you don't need pants for the victory dance

In a modest effort to get back to the potty training, we've been letting Charli run around without pants on while at home (we still put on a diaper when we're going out). Mostly anyway - we occasionally resort to the pull-ups at home, but she really seems to do best with nothing. She has more accidents even if she's just wearing underwear. But overall, she's been doing great - today she started running to the bathroom on her own!

all worthwhile

Today I was lying on the floor in the living room, and Charli came and laid down next to me and put her head on my arm. "Mommy?" she said. "Charli?" I said. "I love you," she said. And then my heart blew up.

dual purpose visit

My parents came out this weekend to see Charli and to meet up with my grandmother and take her back to Colorado for a few months. It's spring break, so they were able to come out earlier than usual and make a long weekend of it.

They showed up on Thursday morning and the weather was so warm that Mom was motivated to get out our little inflatable pool for Charli. They both had a great time. Although you can't tell from this picture, Charli DOES have several swimsuits. She even had one on, but this is after she went to the bathroom, and she didn't want to put her wet swimsuit back on. After pool-spasse (I don't know how to say "pool" in german), they had a tea party, and after I was done working and Brian was home, we went to Yoyo Sushi for dinner again, where Charli once again ate a ton and took a long time doing so. This time she didn't want hamachi or miso soup as much as she wanted all of Mom's pork katsu, but she still ate everything.

On Friday I took the day off, and we went to the kids' museum in Sausalito. I haven't been in a long time, although Nina takes the kids there quite often. I forgot how awesome it is. Charli played in the water, climbed, crawled through "secret underwater tunnels", cranked cranks, ran around a play boat, made waves, played in sand, and painted. That was all we had time for before we had to leave to meet Hal (Dad's bro), Georgia, and Kate for late lunch in Corte Madera. The restaurant we went to had, rather than crayons and coloring books, colored chalk and a chalkboard for kids. How cool! Charli, rather than drawing on the chalkboard, got a mirror from Auntie Georgia and went to town on her face. We had a very pleasant lunch followed by lovely gelato, and it was so warm we could actually eat it outside - in the shade! What a gorgeous day!

After we got home, Mom blew a dozen eggs and we decorated them for Charli's Easter egg tree. Mom always needs a project to do while she's here, and this time it was an Easter egg tree. But what to do with all those eggs? Hmmm... read on!

On Saturday we went to the farmers' market for all the general things we buy, but specifically for piles of basil so we could make pesto. We were in time for empanadas (yay!), and the first good strawberries were in, but... NO BASIL! There was none in the entire market! I had no idea that there was season for basil, but apparently there is, and this is not it. We had to go to Safeway to get the basil, where they can import it from Mexico apparently. It must be in season in Mexico.

After that we met up with Kalei (Mom's bro) and family, who drove down from Sacramento with Grandma, for dim sum. Sam and her friends, also visiting from Fort Collins, met us there, too, and we had lovely dim sum and got full. Then we walked a couple of blocks to Yerba Buena Gardens, where we wanted to fly the kite that Mom brought for Charli. Unfortunately, you can't fly kites at Yerba Buena Gardens, as the security guy who came to visit kindly informed us. Fortunately, Charli found something else to keep herself busy.


Unfortunately, Charli took a good fall while she was doing this, resulting in an honest to god bloody knee (the first in a long line, I have no doubt), which pretty much ruined the rest of her visit to the park. Brian and I didn't have anything to put on her knee, of course, even though we carry around a big bag of stuff for Charli... It (stupidly) doesn't include any first aid equipment. Auntie Bernice, however, had a band-aid, anti-bacterial ointment, and a q-tip in her purse. Bernice = experienced parent. Shortly after that, we headed home. We decided it was better to just hang out at the house than to hang out in a park with no kite, a whiny 2 yr old, and dropping temperatures. At home we played Wii and made a ton of delicious pesto for dinner in the lovely new food processor, of which we still have a large amount. Charli practiced everyone's names, and the Sacramento Fongs headed home after another great day, while Taipo (great grandmother) stayed with us.



On Sunday, Dad had to make two separate attempts to get Tartine's morning buns. Those guys open later every time I look. But we eventually got our morning buns, and in the meantime, we used up the eggs by making a half dozen quiches. We made them with various combinations of cheeses, ham, onions, spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, corn, and pesto, and I must say that of the three we've tried, they've all been delicious, and we used up not only all of the eggs that Mom blew, but also all the other eggs we had left. Charli and Taipo had a great time, and overall it was a very relaxed day. As of the end of Sunday, all the visitors (ours and Sam's) have headed back to Colorado, and we have gone through 2 3/4 of the quiches. I have 1 1/4 still in the fridge, and 2 in the freezer to be eaten at some later, fortunate, date.

raw

Charli likes sushi!

We went to Yoyo Sushi for dinner, where we haven't been in AGES. Yet the woman there still remembers us, and they were so sweet to Charli! Charli ate edamame (LOVES it), kappa maki (cucumber roll), didn't like the California roll, gomae (spinach with peanut sauce), hamachi (yellowtail), maguro (tuna), and miso soup with rice. She ate so much that she was the last person eating, even though she started at the same time as Brian and me with edamame and miso soup and rice. We never even had time to get out her coloring books!

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.

appliances

Last weekend we bought a food processor, but we didn't use it. Last night we watched the hour and 15 minute dvd that came with it - my friend told me it was very informative and we should watch it, and so we did and now we are informed. And also inspired. They made peanut butter in the dvd, and it was really really easy, so we bought cashews at Costco today and made cashew nut butter, and it was really really easy, and it is really really delicious. We were eating it out of the bowl, and my idea is now to roll it into a log, freeze it, and then cut coins off and dip them in melted chocolate. It's so delicious I can't think of anything else to do but make candy out of it. Charli thinks it's mighty tasty, too.

Brian also used it to slice some zucchini - it was so fast I missed it entirely. The slicing disc is adjustable - it will make slices from 1mm to 6mm thick! Isn't that cool? And Dad, you will be happy to know that I will never, ever buy pre-shredded cheese again. It's also got a dough blade, and at some point when I'm feeling ambitious, we're going to try making pizza. It's very exciting. :)

Two weekends ago, I bought a vacuum cleaner. I used to have a vacuum cleaner, but we never used it for 2 reasons: 1, it doesn't work very well, and 2, Flavia comes every other week with a vacuum cleaner that works and vacuums for me. So, when Sam moved into her place and was perfectly happy to have a free vacuum cleaner that didn't work very well, I gave her ours. Of course, not very long after that I got Charli a blanket that shed everywhere, and I really really wanted a vacuum cleaner, but we suffered through a few weeks of that and the blanket stopped shedding. I decided we needed something for light duty (not that we had ever used our old vacuum cleaner even for light duty), and I got a dustbuster that I was very happy with for a couple of weeks, but it really didn't work well for long either. So two weekends ago I was at Costco and for some reason they had an aisle of vacuum cleaners that weekend, and I bought one. It's a light duty, cordless upright, and it's AWESOME. I never thought I would love a vacuum cleaner, but I love this vacuum cleaner. The battery lasts a week, and we vacuum with it multiple times a day. It's gotten to the point where I don't try to wipe things up off the table after dinner anymore - I just wipe everything onto the floor and then we vacuum it up. Seriously, I love this vacuum cleaner. I would like to name it, but I'm having trouble coming up with something suitable. Suggestions?

fibonacci

Charli counts in a modified fibonacci sequence now: one, two, three, five, eight, nine, SIX!