it still doesn’t feel great.   What happens a lot of the time, especially when Claire is feeling under the weather, is that Justin will propose taking the twins out somewhere and Claire responds with a long quavering high-pitched “NOOOooooooo!”  Sometimes we can enthuse her into going, and sometimes Justin will say “Fine, Ronin and I will go have fun without you.”  Then they do go, and have a lot of fun.  I don’t remember having one-on-one time with Ronin, because I always have Soren also.  Even if Justin does take Claire somewhere and I just have the two boys then I am still bound by nap and mobility issues.

"I love Daddy more than you, Mommy!"

We dropped the twins off at school after 9 AM.  Then we had our planned coffee and pastry stop to finalize plans.  It was so nice to just sit on a bench outside and look at the clouds, or at people walking by, and be able to complete a thought or a sentence.  We ended up taking a good chunk of our morning running errands, although we didn’t mind, because they needed to be done and it was so much easier doing them on a weekday and without kids in tow.  And we were together.  We went out to a pleasant lunch and then ran some more errands.   We felt like we accomplished a lot.

A little heart to heart with Claire

By that time, it was time to pick up Claire and Ronin from school and head home.  I was cooking dinner and Mom and Dinah were coming over.  We brought balloons for all of the children and found more balloons in the house so it’s been a busy ceiling.  Mom and Soren had made cherry cheesecake for me.  Dinner was good, dessert was great, and it was wonderful to have a little dinner party on my birthday to contribute to the festivity.  Unfortunately, Soren seemed to be not feeling well and he declined rapidly as dinner progressed and it got to be past bedtime.  I rushed everyone out of there and we got everyone ready for bed faster than they wanted.

Chain of hearts

Soren woke up screaming during the night, shaking with chills and a temperature of 103.2   I immediately gave him ibuprofen.  He cried for water, I gave it to him, and he batted it out of my hands.  He yelled, “I want water, Mama!  Water!”  I told him gently that I was giving him water.  He screamed again, “No, I want WATER!”   His breathing seemed a little weird and I watched him carefully until he fell asleep, at which point it evened out and didn’t seem as labored, but a few short hours later his temperature started climbing again, long before I could give him another dose.  He got restless and began crying out.  I still had some infant acetaminophen in the house, so I gave that to him.   I left a detailed note for Mom, with last doses given, next available doses, and instructions to call me if he seemed listless, had increased work of breathing, or his temperature couldn’t be controlled with alternating doses of the fever-reducing medicines.

Ronin took this picture of me trying to give Soren medicine

I ended up coming home from work early, even though Mom said that Soren seemed to be doing better.  By the time I got home his temperature had started to climb and he said his ears were hurting.  I called his doctor and got in for an afternoon appointment.  He was definitely sick.  He tolerated the appointment without shrieking too much, and I was happy to find out that he did not have a serious respiratory infection, but apparently his ears did look bad.  Dr. Phu said that in this case, he would recommend antibiotics.  It took me four hours to get the first dose in.  He refused to take it, and actually threw up all over me when I tried to squirt a little bit in his mouth with the syringe.  So I mixed it with water, and he would not drink it.  By this time, he wasn’t really eating or drinking anything and his eyes were a little glazed.  I put a straw in the water, and he was interested in the novelty enough that he took a few half-hearted sips, but he wouldn’t do much more than that, even with coaxing or threats.  I checked his temperature again.  104.0.  Justin was at a late work dinner.  I put the twins on the couch to watch tv, and spent the next hour dribbling tiny amounts of water mixed with amoxicillin and ibuprofen into Soren’s mouth, a little bit at a time.  I got about half of it in, then got everyone ready for bed and added some milk to his solution and put him in his crib and encouraged him to drink some more.  He drank more, and his temperature came down and never went up that high again.  I learned to add the amoxicillin to his morning and night-time milk, at the time he is so desperate for it he drinks it down without really even tasting it, and he has been taking it without a problem since then, but if I show him a syringe he turns his head and slaps my hand away.

Love bites

I stayed home from work the next day too, and Soren spent most of the day just wanting to be held, but overall he was improved.  His fever was better, his ears weren’t hurting as much, and he was starting to drink more.   He still coughs if he runs around, and he still has a runny nose, but he is making up for the few days of not eating.  I will tell you later about his new onset of screaming and contrariness.  It’s actually taken me about four days to write this entry, because I’ve been so consumed with his illness and taking care of him and then even when he was better all the screaming that he’s been doing.  I found it a little depressing that it started out being a cheerful Happy Valentine’s Day blog and then it ended up being all about Soren being sick.  Well, life is unpredictable like that, and so are blog entries.

