Ciao San Diego

Sniff--it's our last day in San Diego. We started the morning, as usual, with breakfast at the Cove and then walked over to look at the seals. Brandt was asleep for our previous seal watching visits so I was happy he finally got to check them out up close. As you can tell from the picture, he was mesmerized.

We also wanted to say goodbye to PB so once my dad arrived to visit a second time, we headed to Taco Surf so Brandt could have the best fish taco in the world. He whole-heartedly approved.

We're bummed to leave the nice temperatures, but are eager to get home to Dan and the doggies. Hopefully we'll all get to come out soon.

Torrey Pines

Today we recreated a normal Saturday of two years ago: we met Jennifer in Del Mar at the Stratford Cafe and then hiked Torrey Pines. The beach access has been repaired since we were here last and thank goodness we didn't have to backtrack up the hill and were able to walk back along the beach. Brandt slept for the entire hike which is a good thing because he would have wanted to get down and get dirty/sandy/wet.

Somehow I found the energy to hit Ikea after all that hiking. I can't come to California and not visit Ikea! Brandt had a blast playing in the kiddie area.

But the biggest news of today is that Brandt signed "bird." Of course he didn't do it for the Flip, but I tried to take a video nonetheless. And he still seems to be a one-sign-at-a-time kind of guy. First "milk" meant gimme that, then "toilet" meant everything, and now "bird" seems to be his catchall sign.

Big Friday

Had to pack in a lot today. We met Gina in North Park at 8am for breakfast and then played in the cutest park on Adamas Avenue. I have no idea what it the park was called, but it had a miniature version of the surrounding streets running through it as well as fun playground stuff. Brandt slid down a full-length slide all by himself.

Next we joined Alex's playgroup for a playdate at Mission Bay. There were only three of us there, though, since her group is preparing for a big camping trip this weekend. We mostly hung out on the grass and ate snacks and I convinced Alex to pull Brandt around on a blanket while I sat on my butt and watched. I swear when he leaned over the side and pawed at the ground it was because he was trying to push himself along even faster. It's a bit scary to have a speed demon baby for a son.

Roman finally got in touch with my renters (broken cell phone, apparently) so we did a walkthrough of the house. It looks fine--phew. The hippy sign really had me worried! And the yard looks better than ever. There's something to be said for having flower shop owners as tenants. Then we hung out at Roman and Colette's for a bit to play with Lucy (who I thought was a puppy, but is really five). Roman's parents happened to stop by and as soon as they noticed Brandt started giving R and C the hard sell on having a baby. I'm not sure if it took yet, though. Lucy seems to enjoy being an only child at the moment. I didn't let Brandt in their new pool, but he did make it to the pond and had a great time splashing in it.

This evening one of Ashley's former coworkers had a BBQ/happy hour thing that we crashed. Their baby is one day younger than Brandt and had the coolest toys! I am totally ordering one of those Rody horses first chance I get. Brandt had the greatest time falling off it. There were also two tiny babies there: three weeks old and five weeks old. I have trouble remembering when Brandt was that little.

The Secret strikes back

Driving home from OB last night I called Dan and mentioned I felt lonely knowing Karen and Jake wouldn't be staying with us anymore. Even though she's much happier in RB, it was nice having someone around. The Secret heard me and we woke up this morning to a homeless guy kicking it on one of the lawn chairs in the backyard. That's what I get for not specifying exactly who we wanted staying with us. He woke up and left by the time we were back from breakfast on the beach.

Later in the morning we went to the Del Mar Fair. I've only been once before, and only for 30 minutes, so I was prepared to see everything. My favorite attraction was Doggies of the Wild West and we paid $5 to get a polaroid of a scared Brandt sitting on the mini stagecoach surrounded by cowboy and cowgirl chihuahuas. The photo is from the Fido 500, moments before the first heat (the Chinese Crested won by a mile) charged by and scared the straw outta poor Brandt. I forgot to bring his hat so he borrowed Audrey's pink Disneyland hat (sorry Dan). The ground here is even dustier than it looks in the picture and when I let Brandt play with the camera to cheer him up, it ate a bit of dust and stopped working. So this might be our last photo of the trip :( But at least we'll still have video...speaking of which, here is a video from yesterday of the funny crawl:

La Jolla Cove

Started out the morning as usual: took our coffee, banana, and muffin to the cove and watched the swimmers. We met a fellow vacationer who, with his wife, visits every year from Texas. He thought I should be in PR. I guess I really sold him on walking down to visit the children's pool and check out the seals. Poor guy was staying up Balboa, so probably in Clairemont, blech.

