Archive for April, 2010
Since I worked late the day before I didn’t feel a bit bad about sneaking out early (okay, I really didn’t sneak – in fact, my co-workers about pushed me out of the door) to spend Friday afternoon with J and Ava.
At Souplantation. Again.
While I would have been perfectly content to eat soup there for hours we did also go here:
And can I just tell you something? I did not like Sea World.
Maybe the penguins. They were very cute. And the Beluga whales. They were pretty nifty, too.
But that’s about it. It made me feel very guilty about animals being exploited for our entertainment. The shows with the animal performers left me cold and feeling dirty for patronizing the place. Plus – it was crazy expensive.
Ava was thrilled to see a small Sesame Street themed play area with kid suitable rides. Of course we headed straight there and I simply couldn’t stop myself from making several ‘when pigs fly’ comments…
especially when she handed me a tiny Abby Cabaddy doll and asked if we could buy it. I thought ‘sure’ until I saw the $29 price tag. Needless to say she didn’t get it which set off a tantrum of almost epic proportions in my not-yet-napped kid.
Except she couldn’t even finish the tantrum properly because this happened mid-stream:
So I parked the stroller and sent J off to watch a show with performing seals or something. I’ll spare you the 75 pictures of that. You’re welcome.
We strolled around while she napped, waking just in time to walk into yet another aquarium building full of – guess what? – more fish. She was less than impressed (as was I at this point) so we took her to pet the rays. Yeah, ummm no. J and I did though, until we figured out they were really only interested in the $6 cups of food you could buy to feed them with and that they just automatically assumed there would be food to nibble on in that outstretched hand. Creepy, creepy – I did not like.
Dolphins next. Playful, friendly, almost cuddly dolphins, right? Not so much. There was one who took great delight in coming close enough to let you touch him and then splashing gallons of water on you – and I swear that animal was laughing every single time he did it. It was at this point that Ava threw the.worst.fit that I’ve ever seen from her in public or at home. For real, she was screaming at the top of her lungs and fighting us so hard that I finally strapped her in the stroller and parked us both in a corner waiting for her to yell her fool head off for as long as she wanted to. It is the one and only time that she’s ever tantrumed in public that I really, really wanted to disappear into the floor. J conveniently distanced himself and I don’t blame him a bit. I would totally have done the same if he’d been the one lucky enough to have been present at the start of the fit. I still have no idea what caused it.
I’ll summarize the remaining hours in the park. Even More Fish.
And a whale show. Hated it. She wasn’t thrilled with it, either.
She did tell us how to get to Sesame Street, which was (thankfully) by the entrance, so we let her do a few more rides…
before getting the heck outta Dodge! I suppose I’m glad I’ve been there but I’m happy to say I don’t think we’ll ever go again.
We headed off to Coronado after leaving Sea World. I wanted to see the Hotel del Coronado in person, which I did (National Lampoon style) as J drove past it (Chevy Chase style) before continuing all the way down to Imperial Beach. Our plan was simply to drive until we found something to eat and/or a place that looked interesting so that’s what we did – stopping at a little beachfront farmer’s market right at the Imperial Beach pier.
Oh, it was so quaint and perfect there. We lovedlovedloved it. We ate organic pizza and humongo homemade pretzels from a teeny little shop where the owner makes all the dough by hand. We browsed the little market looking at fancy soaps and organic fruits and veggies and everything in between. There were real live actual functional VW busses around. And surfers! Finally. This is what I imagined SoCal being like.
Ava played on the playground.
And we watched yet another glorious sunset.
The only downside? It was freezing! We only had thin denim jackets on so we left earlier than we would have liked once Ava’s teeth started chattering. I did still manage to get soaked walking along the beach on the way back to the car – guess I kind of forgot about waves and things.
I don’t want to ever live in CA but if I had to I’d want to be in Imperial Beach. A VW Karmann Ghia would also be a requirement for me to even consider such a move. Preferably in pink.
Well, that is what she calls it most of the time. A baseball is a football. A football is a baseball. Whatever.
John waited a long time for this day. The day he took his kid to her first pro sporting event, even if it was only a Padres v. Braves game at Petco Park.
Thanks to my company for allowing J and Ava to use a couple of their season tickets in order to make that dream come true sooner rather than later. And while he may have grumbled a time or two that it wasn’t the Yankees it was free and that counts for a lot.
It was hat day. Ava was stoked!