But we still love you!

]]> http://blog.lyds.org/2012/02/20/happy-valentines-day-and-sick-twins-and-even-sicker-soren/feed/ 0 claireronin IMG_6648 HPIM1678 Ronin HPIM1668.JPGc HPIM1661.JPGc HPIM1652 DSCF0258 HPIM1614 HPIM1596 http://blog.lyds.org/2012/02/10/claire-why-do-you-be-so-mean-to-me/ http://blog.lyds.org/2012/02/10/claire-why-do-you-be-so-mean-to-me/#comments Sat, 11 Feb 2012 06:14:47 +0000 claireronin http://blog.lyds.org/?p=3683 ]]>

Smells like teen spirit

Claire has been going through a cranky phase lately.   I came home from work last week and Mom and I overheard this conversation between Claire and Ronin.

Ronin:  Why do you be so mean to me?
Claire:  Because I’m getting older and that’s what happens when you get older. You get mean.
Ronin:  But why do you have to be so mean to me all the time?
Claire:  I just told you. I’m growing up.

Wild child

I have been questioning Claire as to where on earth she got the idea that you get mean when you get older. “Am I mean?” “No.” My mom was worried (because she had been watching them that day) that they thought she had done something mean to them, but they denied that she was mean, too. I finally gave up and asked Claire if she knew ANY mean grown-ups. She told me truck drivers were mean. I asked her where she got that idea. She told me Daddy told her that.

I asked Justin where that came from, and it was from a big truck that cut him off in a merge. He apparently told them that people with big trucks sometimes feel like they can push into the road and not be as polite because they are bigger.

So I think she was just talking nonsense and trying to justify being mean.

Sweet Child of Mine

On the weird side, Ronin, who is the one who normally doesn’t listen, has all of a sudden started doing everything he’s told and saying, “Yes, Mommy, right away Mommy, and is there anything else I can help you with?” and he volunteers to go in and read bedtime stories to Soren (it is SO adorable!) and it’s like there must be some universal balance of child behavior where if one is good, the other must be misbehaving and vice versa.

Best friends!

Speaking of misbehaving, Soren has been up to his old antics of marking his territory with vomit.  You may have been wondering what I have been doing this past week or more without posts on my blog.  Have I been taking it easy?  Relaxing?  So busy I haven’t had time to write?  In trouble?  Well, all of the above, really.  Some nights the children all went to bed and Justin and I watched a tv show on the couch, just the two of us, in peaceful camaraderie.  We have been watching a British spy series called MI-5 on Netflix.  Other nights we thought Soren was tucked peacefully in his crib and then we would hear a cry on the baby monitor and we would run in there just in time to witness what Justin calls “baby blackmail.”  He starts crying, cries louder, and if he is not comforted sufficiently and quickly enough, proceeds to vomit on average four voluminous times in a row.  He can cover a lot of territory with his stomach contents.  We have spent a lot of time cleaning and de-pukifying this week.  Poor Mom had to deal with it one time I asked her to come over while I went to pick up the twins from a play date.

Give me what I want and nobody gets hurt

Coincidentally, there has been a massive norovirus outbreak going on around here lately, so I’ve been paranoid about all of this vomiting, but it seems to be completely non-infectious.  Just very unpleasant.

Soren at Pt. Pinole

I have about two weekends’ worth of posts to catch up on, so I’m jumping around a bit.  We went to Pt. Pinole last weekend so I could see the Monarch Butterflies.  Justin has taken Claire and Ronin there a few times, but I hadn’t been there yet and was eager to find a new place to go for walks.  Monarchs overwinter there and in a few other of our Regional Parks.  We followed signs, and saw a few of them fluttering high in the branches.  There was a playground as well, and we went with my mom and our friends Chris and Luc.  Everyone was playing on the way back when we saw a massive smoke cloud in the direction of the refinery.  Justin and I rushed everyone out of there before the smoke cloud caught up to us, thinking there had maybe been some kind of explosion at the refinery.  We stayed calm but expressed urgency, so much that Claire and Ronin got worried.  It turned out to be a huge warehouse fire on Mare Island, and smoke was seen all around the Bay.  I was glad that everyone actually evacuated when we needed them to, though.

