Santa Claus

I anticipate many more visits with the fat man over the course of the season. There is the daycare party, preschool Christmas program, Christmas Craft Fair at church… Still, the first sighting of the season is a nice milestone. It actually took Anthony a few seconds to decide to approach Santa, the most stand-off-ish he's ever been.

Sea World

The day after Thanksgiving found us at Sea World. Anthony and I rode a few rides while we waited for his cousins to arrive. Then we headed off to the dolphin show which was a HIT. It was VERY flashy with aerials and divers in addition to the dolphins.

Anthony's favorite animal was the walrus. He would spit out his food and then eat it again. It was pretty disgusting and kind of cool, all at the same time.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yesterday we flew down to Southern California to visit my family. My mom prepared cookies for the grand-kids to decorate while we waited for the turkey to cook. Anthony LOVED squeezing enormous amounts of icing on his cookies. He also enjoyed a spoonful of blue sprinkles.

Cartwheels with Friends

I came home from my new job with an 18 lb organic (fresh) turkey. We're going away for Thanksgiving and it seemed like a sin to freeze the bird. So we invited friends with teenage boys over to help us eat the thing.

We had a lovely evening, a low key dinner, the kids played Wii, the adults chatted... At some point Anthony conned Riley (aka King of the Little Kids) into teaching him how to do cartwheels.

The turkey was pretty good. Would I spend that much of my own money? Doubt it. But it instigated a nice evening and we had plenty of leftovers, even though we had TWO teenage boys to help.

"Helping" Daddy

Anthony was MORE than happy to help Daddy fix his airplane. Daddy even let him run the drill a few times.

A New Medium

Last week we explored a new art medium--shave cream on cookie sheet. Anthony LOVED it. In case you can't tell, he drew a picture of my cat Tigger.

You can easily tell the picture was taken last week--he's wearing short sleeves. We went from summer to winter in about two days last week!

Discovery Museum

One of the disadvantages of working full time is that all the fun stuff is CROWDED on the weekends. The Discovery Museum is particularly bad, it gets really noisy. So, today we headed off to San Jose to play in the museum when it was nearly empty. Anthony had fun at the sand table, but the water area was (as always) the hit.

The bottom picture is a favorite toy in the water play area. You fill up the pneumatic tube with balls while another tube fills with water. Then you pull the rope, the water drops and the balls fly! The musem provides little waterproof aprons, but a full change of clothes is generally required.

I didn't get pictures, but we spent a little while visiting the new mastadon exhibit. The star of the show is the mastadon fossil that was discovered right by Bob's office when he worked at Rockwell-Collins.

Fun Day Off

I'm in the process of switching jobs and am taking the week off! I spent today doing all the things I normally CAN'T do. I started off by volunteering in Anthony's preschool class. I would say that it was nice seeing him in his natural environment, but my presence definitely disturbed things. Basically he was pretty darn clingy and FAR less cooperative than usual.

His teachers said he was doing well. He needs more work on his fine motor skills, and we're starting to make a conscious effort for that. Mrs. Rooney thinks he's on the verge of being able to read! I think she exaggerates, but he certainly enjoys saying words out loud and figuring out what letter it starts with. If he knows, for example, that Subway starts with "S", he can then find "Subway" on the package of apples.

After preschool we had lunch with Daddy and then headed home for some rest time. Then we met up with Ciaran at a local park for a few hours. The best part of Heritage Oaks park was the rock climbing area. They spent awhile climbing on the rocks and Anthony could make it all the way across the climbing ropes by himself.

He was pretty worn out by the end of the day.

Tossing the Dough

Anthony spotted a recipe for "Cinnamon Critters" in this month's "Highlights High-Five" and wanted to bake them with me. He LOVED playing with the dough. The highlight of Pizz'a My Heart (where we eat far too often) is watching the employees spin the pizza dough. The treats came out nicely, though I was careful to make sure that Bob and I ate the ones I had made. Anthony's were a little too sampled.

On a related note, we LOVE High Five magazine. We got Anthony the subscription for his 3rd birthday. The first few months we just read the stories and the comic strips. Then at closer to 3 1/2 he discovered Hidden Pictures and thinks those are tons of fun, too. Its an expensive magazine, but worth every penny. I loved my subscription to Highlights and am happy to continue the tradition.

Boys' Day Out

Anthony's birthday present to Robert was a trip to Happy Hollow together. They went with the Daddies and were there ALL DAY. They left our house at 10 and didn't return until 4:00. Anthony is finally big enough to ride the roller coaster unchaperoned, so he and Robert took multiple turns together.

They didn't see the puppet show, but they did visit all the animals down in the hollow. Anthony came back with soaking wet legs and feet. There's a little pond(?) with stepping stones across it. Guess who missed a step? Fortunately Daddy was holding one hand to keep from going in all the way.

"I'm a Carrot Farmer"

Imagine small person dancing around the house singing, "I'm a carrot farmer." Well, that was the start of our morning.

As Anthony enjoyed his summer zucchini plant so much, we planted another crop in our self-watering containers for fall. We did one pot of sugar snap peas (the birds loved the baby plants) and one crop of carrots. As expected, they were well loved.

Today we harvested our first baby carrot and Anthony was thrilled to no end.

There's no sign of frost, so we'll let the other continue growing as long as we can.

Milestone towards winter

Turned on the heat today.

Bob had planned to take Anthony on a field trip to see the zeppelin today, but the event was cancelled on account of inclement weather.

Bummer.

Bouncy Birthday

In addition to all the Halloween fun, last weekend we helped Anthony's pal K (preschool and Sunday School) celebrate her birthday. Anthony had a GREAT time. There was a large selection of jumpers but Anthony clearly liked the gigantic slide the best.

I was glad to meet some of the parents of his classmates. There's a pair of kids that Anthony talks about ALL the time. I got to know their mother so hopefully we can have a playdate soon.