I Love

Patrick has started saying he loves things, which is cracking us up. Just today, he proclaimed his love for the following...

"I love cheese!"
"I love the car wash!" (even though he cried there)
"I love fish!" (watching, not eating)
"I love chinchillas!"
"I love green Play-Doh!"
"I love milk!"

Life

I haven't had much time to update this blog recently, life just seems to be keeping us busy. Here are a few pictures from the last week or so. We went to the San Francisco Zoo and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Plus see how Patrick can fit in dad's guitar case!

Gravy Train

On Friday we went to Roaring Camp for a special ride on Thomas the Train. Patrick, who seems obsessed with all things train related, seemed pretty underwhelmed by the whole thing. In addition to the train ride, they had all sorts of little activities set up around the place. Again, Patrick was pretty disinterested. What amazed me most is how much money someone is making off of this little Thomas gig. Train tickets were $19 each (Patrick had to have his own ticket), each train ride held several hundred people, and the trains left every hour all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Thomas engine travels across the country repeating this all over the country. I need to come up with a great money making idea like that!

About 10 years ago we took Louie to ride the train at Roaring Camp. He loved hanging his little head over the edge of the train to catch the breeze. Patrick did the same thing, it made me smile.

Twinkle Toes

I could also title this one "Why Patrick doesn't need to have his toenails clipped". Ewwww.

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!