Claire watching the trains at Pt. Pinole

I took all three children to the zoo by myself without a stroller one sunny day.  It was wonderful.  Soren loved it.  It was a little hard keeping them all together, but I have been wanting to go back ever since then.   It is really challenging doing events with all three children, because I pretty much have to get Soren home by 11:30 AM or he falls asleep in the car and then won’t go back to sleep for his nap.  He usually naps from about noon to 2:30, wakes up and eats, and by that time it’s after 3 PM and it’s pretty much too late to go anywhere and be back to cook dinner by 4:30 PM.  The zoo, as well as most other kid places and museums, opens at 10.  That only gives us a little over an hour there.  I will be so happy when we don’t have this huge chunk of time in the middle of the day that traps us in the house.  It is also what makes it so much easier to just go for a walk early in the morning, so we don’t have to wait for places to open, but the children like going to places like the zoo and to Fairyland also.

Piling on the frog at the zoo

Soren at the zoo

Claire at the zoo

Claire and Ronin talked about us dying recently.  Claire said she wanted to remind me that she liked going on airplane rides and would like to travel by plane soon again. Ronin added, “And I would like to visit Iceland, among other places.”

I replied that I liked traveling very much, too, but it cost a lot of money and we needed to save up, both our vacation time and our money, so we could take another trip some time. Ronin thought for a minute, and then said, “Well, if you and Daddy both died, then we could have your money and we could do what we wanted with it. We could go on airplane rides and travel.”

I have no idea where they got that from. We have never discussed inheritance, and haven’t read any books that talked about it. I decided to nip that in the bud. I told them that we got our money from going to work, and if we died we wouldn’t be working, so no more money would be coming in. Besides, they know the laws about not being left alone, so it’s not like they would just be able to go traveling around the world on their own.

Claire pondered that for a minute, and then said, “Well, even if you don’t have a lot of money to leave us when you die, can I at least have all of your clothes?”

I told her yes.

I told my mom about this story, and she remembered me arguing with Dinah over who got one of her blouses when she died. So I guess what comes around, goes around.

Claire and Ronin, traveling the world together

I am officially in love.  You know I have been on a quest to turn the twins’ bedroom into a real bedroom and not a nursery, with the end result hopefully a room that they will be able to live in and share comfortably into their school years.  We got the bunkbed.  We got them a little table and two chairs for homework and art projects.  We moved the changing table out of there and replaced it with this:

The new bookshelf and organizer!

Like I said, I am in love.  I wander into the room periodically and just feel a lifting of my heart.  It’s amazing that something like this can make me so happy.  You can’t tell by looking at it, but there are 231 kids’ books on this shelving system.  That is not all of them, but they are not wedged in there and they are not stacked on top of each other and they don’t even look over-crowded.  I was able to pull toys and puzzles out of closets and top shelves from around the house to make them more accessible on a daily basis.  I expect to get a lot of good use out of this.

16 months old, Rock City, Mt. Diablo

Same exact place, 4 1/2 years old

It was a pleasant and warm afternoon.  The sun was out, and we were warm when we were out of the wind.  The observation deck at the top of the mountain was closed, and I regretted driving all of those extra twisty miles when Ronin asked me to stop the car because he wanted to throw up.  After a while in the fresh air, he was fine, and scampering up and around the rocks.

He's got her around his finger

I didn’t realize until after I was home and looking at my pictures that Ronin was twisting Claire’s hair up around his finger while they were both perched on top of a rock.  Claire was not distressed, and he must have just untwisted it a few moments later, but she was definitely trapped there while he was idly doing it.

Ronin squeezed himself into a horizontal crack

Ronin has always been an excellent climber.  At Rock City, he was charging ahead and Claire was the more hesitant one.  He did need extrication a couple of times, and I had to keep reminding them to think about how they were going to get down if they wanted to get up.

Ronin, Champion of the World

King of the Mountain

They talked me into climbing a large rock with them.  We got partially up and then I realized it was going to be much more difficult than I had previously thought to come back down.  Ronin was climbing up like a mountain goat, and getting far ahead of me and Claire was balking.  It was very steep, and there was no way I could reach Ronin if he slipped.  I told them we would need to come back down, and then Claire immediately jumped back against me and almost knocked me off the rock.  I told Ronin to stay put and brought Claire all the way down, inch by inch, and then went back up to get Ronin.  I was very glad we didn’t go up any higher before turning around, and was glad I didn’t have more than two kids and could mostly trust them to do what they were told.

It looks so much smaller than it felt!

Be My Valentine

After having children at preschool for more than a year, I am better prepared this time.  I am not going to be taken by surprise and suddenly need to produce valentines for a whole school full of kids at the last minute.  We were browsing for supplies at a craft store last week and Claire picked up a stamp in the stamp section and said, “Let’s buy this one!  It says Be My Valentine, so it would be perfect for Valentine’s Day cards, right?  I stopped in my tracks and asked, “Did you just read that?” and she nodded yes.  I am fairly certain she recognized all of the words, because the twins still aren’t that great at sounding them out, but I was still impressed.  I bought the stamp as a treat for being a good reader.  I also bought these fancy stickers and Ronin used them all up on just a few cards, so we started over and did the shaving-cream food-coloring project instead.

Claire and Ronin both know a lot of words.   When I read them books at night, they generally follow along with me, or try to.  They stop me before I get to a paragraph sometimes and pick out words they know.  “There’s water!  And street!”  They notice sometimes if I leave out a word.  Again, I think these are mostly “sight” words, or full word recognition.  We try to do step-by-step sounding out and they can do it when I help them, but they are not so good at it on their own.  Often they will start with the first letter of an unfamiliar word and then fill in a word they think it would be that starts with the same letter.  Claire is particularly good at just guessing what a word will be based on context.

I finally found a chapter book series that Ronin enjoys, too.  We have been reading the A to Z Mysteries.  We are on The Empty Envelope.  I think I will keep these around for a while, because I imagine they will like to read them on their own, later.   The books have a map of the town in the front, so we can refer back to it and see where the action is taking place, and Claire and Ronin are both good at spotting where things are on the map and reading simple things like “Pet Shop.”

Ronin's spectacular helicopter

I’ve been a little delinquent on my updating lately.  Justin went out of town this past week, for a whirlwind trip down to San Diego, flying down and working all day and then driving back with his results on dry ice the next day.  I have been having to spend more time on my volunteer work.   Last weekend I was gone all day with the twins, first to gymnastics, and then over to a birthday party in Pacifica where there were ponies!  Ronin drew this picture of a helicopter for the birthday boy, and I thought it was such a great picture.  Initially, Ronin refused to make him a birthday card and Claire made two, signing one with her name and one with Ronin’s.  I sighed and thought again about how this didn’t bode well for schoolwork, but a short while later Ronin produced this spectacular work of art.

Claire on Bonnet the Pony

The party was wonderful, and it was great having a couple of ponies ready to go whenever they felt like it.  Claire and Ronin spent most of their time riding, although Ronin roamed around the party at will and aside from eating the cake with his fingers, was well-mannered the whole time.  At one point I gathered both of them up to make a bathroom trip and Ronin said, “Oh, I already went.”

Really?  I have trouble getting him to go before we leave school, and then we sometimes have to stop emergently 10 minutes down the road because he can’t wait until we get home.  I asked him how he found the bathroom.  He said, “I just asked a grown-up where the bathroom was, and then I went.”  THAT seemed like a milestone to me.

We have been letting him go into the men’s room by himself from time to time, too, lately.  At gymnastics, I send him in one side while Claire and I go in the other, and then we meet in the middle sink area afterward.  Claire won’t even use her own stall, so it takes us longer, and I’m always a little worried he’ll wander off (because he does that sometimes), but he’s been very good about waiting so far.  At a fast-food restaurant on the way back from Monterey, we sent him in by himself while we were eating, but we could see the door and Justin was there to go in after him if he took too long.

I mentioned this to a co-worker whose sons are a few years older, and she said, “Don’t you check to make sure the bathroom is empty before you let him go in by himself?”  I hadn’t really thought about it.  I’m usually close enough that I could hear him if he needed help, and like I said, I’m more concerned about him wandering off.

Claire about to get soaked

We stopped at Treasure Island on the way home from the party, because we don’t often get over the bridge and I don’t have many occasions when I can be out with the twins without Soren.  It is so much easier to make stops and take in sights.  We checked out the Bay Bridge construction, took a little tour of the island, and splashed in some puddles.  That Saturday was a tiny break in between a lot of rain.

