The Small Family   

My rambunctious little boy is very much in touch with his feminine side this week. Not only has he learned how to do the fun domestic task of Swiffering the floors, but he has learned to accessorize with a lovely purse. (Okay, so Swiffering can be done by either gender, but since such tasks were traditionally “women’s work” back in the day, we’ll call that being somewhat in touch with his feminine side. In reality, Chris is the Swiffer King around here, as I rarely have time to do it!) You’ll see a few pictures of the new Mr. Swiffer in this week’s album, as well as several of him toting around one of my purses, which he’s very enamored of. The blue does match his eyes well, I must say....

We started out the week by going to the park with Grandma Diane, though unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera this time. But Theo had a blast running around the park, and I think his greatest joy was in stealing Grandma’s cell phone from her purse and proceeding to make some “business calls” while sitting on the slide.

It’s amazing to me to watch his little brain developing right now—it’s like an explosion! He’s really putting two and two together in more ways than I expect from a toddler. (I haven’t been around toddlers in a long time, so this is all new to me!) For example, he has a book that has pictures of various objects and food in it. One day, after he woke up from his nap, Theo opened the book, paged through it to the food page, pointed to the French fries, and made the sign for “food” and said, “Mmmmm!!!” He has also figured out how to turn on cell phones and how to make them do certain things—on Grandma Diane’s, he knows how to make it play the ringtones, and on Chris’s, he knows how to make it take a picture. It’s just little things like that happening every day that are fascinating to watch. And he’s practicing more and more words—today it was “good.” I’m slightly chagrined to say that one of his newest words is “Dooo!” which I’m almost sure means “Dude.” Every so often we refer to him as “Dude,” as in, “Dude, that’s a funky diaper!” or “Dude, why did you pull off your shoe and throw it?” But we call him many things: Theo, Widge, Monkey, Turkey, etc...and of course, “Dude” is the one he picks up. Sigh...

Speaking of babies and fun, I have to share the news that my cousin Steve and his wife Alice had their first baby this week! (Alice was quite pregnant when we visited Buffalo.) Adelaide Michele is her name, and they’re calling her Addie. I LOVE the name...I’m partial to old-fashioned, classic names (as evidenced by Theo’s moniker). Anyway, we got pictures of Addie this week, and she is adorable. Congratulations to Steve and Alice!!

Our week around here had its ups and downs. Some aren’t worth mentioning here, but one is that I got what essentially amounts to a pay cut of about 15% a year. Ouch. But, I’m still employed, so I shan’t complain. There was a threat of my job being completely outsourced, so I’m just relieved that didn’t happen.

That said, a rough week deserved a good weekend...so we had one. Friday night we took Theo over to a local shopping center for “date night,” and we all enjoyed dinner at a customize-your-burger place.  Chris stepped out of the box (not!) with a burger with bacon and BBQ sauce, while I had a veggie burger with grilled mushrooms and bacon...because all good veggie burgers must be adorned with bacon! Theo, as usual, enjoyed some fries and sweet potato fries.

There’s a playground in this shopping center, so we took Theo over there after dinner. He played happily for about five minutes and then said “bye bye”—his indicator that he wants to leave. So we opened the gate, and he promptly made a beeline across the courtyard for some small “drive yourself” cars that you can rent for your child to use at the shopping center. We have no idea how he saw them all the way across the courtyard, but he did...that kid has an eagle eye when he sees something he wants, and he’s VERY much a fan of cars!

Saturday was our annual Howl-o-Ween pug meetup, which Chris politely declined to attend. (Pug meetups are not his favorite things—he kindly suggested that I take my Mom, who was happy to go along.) Luna dressed as a turtle, and Theo was going to be a kangaroo, but it was a little too muddy and warm to put him in his heavy, light-colored costume...so he just stayed in civilian clothes. We had a lot of fun with the dressed-up pugs, and in fact Luna actually made it through four rounds of “Musical Pugs” (think Musical Chairs, only with pugs attempting to sit on command) before she lost. (Impressive, since she failed out of obedience school for being unable to sit still!)

Sunday we decided to get out of town for the day, so Chris, Theo, and I headed down to San Francisco. We were going to take Theo to a Halloween festival for kids at the Bay Area Discovery Museum (a hands-on children’s museum we’ve gone to before), but it was packed, so we changed plans and went to Golden Gate Park, where we spent a couple hours at the California Academy of Sciences—home to a museum and the Steinhart Aquarium. Theo went crazy in there, running from exhibit to exhibit and squealing with excitement. He particularly loved the African animals exhibit, which had replicas of animals from the savannah. A great place—we will definitely go back!

After the museum, we headed to the Ferry Building for a late lunch. Alas, silly me said, “Let’s forego our usual places and try someplace new to eat”—and thus we tried a Chinese restaurant. Now, I rarely eat Chinese food. Of all the ethnic cuisines, most of which I love, it’s the one I’m not overly crazy about. But it sounded good for a change, and it was one of the few places still open when we arrived, so we went. Ack, we won’t make that mistake again. It was very expensive and not very good—specifically, it was the blandest Chinese food we’ve ever eaten! Nothing tasted bad, but the food just had no flavor at all. I had a dim sum plate and Chris had a curry dish, and neither had any flavor. Blah! I am officially referring to it as the “Chinese lobster roll lunch,” referring back to our lobster roll dinner in Maine. (When we went to Maine some years ago, we were determined to try the local specialty—the lobster roll. We picked a place to get one and shelled out our $50 for two lobster rolls, an order of French fries, and two Cokes. It was the grossest $50 meal ever! We’re not really picky people in general, but the lobster rolls had no flavor, the French fries were bland, and the coleslaw that came with it actually tasted rancid. That and today’s Chinese food lunch are probably the only two times that we’ve really been disappointed in a meal out. As I said, we’re REALLY not that hard to please!!)

We did get home in time for me to go for a jog before dark, which was nice. “A jog???” I hear some of you saying. Because as some of you know, I don’t run. I don’t jog. I love to walk, but I don’t run or jog. It makes me feel sick, and I’m lousy at it. However, insomnia has reared its ugly head something fierce the last few weeks, and I’m desperate. So my latest attempt to cure it is by taking up some form of regular exercise. I get exercise every day when I take a walk with Theo and when we go to the park or play outside, but it’s not a sustained exercise that increases my heart rate, by any means. So...jogging. I’m pleased to say I did a hybrid walk/jog loop of about 1.5 miles five days this week, so that’s a start. I can really only spare about 30 minutes a day to devote to this, so I figure I’ll just do what I can in 30 minutes and hope for results.

Last but not least, a super big Happy Birthday to my friend Lisa, who turns 35 on Monday. She’s in Spain right now with her hubby and probably won’t read this until she returns, but Happy Birthday anyway!!