Toilet Pumpkin; Carrot Facial

Anyone want to come West next Halloween? Because we have the best new Halloween event ever - the pumpkin race. The deal is you decorate a pumpkin and put a set of wheels on it, and then let 'er rip down the big hill toward the pier. The whole event was both meticulously organized and relentlessly silly. Here you can see a few pumpkins in the staging area waiting for the semifinal heats; yes, the white pumpkin in the foreground is decked out like a toilet, complete with flush handle and a roll of t.p. flying off the back. The referees made a big show of "core checks" to make sure that there were no imposters, and at one point did a very public smashing of a watermelon that had snuck into the race with some orange paint.

This was all in the context of the downtown trick-or-treating, so practically the whole town was out there; and fortunately for Luke, that meant lots of police presence (truth be told, the police were mainly out to do a mock "arrest" of the pumpkin cheater, and to race their own police pumpkin).



At one point during the race the emcee said, "Just think of all of those poor people back East freezing through Halloween, and here we are in 70 degree weather, rolling pumpkins into a magnificent sunset at the beach." So I did think about that, and I managed to get a little bit of the tail end of the sunset in the picture with the policeman.

Funny little side note: The actor Kevin Nealon lives nearby, and I have seen him around town many times, at the farmers' market, etc. Yesterday he was loping around in that Kevin Nealon-y kind of way (but presumably not wanting to be recognized) in a massive hot dog costume with his face painted. I didn't want to be so tacky as to take his picture, but darned if it wasn't so darned funny.

Another thing that I find tacky is pictures of infants with food smeared all over their faces. But I guess there's an exception to every rule. Zach just seemed so darned happy yesterday while giving himself this carrot facial that I just had to take a picture.



Was Luke neater, or was it just that I never took pictures of him making a mess? Well, either way, we're fully in the realm of baby food these days, much to the delight of both Zach and Luke. How can you not want to join in the fun?

Seven Years of Bad Meatballs

Let me start out by saying Joe, I'm sorry for poaching your title. But you gotta admit that 1) it's a great title for just about anything; and 2) I actually have accompanying pictures of meatballs, so it's not entirely out of left field. The title comes from some Mad Libs that the kids did this summer; the concept is one that we all seem to be able to identify with.

So, these meatballs are part of the dinner I made for our Thursday night class (Special Halloween Edition); the recipe is Spaghetti with Eyeballs from the "Secret Life of Food" cookbook. Speaking of Joe, I should say this as well: When I make something like this, it generally looks like a well-intentioned craft project, whereas when Joe makes something like this it looks like something you'd actually pay money for. I guess that's why he makes the big bucks.

But I should give this project a little bit of context. Was it made with my full concentration in a spotless, stainless steel professional kitchen? Neee-o, as Luke would say. Here's how it unfolded:

11 am: Shop for groceries, unpack them; stop to nurse the baby. 1 pm: Prepare the salad and the fruit dishes, assemble and pack the paper goods and utensils, eat lunch; stop to nurse the baby. 3 pm: Pick up Luke from school. Supervise Luke and maintain ongoing distractions for Zach while simultaneously preparing three pounds of olive-eyed meatballs and four pounds of spaghetti. Endure whining, fussing, complaining, gnawing of baby who is ready to eat again. 5:15 pm: Finally: Three large pots of water are boiling; three large pans of meatballs are cooking in the oven; but the panic is setting in. We are at T-minus-45 minutes until we are expected on the other side of town with dinner in hand, and Dave is still not home. He has been traveling for two days and his plane was supposed to land more than an hour ago. 5:20 pm: Prop up Zach on the floor while helping Luke get into his policeman costume. 5:25 pm: Dave bursts in, sees us sitting on the floor with the Halloween costumes, and says, "Nice to see you all so relaxed!"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

5:50 pm: Dave and I shift into crisis mode when the dinner is all laid out and I decide that we really need another pound of spaghetti. So Dave supervises the spaghetti while I feed Zach, wandering in and out of the room and barking out orders with a baby dangling from my arms, and Luke flops around in his police-man costume whining "When are we going?" 6:25 pm: We finally stumble into class, sweating profusely, with less-than-photogenic meatballs in hand. But you know what? We had a lot of fun, and everyone seemed to appreciate the dinner.

