"New" Table

We rearranged the space for O's play kitchen today to accommodate the newly-arrived play table from Pennsylvania.  The new set up gives him a little more room, and he is definitely a fan of the table.  I think it must be the many, many years of good play vibes contained in the table.  It originally belonged to my Mom and Aunt Linda, and passed through my four siblings and I, as well as my sister's kids.  Now, it is in it's new home, we with a new little boy to sit and color and serve up the meals he prepares in his kitchen - recently he make a lot of "Happy Birthday cakes" and quesedillas.

He looks so grown up in this picture, it is killing me!

Almost Healthy

As you can probably tell by the title of this post, we have not been the most healthy family here in Alameda.  Almost three weeks ago, O came down with a pretty nasty case of Hand Foot and Mouth Disease a couple of days before our scheduled camping trip.  The poor little guy probably looked worse than he felt, but he was out of commission for about a week.  Tom and I also caught it from him, and were about four days behind on the symptoms and feeling generally icky.  Needless to say, the camping trip was put on hold.

Now that he has been healthy for about a week or so, O has a minor case of pink eye.  Ah, the joys of daycare and toddlers.

We have had some fun in the past few weeks.  Just as O was getting better, and probably before Tom and I should have been going on an outing, we spent the afternoon at Golden Gate Park.  This picture was from the Dutch Windmill; I told O to go over by the windmill and he walked all the way over, turned around and told me take a picture.  Funny guy!

I really like this picture on the beach.  You can see that Tom is talking to him, it looks like they are old friends taking a walk on the beach.  O was insistent on walking all the way to the water.  He made it most of the way before Tom had to carry him.  

Last Thursday, I went to the Open House at Olin's school.  It was fun to see how they spend their day, and learn the songs and games that they play.  He really likes it there, and his teachers all love him (of course).

Tonight we had pancakes for dinner.  I don't think I have ever seen O so excited for a dinner in his whole life - not even peanut butter and jelly!  He watched me make every pancake, even telling me when to flip them and to put more butter in the pan. He has become quite bossy lately, by the way.

I think he ate more pancakes than either Tom or I, and he probably would have eaten more if we let him.  

Home Again

O and I are back home from Pittsburgh.  We had a great trip.  My conference was good and productive for me; and O had a great time with Grandma, Grandpa and Jenna.  They all got out and saw a bit of the city while I was in sessions.   I don't have any pictures from the trip, but hopefully Grandpa will send some to me that I can share.

O was a real trooper on the airplanes. I could not have asked for him to be better, really.  We spent the remainder of the weekend since we got home Sat evening relaxing and today we got out for a nice little hike.  O did a bit of hiking himself and took a three hour nap when we got home!

He was mixing something with a stick here...  I think he said it was soup.

The tall redwoods: