nobody weds in LA

A couple of weekends ago we were supposed to drive down to LA for my cousin's wedding. Unfortunately, the wedding was postponed the day we were going to leave. We decided to go anyway, since Mom and Sam and Grandma were all still going to be there, and even more family besides. It turned out to be a great weekend, and we got to spend a lot more time hanging out with my cousin and her family and her fiance than we would have otherwise. For instance, we had a lovely IHOP breakfast on Saturday morning...

The weekend before we went down to LA, we got a membership to a children's museum in Marin. It gets you into a pile of other children's museums as well, so we looked up what was available to us in LA, and we ended up checking out a place called Noah's Ark, at the Skirball Cultural Center. Noah's Ark is the coolest children's museum I have ever been to. It's obviously based on the Noah's Ark story, which they've broken up into 3 parts: the storm/flood, the ark itself, and the return to land at the end. Of course there are animals all over, and they are all made out of recycled materials. I wish I'd taken more pictures (they had the cutest kiwis made out of boxing gloves), but this alligator is an excellent example. The snout is a violin case, the teeth are eyedroppers, the tongue is the neck of a violin, the eyes are made out of gloves, and the body is made out of a tire.

This is the storm room. Brian is making lightning, and there are some displays where you can make rain and see a boat go up and down on the flood, or you can make sounds that sound like storm winds, etc. You can also make the coyotes howl, and make the giraffe's head turn.



After the storm room is the ark. In addition to a ton of stuffed and plastic animals, there are the recycled animals still, and there is a big tunnel/climbing structure going up to the second floor that anyone can run around in, including adults. Sam and Brian checked it out for us - it looked pretty cool.

Last is the happy ending room, which is basically just a big room where you can do some arts and crafts. Charli loved the blocks there, but they weren't anything special, just regular blocks! As you can see, she especially loves Brian's blocks...



Saturday night we had dinner at Tod's (Alina's fiance) nightclub, which was quite delicious (and extremely large). His club is GIGANTIC, and right in the heart of downtown Hollywood. Unfortunately, Charli had a meltdown on the way to dinner (which ended up being really late), and we ended up having to take her back to the hotel room and have Brian stay home with her, while I went back to dinner. Have I mentioned recently how great Brian is? Well, he is. Really a lot. Tod's chef fixed up a plate for us to take back to Brian, but we lost it amidst all the leftovers we also ended up taking home. I mean seriously, it was 3 1/2 shopping bag sized bags of food, not including Brian's. I think some food got put on top of his plate, and then we couldn't remember what bag it was in. We took home two bags of food, though, so no worries about starving...

Sunday we thought Skirball was so cool, we went again, this time with a much larger entourage, including Avery (Alina's 3 yr old daughter). Unfortunately, we couldn't get into Noah's Ark until sort of late, and most everyone had to leave before we went in. Avery and cousin Noa stayed with us, and we hung out until we had to leave for Tod's house for dinner. As expected, we had a pretty awesome time.

Sunday night we had a lovely dinner at Tod's house, where we met a bunch of his family and his roommates, and then on Monday we drove home. We had a great time!

charli bit me!

and it REALLY hurt! I mean it! It really hurt! I guess she was biting my sweater, and she bit me too, and now I have teeth marks on my shoulder! Man was I ticked.

Charli has learned a new thing - shrieking. I am trying to unlearn it from her by turning away every time she does it. I have just started this behavior modification attempt, and so far it isn't working, but I'm sticking to it anyway. At least that means I don't have to look at her while she's doing it. Argh! It makes me want to shriek too!

Charli has also learned another new thing - this one good - but I'm not going to tell you what it is until I have some video of it (especially Donna and Jerry and Kelly)! Ha! How's that for blogging? I'm just stringing you all along... In the meantime, you can watch this video instead:



Today Brian and I made brunch for Jason and Tracey (and ourselves, of course), and it was highly successful. Even Charli liked it! Kim and Brent will be pleased to know that their Saveur breakfast issue has at least one good recipe in it. We had zucchini custard with greens, grain and nut pancakes and bacon, and orange/mango mimosas. It was yummy! And we made it all! If only all of you could have been there, too - I'm sure you would have been very proud of us (and impressed).

bella turns 1!

I can't believe it! Today was Bella's - our nanny's daughter - first birthday! She is a whole year old! And that means Charli is almost a whole year old! And that means... *sniff* she's growing up! Waaaah!

