So there I was, again

Two years ago today I started this blog.

In that inaugural post, I reflected on how wacky, unexpected and fun my life was at that moment.

Well, I am happy to report that today my life is as wacky, unexpected and fun as it was then.

Perhaps even more so.

Dancing babies

Apparently, babies love to move to a beat. They can't help themselves. And their parents can't help but film them and put them on the internet.



See? And here's another. I love the comment on this Brazilian baby video: "When you've done this as a baby, it don't matter what you do. You can't fail life anymore"




And if youtube videos aren't proof enough for you: scientists have even studied it, further evidence that there is someone willing to fund almost any study.

Pick your own fruit - check

We took Emerson fruit picking this weekend. It is something I've wanted to do for a while. Eric insisted that if it were that much fun it wouldn't be something only desperate migrant workers are willing to do. I did point out that they usually work for less than minimum wage - perhaps because they enjoyed it so much? OK, probably not.

We drove a little over an hour outside of San Francisco to get to the fruit and it was h-o-t out, which I love. The fruit on offer was apricots, nectarines and peaches. The nectarines and peaches were ready to pick but not quite ready to eat. The apricots, on the other hand, had the double bonus of being ready to eat and being an easy two bites. Yum!

For me, this experience gave new meaning to "low-hanging fruit," a term which I have used many times as a consultant rather than as a fruit-picker. For the record, it has significantly more meaning as a fruit-picker. Especially when picking with people who are taller than you are.

The haul (half of it actually- we had two boxes):

What do you do with 30+ pounds of ripe fruit? Make some* jam!

*way too much

Bravo

Eric and I once again found ourselves at the symphony this week, enjoying some classical tunes. It was an all Berlioz program, including the Roman Carnival which evoked for me the scene in Mary Poppins at the end of "Spoonful of Sugar" when the toys and closet doors are all going crazy. It could easily have been the soundtrack for the scene. I loved it.

The piece that ended the evening was another rousing number and towards the end of it Eric pointed out to me a girl of about seven who was in one of the seats above and behind the stage. She was sitting on her father's lap and "guest conducting": waving her arms wildly with a huge grin on her face. She was having a fabulous time and putting on an excellent show. We watched her, grins spilling across our faces, for the duration of the show.

Living like we're leaving

Eric and I are not planning on leaving San Francisco any time soon. But someday we might choose or be forced by the ravages of runaway climate change to move somewhere else, and that is when we will realize that there is a ton of stuff to do here that we have never done, and we don't have time to do it all before we leave.

Or not!

We've made a list of a bunch of things that might be fun to do here that we haven't yet done and we're going to do them. (See what happens when you sell your TV? You have to get creative.)

Here's our current list, which should keep us busy for the next few months (in addition to raising a child):

• Anchor Brewery Tour
• Golden Gate Fields for horse racing
• Infineon for car racing
• Weekend getaway in Healdsburg, with canoeing on the Russian River
• Go to the water park near San Jose
• "Pick your own" organic fruit at a nearby farm
• Dolores Park movie night
• Walking tours of different neighborhoods - "City Guide" tours
• Alcatraz
• Make our own cheese
• Go see a movie at the drive-in movie theatre in the east bay
• Visit the Lavender Bee Farm
• Go to a 49ers game
• Take Emerson to a Giants game and an Oakland A's game
• Play at Lake Tahoe in the summer
• Get spooked at the Winchester Mystery House
• Long weekend trip(s) to Big Sur, Carmel, Monterrey
• Go see Teatro Zinzanni
• Go see Beach Blanket Babylon
• Check out the Seward Street Slides
• See all of the beaches in the bay area - preferably on nice days
• Take our bikes out of the city and go for a ride with Emerson
• Go camping at Arroyo Seco
• Mini golf
• Kayaking on the channel

Back on the bike

Several weeks ago, Eric agreed to watch Emerson while I went to a yoga class. This was exciting! But to get to the class I had to ride my bike. I was less excited about this than I would have anticipated.