At bedtime, Luke and I always play My Favorite Part of the Day: He tells me his favorite and I tell him mine. When I thought about it tonight, I had to say my favorite part was when we were sticking the olives into the meatballs and getting that giddy little thrill watching them change from lumps of meat into little creatures with personality and character.

And the good thing is that now Dave is home too. No one likes when Dave is away - and this time was especially unfair because he was up in Berkeley breathing cool, clean air while we were all stifling in the heat and hacking and coughing the thick grey air while soot fell on our heads. But here's the thing: When Dave is gone, and Luke and Zach wake up in the morning, we don't have to tiptoe around Dave - we just have the whole bed to roll around and snuggle up in. I love those moments. Next time, however, he is totally taking us with him, especially if we have to contend with natural disasters or googly-eyed meatballs.

The Policeman and the Snail

Had our first of several Halloween outings today; this party was at the hospital for graduates of the NICU. We saw some of our old NICU pals and marveled at the collection of happy, healthy kids who all at one time or another spent time in the hospital as teeny tiny babies. Then we meandered over to say hi to our good friends at Labor and Delivery, who were more than happy to see Luke and a bloomingly healthy Zach. It's weird - I like the idea of going to the hospital but I still get a little icky feeling in the pit of my stomach when I'm there, just remembering... Luke, however, seems to like it so much that when he had to fill out a "getting to know you" interview form at school, when asked "Favorite thing to do," he said, "Going to visit the hospital." Hmmm. Possibly spent a little too much time there this year already.


So Officer Luke strutted around in his policeman costume, while Zach acted appropriately goo-de-ly (Luke's term) and smiled and mugged until he finally passed out, and then woke up and smiled and cooed some more. Just like Luke, he's a great showman in public. Getting home was another story - we all basically melted down with crankiness.

We also took the plunge and bought another stroller today... bringing us to a total of five strollers for two kids. Now before I get a lecture on excess, we're about to sell one of our strollers, and possibly two. This new one will replace my regular single stroller that literally wore into the ground with Luke. One of the first times I took Zach out in it, a little screw fell out and it collapsed onto itself.

Since I use a stroller so often, going to the beach and the park and whatnot, I had a very specific list of things I wanted - basically, I wanted every feature of a high-end stroller but I didn't want to spend more than $100 - and it seemed somewhat unlikely that I'd find all that for so little. But I kept scanning Craigslist, and low and behold, there was exactly the kind of stroller I'd been looking for, a Bumbleride, barely used, for just over $100 (compared to $340 retail). We bought it, natch, and now I can't wait to just get out there and walk up and down the beach. Just the kind of thing that I pictured doing, day after day, from my hospital bed.

Boo!

While taking out some trash the other night, I was surprised to see my friend Julie (Hatcher's mom) pulling up outside our house. "You're not really supposed to know I'm here," she said sheepishly. "Have you been Boo'd yet?"
"Nope. Not this year."
"Cool."
With that, she handed over a Halloween bucket filled with super-cool treats for Luke: Halloween cookie cutters, glow sticks, flashlight, glitter cup, candy, a little pumpkin; some Halloween baby socks for Zach; and of course the requisite "Boo" sign for the door.

That in a nutshell shows why it is so much fun to have kids in a small town: You just kind of get wrapped up in these cool little things that keep you connected with everyone else. In this case, it's the Boo epidemic. Sometime around the beginning or middle of October, these Boo signs start appearing in people's front windows. The idea is, someone leaves you a treat bag and a Boo sign, along with the Boo instructions, at your doorstep (you may or may not know who Boo'd you). Then you have to leave treat bags and Boo signs for three of your friends ("or else your house will be haunted")...and you put the Boo sign on your house so that everyone knows you've been Boo'd. Soon the thing is spiraling out of control and the Boo signs are everywhere. I think it probably ends up like some sort of pyramid scheme/musical chairs situation where you might be the last person with no one else left to Boo. Glad we got in on the ground level this year...

(Oh, and Luke has been carrying his Halloween basket with him all around the house, from room to room, and repeatedly asking us to pretend that he is trick-or-treating at the door. Go figure.)