After a bit of walking around we stopped by the apartment to check in, but we were the only mom/baby pair awake, so still business as usual at this point. But here's where it gets good: Rose tipped me off that there is an Enterprise around the corner so we rented a car. There are worse places to be stranded than La Jolla, of course, but that doesn't mean I want to miss out on visiting all my friends and favorite places. With no advance notice, the only car the small office had available was a Dodge Avenger. It's huge! Or in Enterprise's eyes, "standard" size. I'm tempted to trade it in for a smaller car in a day or two if they can get one sent over. I was given the rate for a small car, at least. Enterprise is very sneaky and gave it to me with 1/4 tank of gas, which is how I have to return it. I know I'll end up returning it with more gas than necessary. On a personal level, I'm annoyed by this, but in the grand scheme of things, I appreciate the sneakiness.

We didn't get to drive the new car right away, though, because we had to watch Jakey so Karen could book a hotel. Yep, more good news: Karen and Jakey have given up on "roughing it" in a free apartment one block from the beach and will move to a fancy hotel. I have never seen someone more miserable so I'm happy she was able to find better accommodations.

We took a break from the hotel booking/apartment-bashing to meet Alex and gang at the Cove. It was cool and windy up on the grass, but really nice down on the sand. The heat wave is finally over so the temperature is perfect and I think we could have easily stayed down there until sunset. Brandt was having such a fun time playing on his own and with Audrey that I snuck off to swim to the quarter mile buoy and back...except 3/4 of the way out I remembered what we overheard this morning, Adam said the leopards are out, so I got scared and turned back. I know leopard sharks are small, but they still scare me. If they organized and all attacked at once, I'm sure they could eat a whole person with their tiny mouths. And no, I didn't see any. This is the first time I've swum alone. I'm usually in the safe escort of Gini or a heat of 200 racers. Gini will laugh when I tell her I turned back early, but she won't be surprised. Now while I was away those ten minutes (yes, quite a long swim...ha), Brandt didn't miss me at all. Alex said he started off in the middle of the blanket snacking with Audrey, but then crept up behind the sunbather in front of us so he could pour handful after handful of sand into her hat. She didn't notice and he was entertained until I finally got jealous and made him come play with me.

When we went up to the grass to de-sand and change the kids, Paris let Brandt ride her PlasmaCar. He was able to push it along himself, but they both had more fun with Paris pulling him around. I think he's too little for his own at this point, but maybe next year...

I had hoped we'd have time for a shower, but Karen was packed and ready to go. You can't tell from the picture, but I put a blob of sunscreen on Brandt's head. I don't know what I was thinking--I did that once a while back with disastrous results. This sunscreen is even thicker and whiter so it looked like a bird pooped on him. But since our number one priority was getting Karen out of the apartment, we rushed home so I could load up both cars with her stuff and follow her to the hotel. Turns out the "fancy" hotel is a Residence Inn off the 15. Go figure. I unloaded the cars and we were both finally able to relax and start fully enjoying our vacations. If you're like Dan you're wondering why I did the loading and unloading and I don't have a good answer for you. All I know is that if I didn't do all the work, she'd have to stay an extra day until her ex-husband was available to do it. So whether or not it makes sense, it was worth it!

Next on our itinerary was OB farmers market and sushi with Gini. I really wanted to go home and shower the sand and seaweed off me and the white splotch of sunscreen off Brandt, but I figured why be late when I'd fit in better in OB if I looked like a bum. The sushi place spread a tarp under Brandt's high chair. Effective, but funny.

And in a final stroke of good luck, Dan booked me a flight home for Sunday evening so Brandt won't have to suffer through a car ride Monday afternoon. I haven't read The Secret so I don't know with certainty what it's all about, but I have an inkling and I feel like I practiced it today. Last night I was lamenting that Karen would be much much happier in a hotel and I wished I had a car since her promised rides around town hadn't materialized and was dreading the long drive home. And boom, I get it all! Tonight I'm going to think about the Hippies use backdoor sign falling off my gate.

Fun with A & P

This afternoon my dad drove down and accompanied us to Balboa Park to meet up with Alex, Paris, and baby Audrey. It was free museum day so we met at the House of Pacific Relations International Cottages, but apparently they *can* be open on Tuesdays, but they *must* be open on Sundays so only one of the 31 cottages was open. But Iran was very nice and we got some free tasty tea. Of course, free tea is my favorite kind and free tea is by definition tasty tea.