It has been many months since I have been on my bike due to the whole pregnancy and giving birth and having a newborn thing. Long enough that my bike had to be unearthed from the back of the garage and revived from a serious bike coma. We dusted it off, filled up the tires and greased up the chain, which had gotten a bit rusty (whoops). As I wheeled it out to the street, I noticed the back wheel had gotten slightly warped, probably from having the lock hanging on it for almost a year.

I hopped on and pedaled off to yoga, ignoring the regular soft jolt as the warped part of my wheel rubbed against the brake.

It all came right back to me, just like riding a bike.

Meet the Droogies

On Saturday, Eric took Emerson and me to meet our two beehives, also known as "the droogies." They live in the Bee Yard on Stanford's campus and they are busy making honey for us.

There comes a moment when one is wrapping one's not-yet-three-months-old son in mosquito netting in his carseat to take him to see hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of bees, when one questions one's parental judgment. Then the moment passes and one proceeds with one's mosquito-net-wrapped son into the Bee Yard.

Eric lit the smoker and we walked through the 40 or so hives to get back to our two. It was spectacularly neat: there they were! The Droogies. At the entrances of the hives we could see lots of activity, with bees flying out to forage for nectar and being checked by the guard bees when they tried to come back in.

We examined both hives, which meant that we opened them up and pulled out the different frames. Droogie 1 is going gangbusters - lots of brood (a sign that the hive is healthy) and lots of capped honey. Droogie 2 is full of slacker bees and is not doing so well. Perhaps this will present us with the learning opportunity of what to do when things go wrong with your hives. Eric got some great photos which you can see on his post on this same topic.

Emerson slept the whole time so he will probably not remember his first visit to the droogies. (And I'm not sure he could have seen very well through all that mosquito netting even if he had been awake.)

Given the cooler climate this year, the slightly late start with the hives and who knows what else, this year may not be a huge honey harvest but we sure are enjoying keeping some bees!

A night out

On Saturday night, Eric and I met some friends from out of town for dinner at a local brewpub, Thirsty Bear. Across the street from Thirsty Bear is the Gold Club, which is a strip club.

We had Emerson with us, as we almost always do, and I was curious if an adorable, well-behaved baby would be allowed into the strip club.* The question is purely academic, of course, but I was curious to know the answer. And it was easy to find out.

"Could we bring him in?" I asked the bouncers standing out in front of the club.

"Uh....no," they responded.

So there you have it. Babies are not welcome in strip clubs.


*For the breast-fed babe, I suppose this would feel like being at some sort of dancing buffet?

Bee happy*

The birth of our son Emerson this past March was only one of two major new beginnings for our family. The other, which got somewhat overshadowed but is still a big deal, was the launch of our two beehives! Eric set them up down at Stanford in a special bee yard and has been telling their tale in his new blog The Bee Bungalow. I highly recommend. If only honey could be transmitted over the internet...

We are going to go down there tomorrow so that I can meet the bees in person and check out the hives. I am so excited! I promise a full report.


*When one's attention is focused on bees, it becomes clear that the entire English language was created just to provide endless bee puns for beekeepers.

It was good while it lasted

Eric and I, at least since we have been together, have not been TV people. We've never had one or really felt the need for one, other than to watch certain sporting events. This problem is handily solved by going to sports bars.

Until you have a newborn baby right before the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

We bought an old tube TV off Craigslist for $30 (the manual boasted that it was "Y2K Ready") for the express and exclusive purpose of watching the Stanley Cup playoffs. The deal was: we would get a TV for the playoffs and then sell it as soon as the Cup had been won.

While we had the TV, we were tempted to take advantage, naturally, of some of the other programming. We may have watched a few episodes of Law and Order, or a movie or two on On Demand; and it is possible that Eric watched several (many?) hours of crab fishing.

And while I was absolutely thrilled when the Hawks won last week, I will admit it was bittersweet.

We sold the TV last night. For $40.

First date

Eric and I had our first baby-less date last Thursday. We are helping the symphony finish out the season, having swapped our tickets for the last performances of the season.