Well, we were supposed to meet Bella and her family (including visiting aunt and grandmother) at the zoo, to hang out with the goats and whatever. Unfortunately, Charli napped late, and then traffic was terrible, and it was raining. This all conspired to make us pretty late to the zoo, so that when we got there, the ticket lady actually discouraged us from buying tickets (she was practically refusing to sell them to us). It was about an hour til closing time, and since it was raining, she thought they might have put a lot of the animals away, and she really didn't want us to spend all the entry fee money and then maybe not see any animals. However, although she warned us quite strongly that any money we spent would be generally wasted, she was not willing to let us in for free. We dithered around for a bit and then tried to get someone else to let us in free which also didn't work, but she did tell us that at 4:30 you can get in free every day. Of course, that didn't really do us any good, since the petting zoo closes at 4:30, and that's all we came to see, but then it would have been even more stupid for us to have bought tickets. We ended up spending the intervening 15 minutes very well - hanging out in the pumpkin patch and taking lots of pictures until we could go in for free. We met up with Bella and family on the way out. *sigh*

After that we went over to Bella's house for party and cake! Charli likes cake! We had a lovely dinner and hung out and met a bunch of Bella's (and Nina and Dex's) other friends. Dex's family is really nice, and everything went really well.

Here's Charli hanging with her homie. BFF!

bay area discovery museum

Today we joined the Bay Area Discovery Museum, which means we'd better bring Charli back here a lot. Actually, with this membership we can also get into 2 other kids' museums in the bay area, as well as a pile of other museums throughout the country, so we don't have to bring Charli ONLY to the one in Marin (although it's very nice, and we wouldn't mind).

The Discovery Museum isn't really much of a museum (translation: boring for adults), it's mostly just kid oriented play stuff, which is really pretty good. There are a lot of different areas catering to kids of different ages, there's indoor and outdoor parts, and best of all, it isn't too crowded. There's a room with all these sort of waterbed things you can crawl around on, and another room with structures you can climb through, and an art room for kids under 5 and another for kids over 5. There are all these buttons around that kids can press and they make animal or insect noises. Charli had a fabulous time, as you can tell from this video.



There's also a little cafe, but we have no idea how the food is because it closes much earlier than the actual museum does. However, we did manage to get the last cheese sandwich (yuck), as well as a PB&J and a banana - which gives us the opportunity for more banana face pictures. Brian took this one. :)

costume

Our sharecare partner told us about a professional photographer who takes free pictures of kids and pets in costumes a week before Halloween, so Brian and I went to go check it out. The occasion is a pet parade, which we missed, but we did get to see lots of pets in costume while waiting in line for the photo booth, and they were really funny! One of the best costumes we saw, which I didn't take a picture of for some reason, was a kid dressed up as the Titanic with his dog dressed up as an iceberg. :)

The photo booth line was short in terms of length, but LONG in terms of time. We waited for about an hour, but we finally did get the pictures, and I think they will definitely be better than the ones I took, so I have high hopes. The pictures are displayed in Farley's, a coffee shop in Potrero Hill, throughout November, and then we can pick them up at the beginning of December.

In the meantime, here's some of the pictures we already have. Isn't she adorable? The outfit is from my grandmother, and we made the hat. It's so cute! And the dog was just such a good picture, I couldn't resist putting it in. Her owner had a coordinating costume.

11/12

Whoa - Charli is 11 months old as of two days ago. That is 11/12ths of a year, Charli! Which is almost 12/12ths of a year! Which is a whole year! Where has the time gone?

In other news, Charli is really getting ready to stand up - she stood up for Maria and for Kim! Also, it seems her tooth is finally in. She has been sleeping really late in the mornings lately, and still been napping well. I think she's making up for all the sleep she's missed due to that tooth.

She is still adorable, and we are going to the zoo next week for Bella's 1 yr. birthday party. Should be lots of fun!

teething

Poor Charli has been having such a hard time lately. Her 4th tooth seems to be causing a lot more pain than all the others put together. She woke up Monday night at around 11:30 and cried for about 45 minutes. We finally gave her some tylenol, which helped, and she managed to finally fall back asleep and was fine the next morning. She was a little fussy on Tuesday, but not too bad, and then on Wednesday she ran a fever in the afternoon and had to have more tylenol at Nina's. On Thursday she ran a fever again in the afternoon and had some tylenol, and hardly napped at all and was fussy all evening. Friday she ran a fever again I think, but she was in good spirits so I didn't worry about it. Today she is a little fussy, but no tylenol has been needed yet. I thought the tooth was already out, but now it seems to have disappeared again...

Also, we've decided that Charli's record setting poops lately are a result of the teething, not my taking laxative tea. Especially since I've stopped, and she hasn't.