Wacky Wednesdays - North Berkeley

One benefit of having Daphne in part-time daycare that I'd been really looking forward to, as I mentioned in my last post, is having some one-on-one time with Elias each week. That is obviously one of the challenges of having more than one kid, especially when your first kid is so old by the time any siblings come along - how to carve out some time for each of them. And I may not be able to keep this up indefinitely, assuming/hoping work picks up over the next few months, but for the time-being Wednesday afternoons are a chance for Elias and I to enjoy some mama-son adventures around the Bay Area. He's at such a fun age for these kinds of shenanigans, too, still enjoying my company (only because Dad is not an option at that time!) and old enough to do so many fun things. Of course a couple of Wednesdays have been botched due to illness of one family member or another, and a couple of afternoons were used to see movies, but the idea is to do things that we can't easily do with little sister in tow for the couple of hours between school getting out and daycare pick-up.

Like slide down the concrete slide at Cordonices Park a dozen times...

...walk around the rose garden across the street (not a lot of roses in bloom this time of year but the view was spectacular)...

...and enjoy a cool treat at Lush Gelato in Berkeley! So fun. Stay tuned for more adventures!

PS - the top pic is at a froyo place in Alameda following a Wednesday afternoon matinee of the Lego movie. Little did I know there was a popcorn kernel in his ear! And yes, we may just have to end each of these Wacky Wednesday afternoons with some kind of sweet treat!

goodbye winter, hello spring

It doesn't seem like I'm too behind on blogging but oh my, what a busy year 2014 has been so far! Where to begin in order to catch up? How about the hope that the cold & flu season is just about over? Elias has actually had a decent winter, knock on wood. He's had a couple of stomach bugs and several minor colds but has managed to not miss any school because of it, getting over bugs by the end of the weekend and those two stomach bugs happening during Thanksgiving and winter breaks. The only time he's even been tardy was to remove a popcorn kernel that had been in his ear for a week.

Yep, a week. Apparently he found a popcorn kernel after science class on a Tuesday. Popped it in his ear, it fell out. Repeated that two times but on the third try, the popcorn kernel did not pop out. When asked why he took so long to tell us, his response was along the lines of not wanting to miss out on Wednesday afternoon plans. Since Daphne goes to part-time daycare now, and Wednesday is early pick-up from school, that has become our one-on-one time (more about "wacky Wednesdays" in a future post) and that particular Wednesday we had planned to see the Lego movie - second time for him, first time for me. I think he honestly forgot after that until it likely began to bug him a bit. But apparently this is only an emergency situation if there is pain, bleeding, and/or fever. He had none of those symptoms so I took him to the doctor the next morning, after getting little sis' to daycare. It took the better part of that morning and then I dropped him off at school for the rest of the day.

Daphne came down with a nasty bug that night so that was the end of that particular work-week. She was really down for the count for a full week, with stomach bug-like symptoms and fever for about three days, then just not quite herself for another 3 or 4 days ... her worst virus yet. But this kind of thing is obviously bound to happen, especially now that she's in daycare.

Anyway, there were a lot of naps on my shoulder - it felt a little like having a newborn again - and beloved bear lovey (sometimes both bear loveys - she has one for home, one for daycare) did not leave her side for the first few days. As soon as she recovered I came down with one of the worst colds I've had in years and I'm still recovering, over two weeks later! Ugh. It's that time of year, I guess!

PS - that picture above is "enhanced" by Google +. It's from a few months ago, but seemed appropriate for this post, silly as it is (snow in Oakland?! Yeah, right.).