We got dressed up. I wore the dress I was wearing the very first time I met Eric* which is loose with a tie around the waist to give it shape. It was as flattering a dress as a two months postpartum woman could hope for. I dressed it up with three inch black patent leather heels that I need to relearn how to walk in. Eric wore nice slacks and a sharp dress shirt. We looked elegant.

We left Emerson with Sarah, her sister Liz and Rob. Three adults to two babies seemed like fair odds for Emerson's first evening without at least one of his parents.

The symphony menu that night included Wagner, Berg, and a Beethoven violin concerto. Before it started we made a bet as to how much the soprano for the Berg would weigh: I took under 170 lbs**, Eric took over. Eric won unambiguously.

"What do you think?" Eric whispered to me after the first movement of the Berg piece, a modern, somewhat atonal work.

"I think they should be just about tuned up." I responded. It was not my favorite.

During intermission, I snagged a table and Eric got us celebratory drinks. He ordered two glasses of port, stumping the rookie bartender who, after looking everywhere for glasses and then everywhere again for the port, poured two very generous glasses of port. The veteran bartender's eyes got very large when he noticed, but he let it slide.

It felt nice to be out with adults, looking elegant and making adult conversation. As the lights dimmed for the second half, Eric asked me what the violinist's name was.

"It's Anus," he heard me respond, triggering a merciless bout of church giggles. Checking the program and seeing James Ehnes listed as the soloist only seemed to make it worse.

When we got to Sarah's place to pick up Emerson, Sarah was a little sheepish.

"The only place we could get him to sleep was in his carseat," she explained as she opened the door to the guest room where the carseat was placed on the bed.

We were not surprised: we often end up doing the same thing.

*And which has also been central to a Viking Halloween costume
**Apparently I was feeling generous

Grocery store scoldings

I took Emerson with me grocery shopping today, as usual. His socks had been falling off all day so as we headed into the grocery store I took them off and left them in the car to avoid losing them in the store.

In the produce section, the first stop in my route through the store, an older Mexican woman stopped me to admire Emerson.

"Oh look at the baby!" she cooed. Then suddenly, with horror: "Bare feet! Are you cold little one?"

"He kept losing his socks..." I attempted feebly to explain. Ignoring me, she grabbed his feet with her hands.

"Oh you're freezing!* Pobrecito! Pobrecito!"

I managed to move on, but was feeling like Most Horrible Mother Ever.

I was finally fully focused on grocery shopping again several minutes later when another older woman stopped me to admire Emerson, only to recoil in horror and scold me sternly upon discovering his bare little feet.

This happened no fewer than four times. Yes, four times. During one forty minute grocery shopping trip.

As far as I can tell, this grocery trip was far more traumatic for me than it was for Emerson and his chilly little feet.


*He wasn't freezing.

San Francisco Re-Discovered

I've been doing a lot of walking lately. A lot. Walking is a thing that Emerson and I can do together that doesn't make either of us fussy, usually.

I used to think I knew San Francisco pretty well, but I've discovered all kinds of things that I had no idea existed.

For example, I discovered a lovely waterfront walkway along the channel that essentially connects right near our place to the ballpark. It's much nicer than the walk along the train tracks that I did dozens of times walking home from work while pregnant. If only I had known!

Another recent discovery is the footbridge over the highway that allows me to skip the nasty and not very stroller friendly walk under the highway. The added bonus is the unexpected views:

Gone camping

This weekend we took Emerson to the woods to attend a three day sustainability summit organized by a colleague of mine (and at which I facilitated a few sessions). You don't know what you can and can't manage with a baby until you try it, right?

The accommodations were rustic cabins, with walls that were just screens above armpit height. We were deep in the redwoods in a valley, so it was dark and chilly in spite of the hot sunny summer day happening overhead. It was even darker and chillier at night, and the screen walls didn't do much to hold in any heat.

As the only people with a baby at the conference, we presented a modest spectacle. We were alternately providing inspiration for summit attendees (after all, sustainability is about future generations and Emerson represents that well) and providing inspiration for banning children from future conferences. I got a laugh when I dripped yogurt sauce on top of Emerson's head as he sat in my lap at dinner. He was unphased.

