in and about in san francisco

out and about in san francisco

Ollie interlude

I





*******

II

Around Town

Baby belugas--at the actual site of the inspiration for the song, a staple of Aaron's make-the-baby-sleep dirge for almost four years now.
Plus a sea otter. They use their bellies like tables, just like my pregnant self.

Three sinkfuls of laundry in so far.
A little scientific interlude.

And done.

Vancouver

The worst part, by far, was the drive to Toronto. Ollie is not one for a nice car ride, nor is he one to hold back on expressing his burning burning rage. We, in turn, are not always what you would call competent in the navigating unfamiliar airports department, which may have added a half hour or so to the journey. All water under the bridge.

Ollie, it turns out, has been on west coast time for several months. He and Dylan both did fantastic on the plane. Air Canada: better than most US airlines. They walk around constantly with a pitcher of water and there's on demand tv and movies on all the seats and they're really nice and the fares were reasonable.

Dylan has been holding up pretty well, but alternates between completely overstimulated and sort of crashing. This is waiting to check in to the hotel.
The hotel, in addition to being right near the conference and the water, is hosting many marathoners and was right on the route this morning. I hopped on in and ran 12 or 13 miles with them for moral support.
The urchins settled in quickly.


The forecast is a cliched 50-something degrees and raining most of our time in Vancouver, so we seized the brief window of sun yesterday to walk along the water. We brought our traveling nannies, who are easily distracted by ipad scrabble. They don't even HAVE ipads in canada yet. We're fancy.
And that pesky j.crew model, he showed up too.

There are sea planes everywhere. We're hoping to take one at some point.


Traveling with the kids certainly dominates the trip, but it's also fun. Dylan thinks everything is really cool and we're still able to do a lot of fun stuff.

And I got to be in one of the pictures! Aaron says it must have been cold there in his shadow.

DIY baby care

It has become clear why Ollie has not been interested in gaining weight, or digesting, or pooping more than once a week, or sleeping particularly well. He has instead chosen to devote himself entirely to: mobility. He does that rocking up on all fours thing babies do before they crawl. He flipped over from back to front earlier this week. He can scoot around backwards all over the living room, and between flipping and scooting he can go from safely near a wall to edge of the bed in 0.3 seconds. Aaron likens him to a remote control car that can either turn (he pivots on his belly) or move forwards, but not both at once. Dylan did none of these things for at least another 6 weeks, and was never interested in hurling herself anywhere in any case.

*****

I would say about 15% of the time it is now easier to have two of them. Dylan loves to do Ollie-care type things, and Ollie will watch her all day. Sometimes she jams the pacifier in his mouth with a little too much enthusiasm, or starts tucking his breathing holes under the blankie a little too thoroughly, but usually I don't worry too much about her with him. He was howling in his crib yesterday and was suddenly silent. I went to check on him and it was because Dylan was slipping him books through the slats and paging through them with him. She also likes to play "pumping." That's a good one.

*****

In other milestone news I think we're done with pullups at night for the big one. I told her she could wear underwear if she kept them dry for a week. She pretty much couldn't ever do it, so logically I put her in underwear anyway and she does fine 3 out of 4 nights. She sometimes wakes up wailing because she will have an accident if she doesn't go to the bathroom, so that's neurotic for you, but tidy.

*****

I am using my archives as a parenting manual. When do we switch car seats? When do we get all the big baby stuff out of the living room? What should I feed the baby when? All answered in my tediously recorded baby how-to guide of approximately three years ago.

*****

PST ahoy

We're leaving tomorrow on what will be our longest trip away from home since having kids, besides trips around New York State to see family. We should have internet most of the time so I'll check in as we go. We've been keeping Dylan up late all week to get her on west coast time. But tomorrow, first stop: Toronto.

uh, whose idea was this?

iDaddy

My mom got an iPad for her birthday. She left it in our care one evening. Little did we know...how much it would end up caring for us.

It started when we learned it would read books, out loud, to Dylan.We soon realized if it could do such a good job with her, why not the others?

We pushed our luck when we encouraged it to make a complicated soup for dinner.
Things went south for a while.

But everything worked out in the end.
iPad gets tucked into bed after a full day's work.