Threeplus1

Ama Joon giggles with Ada all week

Published by on August 18, 2011 | 3 Responses

Ama Joon came for a week-long visit (Ada’s grandma Samii) — and boy, did they ever have fun!  The first three days were spent with the two of them giggling, giggling, giggling all day, literally.  Like two peas in a pod.  Ada took all of the play that Ama Joon could muster, and boy she did a great job!  What a big shift from corporate life, huh Ama Joon? She quickly became an expert at having a tea party with stuffed animals, rolling a ball of yarn around the living room floor, tracing out Persian nursery rhymes on Ada’s hand, telling stories, building legos over and over again, and giggling.

Some of the highlights of the trip:

– All four of us going to pick peaches from an orchard in Brentwood, which was super fun!  The peaches were gorgeous, Ada pulled the wagon & picked her own, and we were awestruck by the freshness & fragrance of them all.  We then, over the course of the next 3 days, baked 4 pies and 1 cobbler with our peaches.  Yum!  Yum!  Yum!   Ada had a lot of fun with all of the hubbub in the kitchen.  And we had fun eating our creations.

– We had a fun excursion to San Francisco, with Ada and Ama Joon taking on the train adventure with gusto!  We all did pretty good.  Hamid managed to do do some shopping & we had an excellent lunch at the top of the department store looking out on Market Street

– Ama Joon, Ada & I went to Fairyland, one of Ada’s favorites — and now Ama Joon’s too.  They & we had a blast: riding the carousel, running down the Alice in Wonderland tunnel, playing hide and go seek in the Wonderland cards, going on a train ride, and showing Ama Joon all the little details that Ada knows about the place.

– We decided we hadn’t had enough of farms, so we went out to Farm Fresh to You farm tour (another hot day) and picked figs, tomatoes, went on a tractor ride, and cooled off in the shade of a big tree where we could listen to the bluegrass music.

– and Ama Joon got to see the kid-chaos of having 5 families over for a little pre- preschool get-together.  Chaos reigned, but no one cried, and a lot of pie was eaten

Ada is reeling in the joy of having so much love and attention from her Ama Joon.  They read so many books, laughed so much, and really had fun together.  Thank you Ama Joon!  Much love from all of us.  See you soon next month!

 

Yummy peaches

The peach pickers

Hi, peach up there

Happy lady

Listening to bluegrass on the farm

Ama Joon & Ada doing grandma-granddaughter yoga

Isn't this better than checking emails?

Try this Ama Joon...!

Ada & Ama Joon reading a book

Time for a pool party in the front yard

I love you Ama Joon & Ada!

Lots of family fun

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We’re working hard

Published by on August 5, 2011 | Leave a response

8-4-01 to 8-4-11

Happy 10th Anniversary

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The mysterious line-ups

Published by on July 29, 2011 | Leave a response

Mysterious things have begun appearing around the floor of our house. Complex, multi-colored line-ups have begun appearing everywhere. At first they were simple, side-by-side groupings, like this:

An early line up...

A group of (plush & bristle-block) penguins

Food is lining up too!

Then, they evolved to systematized channels… and they became more multi-dimensional:

Two strands

A right angle

And multi-media:

Wood, plush, and plastic mixed-media

Slipper and water shoes acheieve a sort of symmetry

Shoes and puzzle combo

and just today, the dimensions have gone upward, outward more architectural…

Gaudi?

The key ingredients seem to be: i) items must be touching, ii) they must be placed one-by-one, iii) balancing must be achieved that can only be grasped by the creator (and not easily understood by a lay person). Something.. someone.. is putting a lot of effort into creating these mysterious agglomerations.

And all I know is that they keep coming…

Who could be making them….

Some clues.

For full disclosure, I have been watching first generation Star Trek.

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She’s Ready

Published by on July 29, 2011 | Leave a response

I sat with Ada for 3 hours today by the potty. Reading, talking, telling jokes. She’s ready.

Ready for the next thing

Amazing how much self-identity goes along with this stuff. Not only does it happen when she gets to a level of hand dexterity (i.e. can put on and remove clothes). But it also happens when her own self-awareness has gotten to a point where she *really* (I mean really) does not want to be laid on the ground and changed by someone else. She doesn’t like the lack of control over her own body. It feels too baby-like. She wants to do everything potty/diaper related standing up (not a fun intermediate stage, for anyone helping, namely me).