The first night was long. Until about 3am we could hear the other conference attendees dancing, drinking and revelling around the campfire. It was cold and Emerson slept in my sleeping bag with me. He actually did pretty well though his early morning feeding ended with him giving all that milk back to me, catching me totally off guard. He's not much for the spitting up, usually. I guess all bets are off when you're camping.

We stayed most of the day Saturday but decided to skip out on a second night in the cabins. On the way home we stopped for dinner in Healdsburg, a cute wine country village and the site of Eric's proposal-with-ring almost a year ago now.

Emerson woke up and started wailing as we were cruising the main strip looking for parking. Eric saw a primo parking spot on the other side of the street and was already executing an illegal u-turn to nab it when he registered a cop watching him. Eric had successfully parked in the desired spot when the cop rolled up, lights flashing.

"Crying baby, eh?" he commented as he arrived at the driver's side window.

He must have children; he let Eric off with a warning.

Sleeping in our own bed that night felt great.

Stars and stripes

On a recent walk up the hill, we noticed an unusual number of people were gathered outside our local pizza joint, Goat Hill Pizza. They appeared to be filming something. To say that this doesn't happen very often in Potrero Hill is like saying our compost bin only has a few fruit flies in it.

I asked a large man sitting at a console with a lot of buttons and a little screen what was going on.

"We're shooting a little thing with Danny Glover," he told me nonchalantly.

And sure enough, as we walked up the block there was Danny Glover walking and talking with the director.

Not wanting to gawk, we continued walking on up the hill toward the library.

"Danny Glover got old!" I observed to Eric.

A woman, clearly part of the crew, happened to be walking by us just at that moment. She burst out laughing.

There were no stars, young or old, at the library when we got there. Only beekkeeping books. Luckily that's what we wanted.

Hawks Win!

My father maintained a photo album for me while I was growing up. Several times a year, and sometimes more often, he would have prints made from his favorite slides capturing the important milestones of my childhood.

Then in late summer of 1989, the Chicago Cubs won the National League East Championship. My photo album goes from photos of my childhood to clippings from the Chicago Tribune of the Cubs celebrating this victory. After at least five full pages of newspaper clippings, my childhood resumes with photos of me becoming increasingly awkward as I enter junior high.

So it seemed only appropriate that today we interrupt the blog to celebrate the Chicago Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup last night. In overtime. GO HAWKS!

Mom and Baby Fill in the Blank

Apart from the skirt making (which has clearly not been taking up too too much of my time) most everything I do these days is done with Emerson. This includes getting exercise.

I gave Mom and Baby Yoga a try a few weeks back. I think I would have liked it better if it wasn't trying to pretend to have anything to do with actual yoga. Given the number of babies there, at least four of them are crying at any given moment and at least half of them need to be fed at some point during the class. We did do a few yoga postures but I think I have done more yoga while waiting for the bus than we did in this class. Not that it was a bad class, I just didn't feel it delivered on what its name promised. I think it should be called Mom and Baby Play and Feeding Time With Yoga Mats In A Yoga Studio But Don't Expect Any Actual Yoga.

Today I went to Stroller Fitness for the first time. It is offered by a yoga studio but cleverly promises that no actual yoga will take place. The class meets in the lobby of the studio* and walks to a nearby park, in this case Alamo Square. This works out well as a spot for women who are trying to lose embarrassing pregnancy pounds because it is major tourist destination: it is a stop for those double decker tourist buses as well as a good proportion of all of the other tourist buses in the city. People want to see the Painted Ladies. As a bonus, on Wednesday mornings they get to see the Postpartum Ladies too. Running up and down the stairs, doing lunge squats with our strollers, doing forearm plank and push ups with our hands on the actual ground.

"Do you smell dog poo every time you go down?" Sarah asked me as we did push ups.

I can't wait to go back.


*Or, if you are running 10 minutes late like me because of ridiculous and unnecessary traffic near Van Ness, you drive straight to the park and meet them there.

Second skirt

Like so many other things in life, it turns out that if you just keep following step by step, you eventually end up with a completed and wearable skirt.