The Bay Bridge

I ended up giving Soren a hair cut the other day.  I’d been thinking about it for a while, and when I told Justin about it on the phone, I was met with a moment of silence.  You all may remember how badly Ronin’s first hair cut turned out.  I was very conservative with Soren’s, though, and I had a plan and stuck to it.  I think it turned out pretty well.  I mostly just trimmed up the wispy bits that were curling up over his ears.

Soren's first hair cut

I keep wanting to talk about how conversational Soren is.  One morning last week he woke up and conversed with me non-stop for the first five minutes.  He wasn’t grammatically correct, but it was still a conversation with a real little person. He first woke up and greeted me with a “Hi, Mommy, cuddle me.” Then we went out to the living room and he said “Roomba! Hold it. I want to hold it. Pick it up. Hold it.” So we took it to the back room to put it on the charger. Then he stumbled into me and he said, “Excuse me, Mommy.” Then he saw the cat toy and he shouted (too loudly), “Mouse! Emily! Here, Kitty! Emily! Come here! Here, kitty kitty kitty. Come here. Get your mouse!” A whole five minutes, non-stop, he was talking and making complete sense at 20 months.

The night before he told me right after dinner that his tummy hurt. I told him he should take a break and stop drinking his milk and maybe he would feel better in a few minutes. I felt badly for him, but I loved that he could express it.  A short while later I asked him if he felt better, and he smiled and he said “All better.”  This is the best part of his talking–the actual communication.

The worst part, of course, is that it never stops.  Last night Soren didn’t sleep much.  He had this wonderful two-week period of sleeping really well, right after we got back from Mexico, but now he’s teething or sniffly or something, and he woke up eight times between 11 PM and 12:30 AM, yelling or just babbling, mostly “What’s that called?” or “Look at this booger, here on my finger!”  Eventually I took him out of the crib into another room (because it was Justin’s birthday today and he deserved a good night’s sleep) and held him all night, but he still was up most of the time, talking about any random thing that crossed his mind.  He may not have any problem in particular except that his brain just doesn’t slow down sometimes.

Glow sticks in a dark bath

One of the most fun things we did recently with a relatively small amount of money (you can buy 100 of them from Amazon for around $6) is have an evening bath with a handful of glow sticks and the light turned off.  Ronin could have stayed in there all night.

One of the side effects of Justin’s new car enthusiasm is Ronin’s new car enthusiasm.  He has become very knowledgeable and also very opinionated.  He notices a lot of different models of cars, comments on spoilers and other accessories, and makes statements like, “You know, Mommy, no car is slower than a Prius” that make me wonder how he’ll get along if I take him back to the playgrounds in Berkeley.

It worked out well.  We made it down there just as it opened.  We saw the penguin feeding, and everyone loved the gigantic multi-story tanks filled with sharks and schooling fish.  Soren could have stayed there the whole time.  He said “Hi” to every fish that swam by.  It was nice having one adult per child.  At lunch time, I got a sandwich to go and took Soren back to the car for his nap, and everyone else stayed to eat and then explore some more.

I do not have any pictures from inside the aquarium this time.  I was too busy chasing Soren around.  Plus, sometimes it’s nice not worrying about taking pictures.

Soren did not nap particularly easily or well in the parked car, but he got it done, and afterward everyone else was ready to move on to Dennis the Menace Playground.  This is the place with the full-size locomotive parked in the sand, as you might recall.  Ronin and Claire promptly climbed up high onto the train, and then over and under and around, and then as they crawled underneath it to the front of it and I went around to meet them, I caught Claire as she was about to run out of the train area and Ronin was nowhere to be found.   We looked all over the train.  Mom and Claire went to look for him at the other end of the playground after we searched for him futilely around the train for another long few minutes, and brought him back from the long bumpy slide.

Ronin and Jan staying close at the playground

I tend to put bracelets on them with our telephone numbers inside when we’re going to be in busy or chaotic places, like the zoo or museums or an  aquarium or big playgrounds, so if they get separated they know they are supposed to ask someone who works there or a woman with children to help them.  Ronin in particular tends to wander off and not look back.  However, that bracelet doesn’t do any good if he doesn’t care if he’s separated.  He will go off and play and not look back.  Claire gets panicky if she can’t find her group, especially me, so she’s better at staying close.

