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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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:
Ah day 3.. we were underway now, really finding our groove. It takes a few days to get the crusties out, don’tchathink? To stop the mind from thinking about things before and after — to just be there. Before starting off, we had a walk on the cliffs by the ocean. Ada saw seals and pelicans off in the distance. We looked at various flowers, Hamid finding one, me another, Ada copying, telling us ‘stop mommy, daddy’ so she could show us another flower she found. We started driving. The early drive was amazing because we were really there…
We drove paralleling the Trinity River. With our new found routine, we stopped about two hours in, when Ada woke up. We found a shady tree and pulled off the highway where we could see the river down a pathway. Walking to the river, it was clear, fast moving, greenish-blue and beautiful. We stood at a sandy entry spot situated at a big eddy. Hamid took off his shoes & put his feet in & Ada was very curious about Daddy without his shoes. We saw butterflies, talked about the animals that might live at the river, and saw little gold sparkles in the sand under the water of the river — the first time any of us had seen ‘gold’ in a river, the pieces the size of a sand grain. We walked further down the river bend to stand on rocks over some big rapids. Hamid and I found ourselves talking about the best way down, to navigate and avoid the holes and swirly stuff, a throwback to our days in Oregon.. and the novice kayakers we once became.. eons ago. A love affair with the Pacific coast got us here so many years ago…
We did the pop-top/lawnchair thing for our lunch, feeling pretty proud of ourselves:
What's in the cooler?
Pickle eating a pickle and Papa Pickle too!
Yummy lunch..
Ahhh put your feet up...
But… the reason why we came this way was to go swimming in a lake! It had gotten pretty hot and dry, a big shift from the coast. The a/c in the VW worked okay but not well. Swimming!!! We built up the idea of going to a swimming with Ada (an attempted distracting conversation for the hour it took to get there) & Ada was excited (even though she didn’t know what swimming in a lake really was). We found our spot at Whiskeytown Lake, Oak Bottom Marina. The lake, beautiful. The area, a bit of a scene with a lot of boat, houseboat, recreation culture. But the beach was perfect for what we wanted – a good little sandy beach, to spend an hour and take a dip.
Ada was thrilled. We all were. We all went out to our knees… cold, brr!!! Hamid decided he wasn’t so sure his participation was fully necessary in the underwater, torso-submerged part, but after some cajoling and threats of future regrets, he dove in too. We sucked in air, laughed, splashed, and generally felt like we had won the lottery all around. Splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash… underwater, underwater, underwater… brr, brr, brr…and run, run, run…to the towels. We dried off on the beach pretty much 5 minutes after we went in. We spent the rest of the time: watching the (too tame) geese, digging with the (famous) plastic rake, and watching Ada wander the large perimeter of the beach.
Ada (and the second one Ada & Hamid) heading to the lake:
But.. as our day came to a close we were a bit sad. Our reserved campsite ended up being a paved parking with large RVs (and streetlights). We had no food for dinner. We cut our losses and headed to Redding. Wahhn wahhn… In the parking lot at the restaurant, and later at our hotel, we felt sad. It had just been so fun being in camping mode. How great it is to be insulated from the noise of life, hanging out with the ones you love. Only one more day.
Our last day was Father’s Day. We did not want to miss out on any remaining fun. So, we ditched the hotel breakfast and made breakfast in the bus. We cut diagonally across two spots in the hotel parking lot, and called it our camp-spot. Hamid went back in the hotel for coffee, and this was the mini-Father’s Day celebration he returned to. Yummy.
Hamid & Ada reading on the bus
One horse town
Happy on our last day!
We had a fun swim in the hotel pool. Then packed up and hit the road. We tooled along, made good time, made some of our own adventure — stopping in a one horse town with some shade (the VW a/c wasn’t doing much!), a popsicle stop mid-way at some random gas station. But… nonetheless… soon were home in Berkeley by 6:00pm. Memories of the day and our first camping trip. Here’s a few images of our last day below. Happy Summer everyone! Lov, R, H & A