As you can tell – they got there a bit early in order to park (no problem) and get to their seat. It was an afternoon game during opening week so it wasn’t too crowded.
Ava helped locate the seats.
She also insisted that the temporary tattoo they gave her must be applied NOW.
J complied.
She also gave the umpire heck when necessary.
Of course. she also started giving her Daddy heck, too – right about the fifth inning. He called it a day about then.
Since they were out gallivanting about it gave me the opportunity to work late which was nice. And they were super happy when they finally made it home.
And the rest of the day? Yeah – that was spent trying to get the so called temporary tattoo off of her face. We tried everything and it like to never came off. J finally made a trip to the closest store in order to buy alcohol and baby oil and we were able to remove it, along with the top later of skin it seemed, in about an hour. We learned a lesson that day – no temp tattoos on the face any more!! EVER!
I went off to work bright and early – catching a ride in with a co-worker – after having a lovely (free, hotel) breakfast with J and Ava. They didn’t have any hard and fast plans for the day other than hitting a park or two and chasing down a few geocaches.
I’m guessing they had a good day. I wouldn’t know since there aren’t any pictures (thanks, honey).
After work we’d planned to walk ’round the Gaslamp District for a while and grab dinner somewhere along the way. Well, one thing turned into another and we ended up with a rather large group of folks that wanted to meet up for dinner. So that’s what we did instead. Another co-worker lined up a restaurant in Old Town as my requested cuisine was simple. I wanted good, real Mexican food. Easy enough, right?
Except nobody told us exactly how difficult it can be to drive in Old Town San Diego since every street we found was one way only and not ever going in the direction we needed to go. We finally gave up, parked, and started walking toward the center in the hopes that we would stumble upon the restaurant. Fortunately we did – helped in large part by the frantic shouting and waving of one of the members of our party as he spotted us walking by for the fifteenth time.
The food? Yum. We don’t often get Mexican food like that at home. The company? Fantastic. Many of these people are more than co-workers to me. They are friends that I don’t get to see nearly often enough. The margaritas? They were HUGE! And the entertainment?
Well, my little tourist heart was charmed when the (incomplete) Mariachi band showed up. They asked what we were celebrating or if we had any specific requests and before any of us could really formulate an answer they launched into a really, really loud version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. All 17 or so minutes of it.
Ava didn’t know what to think.
She was stunned, I think. As were the rest of us. Heck, the song droned on for so long that we were seriously thinking of giving them a bigger tip if they’d just stop playing and move on. Fortunately we were sitting in the middle of the table and could kind of ignore them – unlike the poor folks at the end who had to look appreciative of and interested in the whole entire performance.
It was a great dinner that went for hours. You know, one of those nights where you can sit with good friends and talk (and drink) the night away.
Well, except for the fact that we (almost) all had our kids there and therefore had a curfew stricter than any we’d ever had growing up…
Bet you can’t guess where J and Ava went while I was at work.
Okay fine, maybe you can.
Since I’d already been there the last time I was in San Diego I wasn’t terribly sad about missing out on this. Zoos tend to mostly make me feel guilty and I knew she’d never last long enough to see the whole place anyway so J took her to spend a few hours hitting the main attractions.
Which, apparently, involved trees.
And hippos.
And flamingos (Mama’s favorites).
Although clearly not even in Ava’s top 10.
She saw pandas – both real, live ones and some apparently made of solid gold or something based on the cost.
One of which she had to have (thankfully not the real one) and which Daddy was happy to provide – even going so far as to buy it a freaking sweatshirt, too. Of course Ava came away with a panda shirt as well.
Then came lunch with the elephants.
An experience that J said was worth every single penny of the $9 bowl of mac and cheese and a souvenir cup. I exaggerate…only a little, though.
After wrestling a wild beast into submission
she was about done in so they wrapped it up and headed back to the hotel for a nap until I got off from work. We set off for Seal Beach in La Jolla as soon as I wrapped up for the day, with a short detour by Souplantation for dinner. It is an understatement to say that I love Souplantation – tacky buffet it may be but we don’t have them on the East Coast so I take every opportunity I can to eat in them when I find one. And their lemon chicken orzo soup…OMG, to die for.
We lucked into finding a parking spot right near the beach. This was J’s first experience with the Pacific Ocean and he was in picture taking heaven. And I will give it to the West Coasters – y’all do win in the dramatic ocean waves and beautiful cliff scenery divisions. As much as I love my East Coast our ocean is a little wimpy compared to yours.