She wants this so much, she’s sitting & sitting & sitting — all of those 3 hours, she wanted to do it. I see how hard she works to grow and change, so much drive, (evolving) confidence, faith, and trust.

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Kendra & Brian & the “little peanut”

Published by on July 28, 2011 | Leave a response

We had a wonderful visit with Auntie Kendra and Uncle Brian, Ada’s godparents. We picked them up at the airport on Wednesday afternoon and the adventures lasted until the next week. We certainly showed them a lot!

  • On Wednesday, we went to the windy Golden Gate Bridge, and Ada enjoyed it from the vantage point of Mama’s backpack, followed by visiting the sites in SF.
  • On Thursday, we headed up to Napa/Sonoma, and enjoyed a fantastic lunch at Coppola winery overlooking the vineyards on a gorgeous afternoon.
  • On Friday, we had a blustery day on Muir Beach in Marin,where Ada learned to play velcro tennis ball-catch with Uncle & Auntie Raisin (in the tradition of Auntie & Uncle Pickle), and we watched Iman jump on the ocean rocks with Uncle Brian. We had grilled yummies from Hamid who loves his  grill, with Ada channeling his enthusiasm by running in and out of the house bringing out toys one-by-one to Hamid & Brian in the backyard, and feeling pretty proud to be out there with her dad & uncle.
  • On Saturday, we had an overnight stay in San Jose in a hotel (i.e. yipee! pool! — did you know I think you can gauge the quality of a year by how many times you go underwater?  really, try it!) following on Lilly’s 6th birthday party with a professional marionette puppet show (Ada liked the puppets kind of… she watched first from the chairs with other kids, then from the porch being held in daddy’s arms, and then finally from inside the house looking out of the window in dad’s arms again…)
  • And on Sunday we spent the day at the boardwalk beach in Santa Cruz, where Kendra, Brian & Hamid walked the warf and cliffs overlooking the surfers. Ada and I joined after Ada’s nap, and she flew an octopus kite, put her toes in the water at the beach, and got amazed by the giant straws in our crazy island drink for Brian’s birthday.

A lovely visit – so much time to catch up, after having not lived in the same geography for 20 years. It was great to see Brian, Kendra & Ada to get to know each other. It was great to see family. We will always remember Brian calling Ada ‘little peanut’ and Kendra picking so many picking meyer lemons!  On the day they were leaving, Ada said, “I love them”. Have a great trip back Kendra & Brian!

At the Golden Gate Bridge

A beautiful foggy day at the GG bridge

The magestic view from bridge to the sky

Ada's having fun!

The Peacenik

Visiting Coppola Winery

Beautiful grounds & civilized lunch

Kendra in the sun

Do you like stickers?

Muir beach

SF summer?!

The pup & Brian

Kendra's beach self-portrait.

Pickle!

Ada's first vantage point for the puppet show

Ada's final view...

Brian's crazy birthday drink.

The day is getting better.

Kendra loves lemons! The last day.

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Ada & the eyebrow

Published by on July 27, 2011 | Leave a response

Yes, she gets it from her dad. (The eyebrow & dare-I-say ham personality) Both find it hilarious that I can’t do it!

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I love you

Published by on July 26, 2011 | 1 Response

Ada & Hamid.

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The Henry Octopus kite

Published by on July 25, 2011 | Leave a response

We’ve been having a lot of fun with kites, especially, Henry Octopus, who we’ve been using since the spring. See, the Bay Area fog is good for something! Ada had gotten good too. Unfortunately, Henry Octopus took his final sail in the CA sky on a trip to Santa Cruz. His stick snapped. Bye bye Henry Octopus. Thanks for the good times.

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Our first camping trip – Day 1

Published by on June 22, 2011 | Leave a response

We had an awesome time camping! Our first camping trip with Ada who is now 2.25 yo. We had so much fun, with lots of driving, adventures & time just hanging out as a family camping, cooking, playing… She had a great time. Us too!. The best part was we rented a VW bus, which made the trip! We cooked in the bus, we pulled over road-side and had our lunch stops, we slept in the pop-up top, and Ada slept in the way back. We pitched a tent just for fun, but the bus was our adventurous home, all 17′ of it!