Paris and Audrey: great camera smilers, Brandt: not so much. This is the best I could get of all three looking at (or almost at, in Brandt's case) the camera. The next shot is Brandt trying to eat the sculpture and the next next shot is Audrey grabbing Brandt's amber teething necklace. But other than that (and a few additional Audrey/Brandt misunderstandings--he's just so fun to grab!), they played together surprisingly well. Brandt loved chasing Paris around. Maybe he just happened to want to crawl in the same direction she was going, but I think he was following her around and it was really cute!

A woman told us one of her seven children crawled like Brandt does (ooh, I'll take a video of it tomorrow) with one knee up and seeing him brought back pleasant memories. Fortunately, she couldn't remember which of her seven had the weird crawl. What if she'd said, "That was my little Billy. He's serving twenty to life now."

After Balboa Park (just playing on the sculpture and in the grass, no museums), Alex's mom invited us over so we got to hang with Gayle and Stewart and admire the finished product of their remodel. It is sooo nice! Very European-looking, I think. Brandt liked the stairs best, of course, and dragged his tired body up and down over and over.

We wrapped up the night with dinner at Lotus Thai, which Brandt loved. He ate a lot of chicken satay and fell asleep next to me in the booth. If it's not too loud tomorrow morning I wouldn't be surprised if he stayed asleep extra late.

Hippies use backdoor

Phooey for trash day. I woke up at 6:30 as usual (Lyle has trained me well) and Brandt was roused from slumber at 7:00 by the garbage truck. It was foggy out, but not cold so we walked down to the cove to watch the swimmers and eat a muffin. I don't know what the water temp was, but it must have been cold because it doesn't peak until September. But even so, there were a lot of swimmers out. I brought my suit so maybe one of these days I'll make it in. We also headed down to say hi to the seals and saw a buttload of pelicans. Not bad for being out too early in the morning.

Rose came down for lunch with Will and Elle and they are so sweet! They played so nicely with Brandt even though they were tired and punchy. Will's a tall, lanky dude, too, so I've seen Brandt four years into the future. Rose confirms that it's a good thing and clothing fits longer.

Karen was ready to leave the house at 3 so we went by Costo to say hi to Gina and then to PB where we drove by my house and OMG there is a sign on the front gate that reads "HIPPIES USE BACKDOOR. NO EXCEPTIONS." The new plantings and step stones look great, but it's hard to appreciate with that sign there! I'll check out the inside at some point this week and see what havoc the hippies have wreaked indoors.

Brandt and I had a picnic dinner and discovered a new game: I was folding up the picnic blanket and he jumped on top of it and made me drag him around, the faster, the better. I think it's going to become a Dan/Brandt game because it's pretty tiring. I'd like all the lifting and running games to be father/son activities if I can help it. It's gotten to the point that when Dan walks in the door home from work Brandt smiles and points up at the ceiling fan. I love that he never asks me to lift him up there. Smart baby.

Oh, Dan got me a Flip Ultra video player so I've taken my first video. I did not follow Dan's instructions to do an establishing shot and hold steady and let the action come to me. It keeps stalling at two seconds, but hopefully that's just me. So here it is:

Baby's first shiner

Brandt is sporting his first black eye today. No, it's not from being bush-crushed by Sam yesterday, much as Jeff was hoping for baby bush-crushing fun. But let's start with the good stuff...

We spent all morning in the back yard while the Ava, Sam, and Brandt ran around naked. Brandt wasn't as excited about the bouncey as I thought he'd be, but he lay in it with me for a bit and pointed up at the trees (this is before he got naked, by the way). The also splashed around in a kiddie pool and two very exciting water-spritzing toys. I didn't realize how deep the kiddie pool water was and placed Brandt inside and he swam to the edge! He was not happy about it, but he kept his head up and paddled for dear life. I won't subject him to that again, but it's neat to know he can swim already.

Then we met Alex (with Audrey, but not with Paris) at the Hillcrest farmers market. There was a booth for Brandt Beef, but I was too hot to leave our shady spot and check it out. And the walk to Whole Foods (where they don't have the same smoothie flavors as in Vegas. I miss you Amazon Berry!) and back was killer. It's always a bummer when I finish my Whole Foods smoothie before I even get out of the store.