Seals:
Not pictured is the crazy environmentalist lady who was haranguing every single tourist who happened to wander into her path with the intent of looking at the seals. Funnily enough she didn’t approach us the same way she did most everyone else – literally coming up to some and physically blocking them from walking near the seals (which is perfectly legal, btw). I was uber-tired and most certainly had an attitude and I’m guessing she was smart enough to sense that. She seemed to be focusing on the easy targets.
Sunset:
Us, watching the sunset and watching J scramble along really steep and pointy rocks taking 9 billion pictures of the sunset.
Note the feet dangling in the last photo. Yes, we do still use the Ergo backpack fairly often when we’re walking/hiking or in places like this where it was much safer to have her contained. She loves it so there are generally no arguments from her when we break it out.
More sunset:
Pretty fabulous, eh? Just another reminder of how awesome our world is and how we need to stop and admire things like this a little more often. And yeah, the West Coast wins in the sunset division, too – but we still smoke ‘em on the sunrises.
Ava was a little freaked out though – and kept asking me why the sun was falling into the water. I started out on some long scientific explanation and then realized what I was doing. My final answer to her was that the sun was going to sleep and we’d see him again in the morning. Yeah, I kinda lied – but it was all she needed at the moment.
It was a really good day. All you have to do is look at the grin on my silly girl’s face to tell you that (and please look past the sheer exhaustion on my face ’cause it had been a really long couple of days by that point with not a whole lot of sleep for me).
Once every few years I make a trip out to my company’s corporate headquarters located in kinda/sorta/sometimes sunny San Diego. I normally don’t mind going but this time I needed to be out there a full week and I was really hating the idea of leaving my girl (and my husband) for that long so we finagled our schedules around, asked my mom if she’d watch the dogs, and worked it our for J and Ava to come out with me. The plan was that they would have plenty of time to explore while I was working and then we’d do a few more things at night and on the weekend.
But oh how I was dreading that flight. The last time we flew with her she managed to pee on me right after we’d checked all the bags. This was before I learned to always carry a full change of clothes for both baby AND parent, although I did learn that day that one cannot wash a leg of jeans in the airport bathroom and expect the hand dryer to be sufficient to dry them in the 15 minutes or so before boarding. The flight before that with her was our return from China and that is an experience that I would like to blot out of my mind completely. And really, it’s not that she was so bad. I, on the other hand, was an exhausted, sickly train wreck of a new mom and cried every single time anyone looked at me sideways which meant that it was the longest (figuratively and literally speaking) plane trip of my life.
My point? I was expecting the worst. We had to get up and leave our house at O’dark early in order to drive 4 1/2 hours to my parents’ house in order to drop off the dogs, then turn around and drive another hour back to the airport, stop and get her lunch on the way, heft way too many bags + car seat into the airport, and make it onto the plane with as little stress as possible. J boarded earlier than we did in order to get the carseat installed so I was left to manhandle her, my carry-on, and her backpack down the stairs, across the tarmac, and up the teeny ladder stairs into the plane. And you know what? It mostly worked. There was a bit of a fuss when the plane started taxiing – just enough to make my stomach clench up in a ball of nerves – and the next thing I knew she was asleep. Slept all the way to our layover airport. Easy-peasy.
The Sit-n-Stroll once again proved that it is worth its weight in gold. It came in very handy maneuvering our way through the airport and got lots of envious looks from other parents trying to corral their unruly toddlers.
My new iPad was also getting lots of envious looks from curious bystanders. And Ava? Well, she pretty much thinks it belongs to her.
Our second flight was as uneventful as the first. I pestered the lady at the gate until she let us pre-board with Ava early since we had the car seat to install and J got the seat in place lickety-split. Just in time for her to settle in for some light reading and a snack…
before snuggling up with her Elmo blanket and her ‘yam.’ It took her about an hour to fall asleep this time and then, once again, slept the rest of the flight away.
Our arrival in San Diego was uneventful and our most pressing decision was choosing what color minivan we wanted from the rental car fleet. The hotel was marvelous as always and J was fortunate enough to be officially welcomed to the state by a California Highway Patrol officer who kind of wanted to know why J made a funky (and obviously) illegal turn. Thankfully Officer Poncharello was very understanding when J pleaded ignorance and let him go with a cheery “Welcome to San Diego.”
Indeed. Welcome to San Diego.