Going To The Zoo

This afternoon we went to the San Francisco Zoo. Mark Twain once said "The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco" and the city did not dissapoint. It was 60 degrees and overcast, but uncrowded so we were happy. Patrick particularly enjoyed any animal that had been featured in the movie "Madagascar", but was sad that there were no elephants (the Pachyderm building is empty since the Zoo shipped off the elephants last year due to concerns about their health). The zoo is looking a little run down, a lot of the original exhibits are empty. I still miss monkey island. But Patrick was oblivious to the old things that I missed and was thrilled to ride the Zoo Train and feed the goats.











With the same elephant in October, 2004

I Love Rock 'n' Roll

A certain little someone in the house has discovered the joys of listening to music on headphones. His music of choice? Why Gwen Stefani of course!

Hot, Hot, Hot

It's supposed to be under 100 tomorrow, we'll see. It's been in the 100-107 range since Friday and we're a little tired of being stuck on the house. On the other hand, Tom and I are patting ourselves on the back for installing central air last year.

Heat Wave

We're in the middle of a heat wave, today it was 100 which is way hot for us. It's supposed to continue until the middle of next week. Our air conditiong has been getting a work out, it's been going almost constantly just to keep the house at 75 ot 76. I've been trying to find things to keep us all cool while having fun, today we broke out a little inflatable water playground I picked up at Target . Patrick had a blast, he loved the little sprinklers and all the toys. Unfortunately, the water was creating a lake on our grass so he mostly had to play with the sprinklers off. Hope you are all staying cool!

Growing Up

Patrick had his 27 month visit witht he pediatrician yesterday. He was declared healthy and perfectly normal in terms of weight and height (50th percentile on each, he weighed 28.5 pounds and is just about 36 inches tall). Someone once told me that if you double the height at age 2 you could predict a child's adult height. So that would put Patrick at about 5'10", the same as Tom (and pretty tall considering my puny height). I also found this online height predictor which spits out a predicted height of 6'2" for Patrick (or, more than a foot taller than his mother). So I have no idea how accurate these things are but I thought it was pretty interesting! And I realized I never posted Patrick's "official" 2 year portrait. We gave it to the grandmas for Mother's Day so I didn't post it when I first got them. The session went horrible, Patrick cried most of the time and refused to let go of a box of raisins he was holding. I was beyond thrilled that a nice picture turned out from it!

Lawn Party

Exciting news on the home front... we're finally doing some landscaping! Today new sod was laid in our front yard, and we're thrilled with the new look. It took a lot of Round-Up and time to kill our old lawn (do you call it a lawnm if it is mostly crab grass?), then we hired someone to put in a new sprinkler system and do the rest. Next we will get al the bushes in front and back trimmed up and looking clean. Now we just need to tackle the backyard....someday.





And in other news, today we got to spend the day with cousin Olivia who is visiting this summer from Switzerland. She'll be here for 6 weeks working on perfecting her English. She is Patrick's fifth cousin! So my fourth cousin once removed or something like that? Cool!

Kinda Cute

Just two cute little things from today...

When I sneezed Patrick said "Bless you mama!". Awww.

Patrick gave me a piece of graham cracker and wanted me to eat it right then. When I finished he said "Good job mama!". Double awww.

In contrast, we had this conversation last week...

Patrick: Where's my red flashlight?
Me: I don't know Patrick, but you can play with this blue one.
Patrick: No blue flashlight! Get red flashlight!
Me: Sweetie, I don't know where the red flashlight is.
Patrick: GO FIND IT!

On The Beach

Patrick has had an odd fear of sand, it started a few months ago and I really didn't mind because sand is sort of nasty and difficult to clean off. This weekend we went to the beach for cousin Isabel and Gabrielle's birthday party and as usual, Patrick freaked out at the sand and refused to touch it. So Tom carried him out onto the beach and Patrick watched his cousins Brandie and Vincent digging and having a great time. Patrick decided the sand must not be all that bad because pretty soon he was standing in it, then sitting in it, then allowing Brandie to bury his feet in it. He ended up having a great day, and it was a rare warm and sunny day on the coast. Everyone had a great time, even Dex who napped under a chair. And check out the cool cakes Danielle made!

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July! We had a great 4 day weekend that incuded 2 parties, a short trip to San Francisco, a first movie, a parade, fireworks and shopping. It makes me tired just to think about it all! This morning we took the train up to Redwod City for the 4th of July parade. It was fun but looooong. We left before the parade ended (and after 2 hours!) because the train home only leaves once an hour and we had lots of stuff to get done! Patrick enjoyed it, but was fading by the end. His favorites were the horses and fire engines (there were lots of both). Later on we went to a BBQ at Grandma's house where Patrick had a complete blast playing with his cousins. His cousins are all older (5, 6, 6, 9 and 11) but Patrick just adores them all and they are so good with him. It's really sweet to watch :)

Patrick also decided he really likes fireworks. We were watching some little "safe and sane" fireworks in the backyard and Patrick kept repeating "I like fire. More fire.". Aye yi yi.

Life Is A Highway

This morning we took Patrick to his first movie! I think I was more excited about it than he was, but he did really, really well. We went to see Cars and Patrick actually made it through the whole movie. He only had to get up to wander around once, and he seemed to really enjoy the movie. Tom and I thought it was cute, 3 thumbs up from all of us!