At five I came out to La Jolla where Gini and Don are conveniently going to be gone for a week and let me housesit. Brandt was exploring the inside carpet/outside astroturf transition and toppled over, banging up his eye. It's only a two-inch drop, but when you're tired and crawling at top speed it can get pretty sketchy. He only cried for a minute so hopefully it's not as bad as it looks. And Gini is a pro and says it will be gone tomorrow.

After Gini and Don took off we walked down to say hi to the seals at the Children's Pool. We missed the excitment by an hour: apparently a girl had walked down on the sand to check on an injured baby seal and one of the anti-seal activists (they want to dredge the beach to scare the seals off so people can take over that small stretch of beach) attacked her and it took two guys to pull him off. There were news crews and police interviewing witnesses, but I haven't been able to find anything online about the incident. The seals all looked fine by the time we were there and if anything, this will help Save the Seals' cause.

I was hoping to get up to Del Mar to walk on the beach with Jennifer up there, but instead she made the trek down this way and we walked around the cove. I had hoped Sunday night wouldn't be busy for dinner, but I guess everyone else is on vacation, too, because La Jolla was hoppin'. Lucky for us, Jose's Court Room wasn't packed so we had a tasty mexican meal. Brandt is still not into plain avocados, but he loves guacamole...and mexican rice...and beans...and any other mexican food put within his reach. So he had a tasty dinner, too.

Karen and Jake are vacationing with us, but they drove down separately so we finally synced up with them late tonight. Brandt fell asleep on my back while I was helping unload the car so he probably won't really his buddy Jakey is here until tomorrow. It will be a pleasant surprise for him.

San Diego (Clemente)

Brandt and I began a nine-day visit to San Diego this morning. Dan is busy working (yep, even this weekend), but don't feel too bad for him because we didn't get to tag along for his Seattle trip a couple weeks back nor for Kevin and Jen's wedding in Nice last weekend.

First on our agenda was a baby shower for Nick and Christa in San Clemente. Of course I brought a heat wave with me, but the park overlooking the ocean was apparently the breeziest place in town and it felt great in the shade. Brandt and Sam spent a lot of time by the beer, as you can see. I like to call this picture "Dan and Jeff: the early years." Brandt kept fishing around for a Tecate and his paw got a little too cold...thus, the pained expression. I'm glad I got a good shot before the boys got into the strawberries. They were quite a mess for the second half of the party.

In the evening Brandt and I walked from Point Loma to OB. It looked great on paper: just 2.5 miles, only a couple twists and turns. I guess I should have checked a topographical map because it was hilly as hell. But three little hills are better than one huge hill and it was a pretty walk. Walking down Newport I heard someone say "aww, how cute!" and of course they were talking about the dog walking next to us, not the baby. Only in OB! We met Alex and her playgroup for a bonfire on the beach and Brandt had the best time! He loved the sand and immediately took off to play with everyone's sand toys and hardly checked in with me. At one point he speedily crawled down towards the water and a couple other parents tried to grab him before I got there, but I was just curious to see how far he'd go and would have arrived before splashdown--honest! I held him above the water to stick his hands in, but thought it was too cold for a proper swim. I was prepared to walk the 2.5 miles back to Ashley's (now I know what "uphill both ways" means!), but Alex generously ditched Nick and the kids at the beach and dropped us off.

Edamame!

Dan got off work early today (I know! Amazing!) so we celebrated our anniversary with sushi. I haven't had sushi in over a year due to Dan's Giant Urticaria episode. We didn't go back to that place, needless to say. My guess is that the sushi dude didn't clean the knife well enough after cutting up a fish Dan was allergic to. That place gets their fish the same place as Nobu so you'd think it was safe. But this Osaka place tonight was *awesome*! It might partially be since it was my first sushi in a million years, but I think it really was that good.

Brandt sampled a little sushi, but most enjoyed the edamame. He also sat in the high chair for the entire meal. Usually he sits in the chair for a while and then next to us for a bit. I don't know if that was just a fluke or if he's becoming a more independent eater. We'll just have to go to sushi again soon and see.

Baby Expo

Big day for Senor Nada Nap today. We checked out the Baby Expo tradeshow in the morning and met the creator of Your Baby Can Read...except I kept accidentally calling it So Your Baby Can Read (we've been watching So you think you can dance lately, if you couldn't guess). I entered Brandt in heat four of Babies R Us' diaper derby, but wouldn't you know, Brandt fell asleep! I was so bummed he had to forfeit, but the derby was great to just watch. They had four heats of four racers each. Walkers had to complete two laps and crawlers just one. Parents tried to lure the babies across with keys and toys, but for the most part it was just four babies sitting on the race track watching their parents yelling at them. In heat three a baby crawled 90% of the way really quickly and then turned around and went back to the starting line. The race announcer said if she crossed over the line she'd win, but of course she just sat right in front of the line. We'll try again tomorrow.