Our rented VW bus!

The first day we drove from Berkeley to North of Mendocino. About 5 hours in the car, including a few stops. We managed to time it pretty closely with her nap. That gave us two hours. But soon after that Ada figured out pretty quickly to say (w/o prompting), “are we here?! are we here?!”. So in the last hour, we would really have to pull out all the stops. We sang Old MacDonald, Zipadeedooda, 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed, She’ll be coming around the Mountain… everything we could think of. We pointed out everything there was to see on the road. We counted, we told stories about everything we could think of… And we invented things to entertain, many things… At one point I used a paper receipt stuck with a piece of masking tape and : taped it to my nose, to Hamid’s ear, onto a bottle and flying it in the air like bird with the receipt as its wings, then we tucked kleenex behind my ears, and under my nose like mustache, in Hamid’s ears, on his head, I put a pail on my head, made faces, and sang songs… front seat antics to keep the little girl laughing.

Our first day, we were excited to put up the tent (we didn’t sleep in it, just played bristle blocks in it before the sun went down). We tried out our cooking in the bus with a yummy dinner. And we figured out our sleeping situation, with Ada playing a new bus-game called ‘pickle’ when she was supposed to go to sleep. She would pick her head up from her pillows in the back, peek over the seat and say, “Pickle!”, then put her head back down. 5 seconds later, “Pickle!”… and on and on…, “Pickle, pickle, pickle”. Pretty funny actually. “Go to sleep, Go to sleep Ada, time to sleep”. She could tell we weren’t in too serious of a mood, and knew she could get us to laught. We were all pretty happy and tickled falling asleep in our camper bus, our first big outside adventure as a family.

Putting up the tent

Our little pickle!

Here’s a video of our night time bus adventure camping near Mendocino

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Camping Day 2

Published by on June 21, 2011 | Leave a response

On Day 2, we drove from Mendocino to North of Arcata with beautiful redwoods along the way. Before we left, we had lunch on a windy (!) beach, where we hid behind a big rock to stay warm. Constraints make the world such a wonderful place! At 2 yo (and 38 and almooost 40) we didn’t need much to entertain ourselves. (Isn’t that what we love about camping anyway?) We made rock mandalas and dug up sand with a plastic rake and shook a whole bunch of rocks in a bucket. What a satisfying hour! Before leaving we had a perfect lunch. We put out a few lawn chairs, popped up the top, made a few sandwiches and crudite, and voila a good time…!

We were satisfied for the next 2 hours of driving. When Ada woke up (and after some wails, songs, book reading subsequently thrown on the ground when finished) — we took our first big break at the redwoods. We walked through a big redwood tree, amazed ourselves with the ‘redwood gift shop’ and its offerings, and ran around a big grassy field tagging trees and playing ‘chase me, chase me!’ where we discovered a bog with dragonflies, and amazingly colored green blue grass. Here’s a few pictures of our redwood stop.

The American family vacation, our iconic picture!

Ada in a big redwood tree

Happy girl on vacation

That night, after a few more hours we arrived at the beautiful Patrick’s Point campground on the coast. Gorgeous! The ocean cliffs were just across the pathway. We were surrounded by beautiful mossy pines. We were so excited… Mainly, because this night, we had gotten wood for a campfire and s’mores, s’mores, s’mores!! Ada would soon know the joys of s’mores. (Okay, she only wanted 1/2 a bite, but I enjoyed the joys myself. Interestingly, I found myself ravenous the whole time. Memories and flashbacks of camping: licorice, pudgie pies sweet and savory, popcorn, pickles, chips, s’mores…. so much of my camping memories are associated with foods. It was hilarious – I could not stop eating!!! Roar!! Good thing, it went away as soon as we got home. Funny how hardwired we/my brain is…)

Ada loved the campfire. It was late. She sat all cuddled up on my lap, wrapped in 2 blankets, wearing her little pom-pom winter hat, practically falling asleep. 10:00pm in the redwoods. A daughter, husband, family, redwoods and s’mores. Life doesn’t get any better!

A video of Ada & Hamid at our campsite:

The view of the sunset and our campsite from our bus:

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