Big Basin Part 2

Well, we didn't get the best night sleep. I don't blame Anthony for most of it. There was a kid in another site coughing all night. After spending quite a few nights listening to Anthony cough I seem to be a little hyper-sensitive to it. Unfortunately I didn't have his inhaler with us, otherwise I'd have gone over to offer it to that poor family.

I was already awake (way too early) when Anthony woke up unhappy about being in the pack and play in the tent. I just pulled him out and he happily went back to sleep next to me. Of course, that meant I had no pillow as I was a little worried about suffocation. And, of course, the poor kid in the ajacent site was still coughing!

Anthony woke up a little early and we let him play in the other room of the tent. He had some fun with Daddy's hat. Then he discovered that he could zip and un-zip the tent door. He spent quite awhile doing that. Next thing I knew, he reached out and brought a whole pile of dirt and leaves inside to play with. Groan!
The bottom picture is Anthony standing inside a big stump that was at the entrance to our camp. The older boys made it into their treehouse and spent hours playing on it!

Summary of our trip report: I'll do it again in an instant! Anthony had so much fun playing in the woods and was a real trooper.

What I'd change: Pack and play is of dubious utility. I think one enormous air mattress with room for 3 might be more useful.

Camping at Big Basin

We took Anthony camping at Big Basin State Park this weekend, our first trip of the season. We went with Celisa and her boys and everyone had a grand old time!

As we got out of the cars I commented to C. that we were already off to a better start than our two camping trips last year. Her response, "Because he's still in the clothes he started out in??" Yep, when you start off low, you have nowhere to go but up. (Little dude got carsick last year.)

We had lunch, set up camp and played in the campsite for awhile. Anthony had so much fun running around camp exploring. There were stumps to run around, roots to climb over, a downed log to walk on and a tent to go in and out of!

After settling in, we headed into the main area of the park and took a 1/2 mile walk on the Redwood Loop Trail, an easy nature trail. I'm guessing that Anthony walked about 1/2 of it, maybe a little more. Some of the time he rode on my back in the Ergo and Daddy carried him on his shoulders some.

We all spent quite awhile playing inside the hollow tree. C's boys are 6 and 4 and all three boys were running around the tree, inside the tree, around the tree....

We ended the day with S'mores and a short campfire. Grown-up s'mores were made with Ghiradelli chocolate (the caramel filled kind) instead of Hershey's bars. Vast improvement!

Bedtime didn't go smoothly, but it finally went! Someone was overexcited and overtired.

New Pigeon Books!!!

We came home yesterday to a package from Grandpa Vince and Grandma Donna. Anthony was so excited to open his present. In fact, he opened it all by himself!

TWO new Pigeon books, "The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog" and "Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus". I'm particularly fond of Pigeon finds a hotdog as he shares in the end. Pigeon tends to be a bit of a brat, but I think they're tons of fun to read.

Check it out, he even has his very own Pigeon.

(I think we now have most of the Pigeon books. I scored a copy of "Don't let the Pigeon stay up late" at our library's used book sale. They charge 50 cents an inch (of thickness), so it was a real bargain. Of course, I learned about the Pigeon books when Anthony's pal Ciaran gave him a copy of "Pigeon Wants a Puppy" for his birthday.

Playdate with Ciaran

Monday after nap we went over to Ciaran's house for a short playdate. They had so much fun together. It was a bundle of laughs.

Teeth brushing

Teeth brushing is definitely Anthony's favorite part of bedtime. He and Daddy each have their own toothbrush and take turns.

We had a minor crisis last week. We started off using "Giggles and grins" toothpaste. It was clear and Anthony loved sucking it off his toothbrush. When that tube ran out, we switched to the Oral-B kid's toothpaste that was in Anthony's Christmas stocking. It was berry flavored and bright blue. The first time Anthony saw it he pretty much went ballistic and there was lots of screaming. I thought that I'd have to go right out and buy more of the "right" kind. Well, Anthony adopted quite quickly and is now happily using is berry-flavored toothpaste.

I'll be careful and try and buy the same kind when this tube runs out!

A Day at the Museum

Today we went to the Children's Discovery Museum to see the Curious George exhibit. It's on tour and won't be here too long and I wanted to be sure to see it.

Of course, most of the exhibit was too old for Anthony but he definitely enjoyed opening and closing the peek-a-boo doors.

I thought the exhibit was pretty neat. They had a display with vintage editions of all the Curious George books. They only had two copies of the original to read, though. (Way too many words for Anthony.)

Watsonville Airshow

Saturday we went to the Watsonville Airshow, one of Daddy's favorites. We drove instead of flying so that we'd have a little flexibility regarding departure times.

The top photo is Anthony standing inside a C-17. He found the large plane a little intimidating. I think he enjoyed the C-17 demonstration, I know that Daddy did! The show started with a bunch of WW2 trainers flying in formation. He thought that was fascinating.

Next year, Anthony and Daddy are going to fly-in and camp beside the airplane overnight. There is a spaghetti dinner and pancake breakfast. Daddy is really looking forward to it. Hopefully Anthony's pal Robert will be able to come with his Daddy, too. (Paul is also a pilot.)