After the Expo we went to Jacob's second birthday party at Peter Piper Pizza. It was similar to Chuck E. Cheese, but the pizza was better and it looked more like a casino. Brandt and I took four black and white photo booth pictures, but while it looked like his head was in the target from my perspective, he was a little too low and his chin is cut off in all of them, duh. Brandt loved the helium balloons. He liberated the smiley face one and in the picture is trying to get Jacob's grandfather to get it down from the ceiling for him.

And just to make the day even fuller, we dragged our tired butts to a BBQ at Makena's afterwards! Makena has stairs, which are Brandt's favorite, so he tired himself big time and I bet will sleep thirteen hours again, even with the big nap!

Senor nada nap

Brandt has been too interested in life to nap lately! At least it all adds up to the requisite thirteen hours of sleep, but I'm hoping this is just a growth spurt or incoming molar. Yesterday he napped thirty minutes, but then conked out at 6:45 and didn't wake up until eight the next morning. Today we were supposed to swim with TJ and Xan at 1:30, who also were on an odd nap schedule so it got pushed to 2:00 and then 3:00, but Brandt fell asleep at 11:30 and didn't wake up until 4:00! So we went swimming alone at 4:30.

This evening Dan and Brandt got into the goody bag from last week's Chuck E. Cheese party. Brandt still refuses to wear his sunglasses, but he was loving the Elton John star glasses.

Water park success

After three misfires (every time I scheduled a water park playdate, the weather unexpectedly turned bad), we had a hot day at the park. Brandt crawled into the midst of the chaos once (while the water jets were off) and executed the quickest crawl of his life to get back out once the water turned on. But other than that he had a great time. We met a family with three huge dogs. It's nice to hang out with nice dogs for a change. Brandt crawled right into the middle of their huddle and petted them all (actually, I think he was trying to bang on their butts and make them growl like Bettie does, but no such luck).

We also got to see Rose today! I've realized one good thing about Vegas is that people come to town for tradeshows so I get to see them more often than if we were stuck somewhere else. We got a coffee and hung out at the aquarium at Caesars. Brandt loved watching the fish and he'll get to see more tomorrow when we check out feeding time at the Silverton aquarium. By the way, the other good thing about Vegas is that since I'm essentially living under a hot iron, my hair has never been straighter and as well behaved. There used to be a third good thing: Trader Joes open two extra hours in the summer (so you can shop before or after the melting hours), but they didn't do that this year.

This evening we went to my friend's hypnobirthing class and shared our birth story in exchange for some sewing work. No, sewing is not on my list of things to learn now that I'm a woman of leisure. The class was fun and the students had a lot of questions...which I guess means my spiel didn't hit on all the right things.

Chuck E. Cheese

Brandt had his first taste of pizza and his first taste of Chuck E. Cheese today. I told Dan we were going to a birthday party for two-year-old Gabby and he said, "Ooh, a cougar." I haven't been to a CEC in over twenty years and it's as overwhelming as ever.

Brandt was scared of all the rides at first, but after a while he warmed up to them and I was able to spend some of the cupful of tokens Gabby gave each of us guests. There was even a baby version of Whac-A-Mole, but Brandt wasn't interested. I think he was trying to climb his way to the mirror so he could kiss himself. The little dude loves to kiss himself in the mirror!

Today is a good example of how crazy Brandt's nap schedule can get. Around 18 months babies switch from two naps a day to one nap a day and I have no idea which Brandt prefers! I seem to have better luck getting him to nap if we're out and about. Today his only nap was the 30 minute drive from CEC to a playdate at TJ's. I had hoped he'd stay asleep for a while at the playdate, but he woke up as soon as we arrived. That's another recent change: he used to stay asleep when I pulled him out of the car, but now he wakes up and stays up. He played hard for three hours so I figured he'd conk out as soon as we got back in the car, but he kept himself awake for the drive and an additional hour until Dan got home. Forunately Dan needed a ride to Mirage Mirage so Brandt finally fell asleep heading home from the Strip. So that was 6:45 and he just stayed asleep! He's supposed to sleep eleven hours overnight, but I think rather than wake up at 5:45 tomorrow morning, he'll just stay down until a reasonable hour.

