santa cruzin'

Well aren't you lucky? You get a picture bonanza today!

Lately I have been obsessing about getting Charli either a dollhouse or a play kitchen. She is getting into pretend play, and so of course I feel like I need to get her some equipment. As often happens when I think too long about these things, I ended up getting her both. I found a kitchen on craigslist, down in Santa Cruz, and we went there today to pick it up. It's a couple of hours away, so we made a day of it - and a very lovely day it was!

We got up at a reasonable hour and headed south. On the way, we stopped at one of the vaguely local Original Pancake Houses (yes, Kim and Brent, you heard me right. Turns out, there are 3 in south bay). It was big, and we got there around 11am and had no wait! There we had a very reasonably sized breakfast, as opposed to the "bigger than my head" breakfast I was expecting, but that's probably good. Charli was great, even though we forgot to bring her any coloring books or her purse, and then we headed on towards kitchendom. Charli might have splashed in some leftover puddles before we managed to stuff her back in the car again.

Once we got to Santa Cruz, we couldn't pick up the kitchen right away, so we hit the Boardwalk. We thought we would hit the beach first, but instead, right inside the entrance we walked through was the carousel. Charli is drawn like a magnet! She stares in wide eyed wonder! Loud, jingly music; flashing lights and things bouncing up and down - what two-year-old could possibly resist? We go buy tickets immediately. Then she gets on, and is too afraid to ride any of the horses. Go figure!

After that, even though Charli saw the helicopter ride and asked to go on it about 20 times, we did hang out on the beach. It was a really beautiful day, and the sand is very fine and warm. There were a lot of flies, but whatever. Charli delighted in chasing seagulls and stomping on anything Brian built, and we ate pistachio nuts with a lot of sand.

Once I figured we'd covered our daily doses of vitamin D (from the sun) and silicon (from the sand), we went back to the Boardwalk and gave Charli a go on the helicopters. These were small enough that Charli went on them alone (no adults would fit). She was very excited while waiting, and very excited while getting into the helicopter, but slightly less excited when the seatbelt (seatrope?) was put on, and even less excited when Brian closed the helicopter door between them, and she looked distinctly worried once Brian left the helicopter entirely.

This is pretty much what she did for the whole ride. You might think she didn't like it, but you would see that you were wrong when you saw her scream and cry at having to get off the ride, and watched Brian try to pull her away as she's hanging on to the end of the seatrope with all her might.

Since the stick controls were such a failure with the helicopter, we scouted around for a ride with some controls that she could go on with Brian, so he could show her how it's done. Voila! We find sea dragons. Charli says, "I want to ride the alligators!" So with much excitement they get on the alligators, no worrying this time, but once the ride gets going, Charli again wants nothing to do with the controls. O well, at least Brian can get them up in the air. He knows how to work the controls, you see. Also again, Charli sobs at having to leave the ride.

With our last 3 tickets, we decided to put Charli on a ride that goes up and down without her having to do anything. On the left is an adorable picture I took while we were waiting, but that was a fortunate moment - usually she looked like the picture on the right. And finally, we hit paydirt, and Charli actually smiled and looked like she was having fun WHILE SHE WAS ON THE RIDE! Yay! And for the last time, Charli was brought to tears by having to get off.

Finally, after hours of writing/reading about it, we reached the end of the lovely day, and capped it off with this:



What's that you say? What about the kitchen? O, ya - here it is. It's tall so Charli can use it for a long time, it's got plenty of room for more than one kid, and it's solid wood, so it should last forever. I'm very pleased with it, and Charli's not too sad about it either.