We emphasized that they all could play wherever they wanted in the playground, but they couldn’t go off without telling a grown-up, and having the grown-up go with them.  It is a very big playground, with multiple structures, hundreds of kids and adults, and many areas that are hard to see, like tunnels and mazes and hills.  After that we stuck more closely with the children.  They all had a great time, and although we did too, I suspect it was a little harder for us just trying to keep up with them and keep them in sight.  I know at least a few more times they forgot and tried to run off to different areas without checking with us.

Soren learning that two of his favorite things (tunnels and slides) can be combined

It seemed a lot later than it was.   We didn’t want to go home just yet, because it was the time of day that would cause all the kids to fall asleep in the car if we had a two-hour road trip, but it was too early for bed.  If they fell asleep now, they wouldn’t go to sleep at night.  We decided to look for some sand dunes and then stop for dinner on the way home.  We found a beautiful beach on the way out of Monterey.

Soren and Claire in the sand

We watched the sun set as the children danced out of the way of the incoming waves.  It was a beautiful end to a pleasant day.

Claire, watching the sun set

Justin and Soren

Ronin and Justin

Claire

I would like to say the rest of the drive home was uneventful, but you already know from my title it was not.  Actually, I should have written this blog entry much sooner, but I have been waiting for the outcome before writing it up, and honestly, I’ve just been feeling alternately too cranky about it and then too busy when my attitude was a little better.  We got most of the way home (thank goodness) when lights on my dashboard started appearing.  It seemed like one system was failing after another.  I got off the freeway and pulled onto a dead-end street just as my lights went out and my car shut down.  It did not restart.  We had three adults in the car,  two sleeping twins, one awake baby who should have been sleeping much earlier because it was past his bedtime and because he didn’t nap much that day, and a logistical issue facing us with getting my car towed somewhere convenient and getting everyone home in as few trips as possible, leaving no children without adults and keeping all children in their car seats.   It was like a river crossing riddle.

My poor minivan!

I remembered why Justin and I work so well together.   Things went very smoothly.  He called a taxi right after I called for a tow truck.  They arrived roughly at the same time.  Justin, Mom, and the twins went home in the taxi while Soren and I and the van went to the night drop at the nearest Kia dealership.  By the time we got there and the van was getting unloaded, Justin had already settled Claire and Ronin at home with Mom, who was tucking them into bed, and had driven down in his car to pick me and Soren up.  Soren stayed awake through this entire experience, fascinated by everything and particularly by being strapped into his car seat in the front seat of a tow truck, facing forward.  He loved looking around.   He fell asleep about a minute away from home, only to wake up inside as I changed him into his pajamas.  He was up until 10:30 PM!

Anyway, my car was in the shop all week.  I didn’t get it back until Friday afternoon.  Each day, I called and they told me that it would probably be done either that day or the next day, and then I would call back and they would tell me that it would probably be done the next day, and they would let me know.  Then I wouldn’t hear anything until I called back, at which time I was told it might be done that day or if not, the next day.  And so on, for an entire work week.  It was very frustrating and I kept trying to make plans to pick it up or decide if I should rent a car because I had to pick up the kids from school and take them to class.   As it was, each day that went by Mom graciously lent me her car and came over in the early mornings on my work days so I could get to work on time.

It apparently was an oil leak that dripped into the alternator, causing it and the battery to fail.  It took so long because they didn’t look at the car for more than a day, and then it took a while to figure out the problem, and then the oil leak was complicated, and then a part didn’t come in on time.  Anyway, it is over now, and it could have been worse.  The whole repair except for the battery was covered under warranty.

We are very glad to have my car back!

News from Justin–he got a new car, a Subaru WRX, and he is in love.  He is having it relay messages to him on his phone about all of its parameters.  He hooked up this computer to my car and it chided me for accelerating too fast when my engine was too cold, but it was a short merge and nobody was letting me in, so I had to put my foot down.  This is the first time since I moved out to California that car payments have been something I’ve had to think about, but the old car was getting to be not safe for the amount and type of driving that Justin was having to do.

Justin's new car

My news is that I am feeling healthy for the first time since September, which is great.  Soren seems to be over his series of colds, too, and is finally back to eating solid food again.  A few days in the sun must have been what we needed.