Another small-town thing we can't wait for: The Great Pumpkin Race. A few years back some neighborhood kids who lived at the top of a hill put wheels on their pumpkins and had a pumpkin race at Halloween. It became an annual tradition that grew and grew, culminating in a huge scene where 850 people (no joke) showed up at this house last year for the pumpkin race. This year they decided to make it a city-wide event down by the beach, on the day that the downtown merchants hold their trick-or-treat open house.

So, we don't have the fall colors or the changing leaves - or even the crisp fall weather, come to think of it - but we are really feelin' the Halloween love this year in our happy little town. Hey - it's good clean fun. At least I didn't Boo anyone by mail, right?

Science Pudding

Some big news on the Zach front - See his blog for details.

From the random file: I asked Luke if he knew what hummus was. "Yeah," he said. "I like to call it 'science pudding.'"

I have no idea what that means but I think it makes me like it a little bit less...

Filling in the gaps

When it's a long time since I last blogged, it means I'm not getting much sleep, because instead of blogging in my off-time, I'm trying to get some extra shut-eye. I guess I should say that life is good; it's just that I'm awake for too darned much of it.


Zach is now basically sitting up by himself, though he's generally in tri-pod (hands out in front of him) position and he's pretty tippy. He's also happy and talkative and laugh-y (especially at 5:30 in the morning, go figure) and he seems like he's ready to swim the 500 freestyle: If you put him on his tummy, he arches his back and his arms and legs start flailing like one of those wind-up bath toys.

What else? He's practically a menace at the dinner table because all he wants to do is grab things and see what it looks like when they fall on the floor. That's not too pretty, as you can imagine. Oh, and now that his head control is so much better, he's really gotten a lot less jowl-y. So all in all, a few steps forward (unless you were very attached to the jowl look, which I kinda was, but it sure was hard to keep clean).

Last time I wrote about how I thought Luke was a natural politician. Now I'm thinking...film director. He has all of these elaborate stories/fantasies, and he spends an inordinate amount of time placing people in different positions and dictating what they should say. Example: Last week after we went to the aquarium, he had this thing going on at dinnertime where he was a shark with three rows of teeth and Dave and I were the divers who were feeding him ("Man diver, now you say to the lady diver, 'I think the shark wants another bite of his shark-turkey'") and it went on and on like this for so long that he was still dictating us our lines long after dinner was over and we were outside on our after-dinner walk. (Luke: "Now can the lady diver say to the man diver, 'Don't put your hands too close to the shark when he opens his mouth'" Dave: "Time for the shark to take a rest!") I know Luke is one of the oldest ones in his class at school and he seems to have a reputation as kind of a ringleader. I can only imagine what kinds of scenarios he's having people act out at school when he has their full undivided attention for the day.

In the "just how smart is he" category: Yesterday Dave was sitting outside with the sun shining on half his face. Luke said to him, "Daddy, you're just like Earth. Half of you is in the sun, and it's day time; and half of you is dark like it's night time." OK, so he can't count past 12 and can't write the letter "L" - but hey, he understands the solar system! He's an astrophysics genius! (As long as they don't require him to do any of that counting stuff...)

Talk about burying the lead: I guess the biggest headline is that this week I formally quit my job (as in, signed the papers and everything). I'll still be a "special contractor" but I'll essentially be the boss of my own time. I guess I just haven't thought about it that much - I'm so confident that it's the right thing that I haven't dwelled too much on the scary "not getting any more paychecks" part of it.

In a strange poetic twist, the week that I quit my job to stay home with the kids also happens to be the week that we found our dream nanny. Juana was my friend Lisa's nanny, before Lisa quit her job, and now she's filling in her time with odd hours here and there while she looks for a new family. As soon as Juana stepped into the house, we knew that she was our personal Mary Poppins. Within the first hour she had taught me things that I never knew about how to play with/engage Zach, and she had him laughing and moving around like a wiggleworm. On Friday she showed up at our door lugging two pop-up tents and a pop-up tunnel for Luke to play in. Side note: She doesn't drive, so she has to take three buses and a train to get to our house to babysit. How messed-up are the economics of that situation? Anyway, Luke and Zach both adore her and I'm thinking that we should just offer her our spare room downstairs for a while. And if she got up with them at night, so much the better.


Parting shot: Luke talks with a policeman about how to use a radar gun. Insert joke here.