Gilroy Gardens

Today we took Anthony to his first amusement park, Gilroy Gardens. The brochure bills it as the country's only horticulture theme park. Its perfect for the young set, nearly all the rides are for little kids. (There are a handful of older kid rides and we generally avoided those.) The park is also known for the beautiful gardens and their collection of circus trees.

I think Anthony generally had a good time. We rode a whole bunch of rides. Top to bottom are the carousel (of course), the Artichoke Dip, and the Pit Stop Racers. We also went on the Strawberry Sunday, the train ride and Bulgy the Goldfish. Bulgy was NOT a success. It was his first ride that he had to go on by himself and he was pretty unhappy about it. We thought he'd be okay but he was pretty unhappy. Fortunately he got over it fast!

During lunch we watched the Musical Market Show. It was pretty corny so Bob liked the jokes and Anthony enjoyed the music.

We really wore Anthony out. He feel asleep leaving the park at 1:20, slept the whole way home and then didn't wake up until 4:45.

Daddy Had a Birthday

Anthony REALLY liked the birthday card Aunt Jessica sent. Mommy thought it was pretty funny, too.

I didn't get him a card, but I did make birthday brownies for Bob to take to work. I tried out a new recipe for Milky Way Brownies. Honestly, I wasn't too impressed--my regular brownies are pretty darn good. However, topping those with chopped up Milky Way might be just the ticket!

Spoons

At Anthony's 18-month pediatrician appointment, Dr. Babcock asked if Anthony has started using spoons yet. My response was "somewhat", and that was considered good enough.

He actually has halfway decent spoon skills. The loaded end always makes it into his mouth. He still needs to work on scooping, though that is also improving.

Both yesterday and today he had mashed sweet potato as part of dinner. That was a little harder to manage, but he did okay. (Its hard because its too easy to accidently leave it behind if you pull the spoon out wrong.) A month ago he would have rejected the spoon in favor of fingers. He considered that yesterday, but then decided that the spoon was a better choice.

The Universal Game of....

"Chase the Pigeon". Or in this case, chase the ducks.

When we were in Italy on our honeymoon, huge crowds of young children of all nationalities would gang together to chase the pigeons around various town squares. None of these kids spoke the same language but they were able to play together as chase is a fairly universal game.

Well, Anthony hasn't gotten to play "chase the pigeon" yet, but he did get to chase ducks, which is a close second.

For Bob's birthday we went down to southern California so that we could go to the Red Bull Air Races. We left Anthony at my parent's house, of course. The trip was of dubious success. Anthony wasn't completely happy being left behind, he didn't nap well and he slept at night even less.

He did, however, enjoy an outing to a local park that had ducks. (And a few errant roosters/chickens/baby chicks.) Mean Mama would NOT let him play in the duck pond, no matter how attractive it looked.

Visiting with Family

Getting nice pictures of Anthony with his cousins is getting harder and harder. The crux of the problem is that they are now mobile. Kurt is old enough to understand the concept of standing still to have his picture taken. The younger boys, not so much.

I'm pretty happy with how these came out, though.

Grandma's Visit

Turns out we did get some nice picture of Bob's mother and Anthony playing together!

Kay was only out for two days, but we had a nice time. I took Friday off work and we took Anthony to Deer Hollow Farm. We had a lovely walk and spent awhile visiting with the animals. We were getting ready to leave and it must have been feeding time because Luna (the cow) and the sheep started mooing and bleating LOUD. Anthony didn't quite know what to make of it.

We then met Bob for lunch and then took Anthony home for his nap.

Saturday Bob flew us up to Santa Rosa for lunch with Uncle Bob. We had lunch at the little restaurant where Bob took me on the infamous "airplane date". We ate outside and afterwards Anthony was able to run around in the fenced in yard.

Big Boy Haircut

Well, after enduring such indignities such as coming home with his hair in a ponytail, we finally decided that it might be time for a haircut. For haircut #3 we decided it was time for a big-boy haircut with actual style. A new children's salon Snip-its opened nearby and we gave it a try.

Anthony was less than enthusiastic about this cut. To begin with, he didn't want to sit in the chair. We started him off sitting on my lap and he did okay there. We tried using an animal cracker to bribr him into sitting in the chair, but no dice. He did decide, however, that he required a steady stream of animal crackers and goldfish to ensure cooperation. In the middle his stylist had to leave to take a phone call and we took that opportunity to transition him to the big-kid chair. (Note the handful of goldfish in the bottom picture.)

He did fine in the chair, except for deciding he wanted nothing to do with the clippers. So we didn't use clippers.

I'm pretty happy with how his cut turned out. We didn't give him a "little hispanic boy buzz cut" because Anthony wouldn't look like Anthony without his hair.

He cleaned up nicely, but I still miss my little wild-haired boy!

Big Boy Haircut

Note the celebratory animal cracker in the bottom picture!

A comment on Snip-its. Generally I was impressed with the franchise. It was clean (brand-new) and bright and generally the staff seemed enthusiastic. However, a huge part of their business centers around birthday parties for young girls. They get their hair and make-up done and get all "glammed up" to "strut their stuff down the Snip-its Catwalk". Frankly I found the whole concept moderately repulsive.

But, I'd go there again.