At the computer

Soren is talking more and more.  He is using more sentences, and putting more words together.  Today at lunch he looked at his mandarin orange, asked “What is this?” and when I told him, he replied, “I like it.  I like the orange.”  He is naming colors and shapes but not always getting them right.  He says most of the numbers up to 10 but doesn’t count objects.  Many of his sentences reflect the recent clinginess he’s been exhibiting.  He says, “Where Daddy go?” and “Where are you, Mommy?” quite frequently.  He has been imitating Claire and Ronin more and more, and when they were singing their Christmas songs, he tried to join in, although he didn’t get it right all the time.  He loudly sang “Tingle Balls” over and over again for a while.  He has added “Please” and “Excuse me” to his repertoire.

Soren in the back yard

Soren has also been using more adjectives that rely on a subjective appreciation of quality.  He looked at the Christmas lights on the palm trees on the boulevard near our hotel in Mexico and said “Ah, pretty.”  He notices when things are messy, also, and although he’s the youngest one in his gymnastics class, he’s also the best one at cleaning up the colored scarves when they play with them.

Claire on a stump

I put my hair in a ponytail the other day and Claire came running up to me, put her arms around me, and said, “Oh Mommy, you look adorable!”  I was just trying to do something with messy hair, and Claire considers it the epitome of style when she has her hair up like that.  I loved her perspective, and how enthusiastic she was.  I gave her a huge hug back.

Claire mentioned off-handedly the other day while we were driving that when she was 5 years old, Soren would be 2 years old, and when she was 6 years old, Soren would be 3 years old.  I asked her how she knew that, and she said because they were three years apart.  I have been letting her play some math games on the computer, but I still thought that was impressive.  At this point, she and Ronin can add 2+3 and 3+3 and get the right answer, but it’s a little different coming up with your own word problem and applying it to your own life, especially when the concept of aging simultaneously is still a little fuzzy.   Then Justin asked her at dinner how old she would be when Soren was 10, and she didn’t get the right answer.

At Joaquin Miller, "fishing"

Ronin has been talking about wanting to go to grad school, although he keeps getting confused and calling it grade school.

Claire has been asking me again about when she can move out. She asked if she would live with us in college, or if she could move out then. I told her that a lot of people move out when they go to college, and she would probably like to do that, too. It’s easier to make close friends if you live at the college with other people your age. I added that she would be a grown-up then, anyway, so she could move out and live on her own. She said, “What the–!” (a new expression she and Ronin have been repeating ad nauseum that Justin says he’s very proud of, because they learned it from him and it was due to a certain amount of restraint on his part).

Ronin in the back yard

We were playing 20 questions at dinner the other night, and Claire said that Soren wanted to take a turn. I asked her if she was sure, because he might have a hard time answering our questions and remembering his object. She said she would help him.
So she turned to him and said, “Is it an animal?”
Soren, who is so good at certain things, chanted “No no no no no!”
She turned to me and said, “He says it’s something you draw with.”
I leaned over and asked, “Is it a pen?” (He had just shown a predilection for pens before dinner by chewing some nibs when he was supposed to be drawing.)
Claire and Soren both shouted “Yeah!” and high-fived me.

Happy New Year!

Claire and Ronin did 2012 collages yesterday, and Ronin actually had fun and completed his.  I asked them questions about the past year and the year to come while they were doing it.

Favorite Color:  green, blue, dark red (R); pink and purple (C)

Favorite Food:  oatmeal (R); macaroni and cheese (C)

Favorite Activity:  playing with Daddy and going for walks, going in Daddy’s car and going to Farmer Joe’s Market (R); playing Princess with my friends at school (C)

Greatest Lesson Learned in the Past Year:  going bar to bar on the monkey bars at school (both)

Hardest Thing of the Year: flip drip tip crip tips (R, speaking nonsense and deciding that the questionnaire is a waste of time);  monkey bars (C)

Favorite Memory of 2011:  going to Mexico (R); my birthday when I turned 4 (C)

What I Loved Most about 2011:  swimming pools and hot springs (R); playing with you, Mommy (C)

Want to Learn in 2012:  how to swim (R); how to read–hmm, I think I just need some glasses, and then I’ll be able to read (C)

Want to Improve in 2012: drawing everything that’s alive (R); going on really long hikes (C)

Biggest Goal: another trip to Mexico (R); going to an aquarium and seeing sea turtles again (C)