pre-Easter Egg Hunt in St Helena

Today we drove across the mountains to St. Helena for an Easter Egg hunt at Elora’s great-grandmother’s house. We dyed a dozen eggs for the occasion, and brought 2 lbs of butter as our contribution to pre-Easter-lunch.

The boys and I had quite a good time. Oliver and Patrick both ate pancakes, and both boys enjoyed exploring the yard and house with the other children.

After lunch, the children went upstairs and read the Easter Bunny Story. I prefer the Bunny to the alternative, far less gruesome.

The egg hunt went well, Anne’s grandmother has a huge and awesome yard so there were plenty of places to hide eggs. Most of the kids looking were about 3 so there wasn’t too much competitiveness and most of the eggs were fairly easy to spot.

It was a nice, relaxing day with friends, and I got a few adorable photos of the boys.

Eggs Dyed for our Entertainment

We are going to an Easter egg hunt on Saturday and we were asked to bring a dozen to contribute to the hunt, so this afternoon we dyed Easter Eggs. I boiled up a dozen of the cheapest eggs Safeway had to offer, and broke out the discount dye kit in six unnatural colors.

It was Oliver’s first time dyeing Easter eggs and he was quite excited by the process.

The kit came with glitter, stickers, beads and sequins. We kept it simple and dyed the eggs in simple monochromatic hues. Continue reading

Baby P hits the big 1-0 (months)

Patrick is 10 months old today.

He enjoys pulling himself up, crawling, cruising along the furniture, bouncing in his door bouncer, and climbing on people. His favorite foods include pureed peas with creamed spinach, apple sauce, local organic goat milk yogurt (full fat vanilla), Bolognese sauce, butter crackers, and bananas.

He naps most days, sleeps some nights, and is ready to charge head-first into whatever action there might be. He can usually be found cruising the living room tables, sofa, and getting into Big Brother’s stuff.

O at 38 months

Oliver is 38 months old today.

He is standing on his me-help-mommy tower reaching for the container of sugar because he’d like to make “Mon-kee Baby” (Patrick) a “farm cake” (like a train cake? not 100% sure on that one).

After he got out the sugar, he also got the flour, baking soda and salt. He was rather upset we did not make a cake.

I promised Oliver could make Patrick a “farm cake” for Patrick’s birthday in May, and then Gavin suggested we could make a “farm cake” and have a “just because party.”

Go for it Gavin, I’d love to watch you assist the boys baking.

the little red fire truck, a tale of great woe

Once upon a time at Christmas Gan-ma Das-ee got O a little red remote-control fire truck. After three hours of very vigorous play, the truck ceased to work so Gan-ma Das-ee took it back, explained what had happened, and exchanged it for a new one.

The new truck hid in the garage for a few months, safely out of sight, out of mind, until this past weekend, when O “discovered” his “fire-guck!” hiding in one of the bins. After two solid days of pestering, he agreed to swap his cars and floor mat for the truck.

The truck came out and was raced around the kitchen, around the living room, used to taunt and torment the baby (“no baby! mine-truck!”), and was finally put on the bookcase (out of baby’s reach) so it could recover from a hard day’s use.

This morning, the little truck’s batteries were nearly dead. They were so spent the little truck could hardly roll over the tile, much less the carpet. O was crushed. He DEMANDED that mommy or daddy “call gan-ma!” so that “gan-ma fix tuck!”

The truck is now “going to grandma’s” (the garage) to get fixed (new batteries…eventually). Gan-ma Das-ee, be prepared for an upset  O to call you later, he really wants you to fix his truck.

still alive!

The blog was fairly silent this past week because I was busy being a mom of boys. Gavin was off in Palo Alto and Santa-Somewhere-or-other for work and conferences so it was up to me to hold down the fort.

We had a few ups and downs over the week, but over all things went fairly smoothly. We had some semblance of routine, even if we did have dinner at four-thirty some afternoons followed by bath time at five.

Highlights from the week:

We got to Skype with Gavin on Wednesday evening. Oliver threw a colossal fit because I insisted he wear a diaper before he could video chat.

Our new mattress arrived Thursday morning. We finally decided on a 9″ talalay latex mattress with an organic wool mattress topper and an organic wool mattress pad on top of that. The wool comes from New Zealand so apparently the sheep are not eaten when they get old.

We watched Wall-E one too many times.

Oliver hit re-dial on our phone and called Gavin to order pizza, he had the take-out menu in hand and was pointing to the ones he wanted and quite firmly insisting that “pee-za” come soon. I didn’t realize he’d made a call so I was quite surprised when Gavin called back.

Are we a Pottery Barn Family?

Over the weekend I picked up a Pottery Barn Kids catalog for ideas. I refuse to go all-out for Easter, or for the kid room decor, but they had some cute ideas.

Much to Gavin’s dismay (and my amusement), his name was prominently featured monogrammed on a variety of items, as were Oliver’s and Patrick’s.

   

Both Oliver and Gavin’s names were featured through out the seasonal items, while Patrick was stashed towards the back and only appeared once on a pillow. One of the Olivers was monogrammed as “Oliver J. Smith” which leaves me wondering how many other “Oliver J” our Oliver J is going to run into in his demographic.

None of Oliver’s friend’s names made an appearance, and I am left wondering what does that say about us?

Mattress Madness II

Today we set about the ambitious task of visiting three mattress stores all in one day.

We started our morning at The Natural Mattress store in San Rafel where we spoke with Will (the owner) of the company. We had visited the Palo Alto showroom the weekend before and had liked their innerspring-latex mattresses. The San Rafel store had a larger selection of innerspring-latex mattresses and lots of space for the boys to explore.

Will was very helpful and answered all our questions, and we had a lot. The wool comes from sheep in Washington and Oregon, the steel springs are made in Georgia (the one in the US, not the one constantly under threat of invasion by Russia). The names of mattresses are selected by Will’s dad, and they are assembled locally (not far from the San Rafel store).

If you want an eco-friendly mattress and want to support a small (somewhat) local business I suggest visiting Will. His team is not paid on commission, so there are no high-pressure sales pitches (a very refreshing change from NYScott’s approach). Go early and park in the lot behind the store, all of San Rafel has parking meters so be sure to bring change.

Continue reading

Return of the Trains

Thursday I decided it was time to rotate out the toys in the living room again. O had somewhat lost interest in the big box of duplos and was trying to insist that he should be allowed to watch more TV than his allotted 20 minutes after bath time.

O protested loudly as I packed away his beloved duplos, including the farm and new blocks he’d gotten for his birthday. He sulked for a while as I wiped off the table, but his mood changed when I hauled out the box of brio trains.

We have spent the last two days configuring and reconfiguring the trains to maximize the amount of track we can squeeze onto the table.

I’m sure a more experienced train enthusiast could fit more, but I’d like to think I did a decent job. O keeps bringing me more track to try and fit in, but over all he seems pleased with my work.