Pitching a tent

Brandt and Dan set up the tent this afternoon. We got it almost two years ago and have yet to go camping. I thought we should camp out in the backyard tonight, but Dan very easily talked me out of it. But we'll go camping soon.

Earlier today we went to Springs Preserve for their first anniversary party featuring free ice cream. It was crazy crowded, but I'm glad we went and Dan came along and really liked it. Plus, admission was only $6 today so we checked out all the indoor stuff I hadn't seen in my previous two visits when I stuck to the outdoor free stuff. Brandt really enjoyed the Compost Crawl in the Sustainability Gallery.

MNO

I had my first MNO (moms night out) today. One would assume my MNO was an evening trip to see the new Sex and the City movie, but that would have been fun and sensible. Instead, I got up at 6:30 to go for a mountain bike ride. We had planned to ride the Mustang Trail (aka the Latenight Loop) in the Cottonwood Valley Trail System, but we got horribly lost. I think the 7-mile easy loop should have taken 45 minutes, but after almost two hours we crested a hill and saw Red Rock. We knew we weren't supposed to be anywhere near Red Rock so we made the hard decision to backtrack to the road we saw at the bottom of the hill. We figured we'd just ride back to our cars along the road to keep things easy. So we stop a dude on the road and ask him how we get to Blue Diamond. "You're in Blue Diamond," he says. Wh-wh-what?? I explain that we're looking for Blue Diamond Road and he tells me we're actually in the town of Blue Diamond and that it would be a very long road ride back but only two miles back the way we came to get to familiar territory.

Fortunately there was a kiddie triathlon going on so we grabbed some free water and watched the awards ceremony while hydrating. Blue Diamond is quite a cute little town. My friend decided to stay in Blue Diamond and have her husband come pick her up there. I decided to try my luck finding my way back to my car. I made the mistake of asking the first old dude I saw on the trail if I was headed the right way and he said I had a long way to go. "You really should have started out earlier in the day." Um, well I started out at three hours ago when it was only 75 degrees, old dude.

I soon saw Blue Diamond Road and followed alongside on the trail heading west for a bit, but felt like my car was probably behind me to the east so I crawled under a barbed wire fence and through some bushes to the road. Unfortunately (and not surprisingly) my instincts were off and after a couple miles I passed the "Entering Red Rock Conservation Area" sign and realized I'd gone the wrong way. I was probably only a couple miles from my car at one point, but now that I was five miles downhill from my car, I just kept going a couple more miles to a gas station and called Dan and Brandt to come rescue me.

I was embarrassed about giving up at the end, but our green ride turned into a black diamond ride so for that I feel pretty badass. And I fell once and have the toughest looking bruise to show off now.

While Dan was in the backyard grilling tonight, Brandt played with his waterwheel play table. He loves this thing so much (thanks, Aunt Renae!) and stands against the sliding glass door banging his fists against it shouting to be let out every day. Today was the first time he climbed up into the table. He needed a hand climbing out and of course crawled straight to the dirt and got super muddy. And he wonders why I don't let him play with the water table every day!

Raw milk

Whole Foods is going to start selling raw milk in Nevada. I'm not much of a milk drinker, but everyone is so excited about this so we went to hear Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures give a talk. It was pretty hot out, but Brandt wore his long-sleeved Meer melk voor kleine helden (more milk for small heroes) shirt to support the cause.

We tried samples of raw milk and kombucha. The milk tasted like milk and the kombucha seems like it's an acquired taste. I didn't want to walk all the way home with a half gallon sample of milk so we just grabbed a bottle of kombucha to see if it's better ice cold.

Earlier today we had a playdate at My Little Garden indoor park. We were here a couple months ago for a birthday party and Brandt slept through the whole thing! I knew he'd love it here awake. He jumped around in a little bounce house and crawled through tunnels and up slides and chewed on everything. Well worth the six bucks.

Park with papa

This afternoon we walked down to Paseo Vista Park to play in the splash pad. Brandt was very brave and stuck his hand in the water spray over and over. I was impressed because the water stream is pretty strong. I guess even more impressive is the kid last week who repeatedly bend over and stuck his butt in the line of fire.

Brandt loves crawling all over the park and his knees and hands get completely black with dirt. On one hand it's nice that he's not walking yet, but I won't miss the dirty knees and paws once he's more upright. But I definitely appreciate being able to easily tote him everywhere right now. I hope that once he's walking he won't insist on walking everywhere and cause my life to slow down to his pace.