Friday, September 26th They
say this is the age when toddlers start to exhibit separation
anxiety. I can't say we've really seen it with Caden yet.
In fact, in the past few weeks when I've dropped him off at my
parents house before heading off to teach, I would hand him over to
my mom and Caden would start waving goodbye to me as if to say,
"Don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out Papa."
He seems pretty secure in himself. Same thing at the
supermarket and other places where we get separated from each other.
He has no problem sitting in the shopping cart by himself while it
gets pulled through the checkout line. He enjoys flirting with
the employees. I've seen other kids come unglued as soon as
they realized their parent is out of reach.
So we're glad in some respects that Caden doesn't have huge issues
with separation anxiety. That doesn't mean he isn't clingy
sometimes, especially when John gets home from work. He just
won't let John put him down. And he's been quite a love bug
lately, giving everyone around hugs, hugs and more hugs. He
grabs you around the neck and squeezes tight and lets out a loud "Ohhhhhhh."
It's worth a million dollars.
He's even been trying it on the
cats lately. While they're all pretty tolerant of him and
enjoy hanging around with him, about the only one who will stick
around for a Caden hug is LuLu. It's because she's so in love
with him. At least four or five times a day he's got her in a
bear hug. She just purrs even louder.
On a side note...
isn't the election stuff getting entertaining? It's going to
be a very interesting month ahead. The more Sarah Palin gets
exposed to the world, the more I want to sit down and watch it all.
The recent interviews with Katie Couric really have to be
seen to be
believed. And I saw something today that I never - in my
life - thought possible: an article from the
National
Review (a very conservative news journal) actually questioning
the McCain ticket. It's very entertaining reading.
Despite all the spin, entertainment, right/left, red/blue, there
isn't a night I go to bed these days without saying a prayer for the
huge mess our country's in and hoping for more peace, more truth and
better times ahead. And less Sean Hannity.
Y ¯
[ ÿ
Wednesday, September 24th
Hello? Hello? Anyone there? Ahem!Yes ... we're back! Sorry about the temporary
absence there. It's been a little crazy around here.
I've had my teaching gig for the past five weeks and it always seems
to burn up way more time and energy than I expect. Even though
I teach every Spring and Fall, it's a pretty intense time including
getting Caden to my parents house early enough in the morning to
make it to the school on time each day. Anyway, today was my
last day of teaching A&P! I'm glad it's done. I really
enjoy doing it, but I'm glad it's wrapped up for awhile.
John's been very helpful in in the past couple weeks getting things
done around here while I've been busy preparing school work.
We're both looking forward to life getting back to normal now.
And more blogging. I think the only ones sad to see me done
teaching are my parents! They love babysitting and have been
in sheer bliss the past month watching Caden.
Last
night the San Jose
Sharks had an exhibition hockey game for season ticket holders.
Kind of a scrimmage before the actual season starts. Some of
the players were available for autographs and they had some games
and activities for kids. We took Caden for a little while.
We're not really autograph seekers but we did get a photo with the
Sharks mascot. In the past, Caden has screamed in horror when
he (it?) approaches, but this time he mostly just froze in catatonic
silence. We stood and watched him for awhile so I think Caden
is starting to warm up to
Sharkie.
No horrified screams this time at least.
When we walked in
the door to the arena last night, I saw this couple wearing matching
t-shirts that said "Who's Side Are You On." I did
a double take. I certainly didn't win any spelling bees as a
kid but I thought to myself... "Oh how embarrasing. They went to all
the trouble of having t-shirts made up and they don't know how to
spell." And then I realized that those were the free
t-shirts that the Sharks were handing out to the fans!
OOPS. They apparently printed thousands of these shirts and
forgot to spell check them first. It's ok; I'll still wear it.
It was free after all.
Caden sure had fun watching the game.
He is very different this season compared to last season. He
was really hooting and hollering and pumping his fist in the air.
We weren't quite sure what any of it really meant but it looked
quite impressive (and funny) nonetheless. He wore his "I Love
Nabby" shirt (Evgeni
Nabakov is their goalie) and he even made it up onto the big
Jumbotron for a few seconds.
The real exhibition games start
tonight and the season opener is in two weeks.
82 games, here we come.
Y ¯
[ ÿ
Saturday, September 13th The
three of us were enjoying a leisurely Saturday morning this morning
sitting around having breakfast and reading the paper. Caden
was doing his part "reading" some of the more interesting parts of
the newspaper. And then we came upon the Toys-R-Us
advertisement. He looked at it for quite awhile as if he was
already plotting his Christmas haul. He seemed like he was
really comparing and contrasting each item. We got a pretty
good chuckle.
We've been lucky so far in toy stores.
No demands or tantrums yet. He's still pretty distractible so
we've avoided any melt-downs. Plus, I've been using this line
on him about how certain toys "live" on this shelf or in that box
and we need to put them back after we look at them. Or they
might not be happy if we didn't put them back where they lived.
Isn't it terrible the stuff we make up and feed to our kids?
Y ¯
[ ÿ
Friday, September 12th
There's one day of the week I'm off the hook to cook: Fridays.
It's John's responsibility to plan something. I don't really
care what it is as long as I don't have to cook. John got
stuck at work late tonight so he offered to spring for dinner out.
Caden and I met him at
Chili's.
Because we all got there kind of late (and because there are no
stinking restaurants on our side of town), there were mobs of people
waiting to be seated when we arrived. The wait for a table was
at least 45 minutes. We worried about how long Caden would
last without food so we looked for a place to at least order a
snack. It just so happened that three spots opened up right at
the bar so we grabbed them.
Caden was being very
charming and charismatic sitting at the huge bar. He looked
very tiny in the huge bar stool. I wasn't sure they were going
to let us sit there with a little kid but the bartender walked over
and enthusiastically asked Caden whether he wanted a shot of Jack
Daniels. I figured we were OK (we ordered milk). Given
how hungry we were, we decided to just stay and eat right there.
For the next ninety minutes or so, it turned out to be quite an
entertaining evening just watching Caden belly up to the bar, bounce
between watching sports on each of the many televisions, and
flirting with all the other patrons. He gorged on macaroni and
cheese, French fries and milk. Baby bar food bonanza! We
taught him how to dip his fries in ketchup which he thought was
really cool. He "dipped" his fries all night long as if he'd
been doing it for years.
Quite a natural acting like "Mr.
Cool" at a big boy bar. I'm sure no one noticed that not a
single one of his fries ever actually landed in the ketchup when he
dipped them.
Y ¯
[ ÿ
Tuesday, September 9th We went to the beach on Saturday. It just so happened that there
was an Art and Wine Festival at the
Capitola Beach,
and well, you know what boozers we are. We admired the art
(aka: imaginative crap you'd never really buy) for a little while
and then we took Caden out onto the sand. He wasn't so sure
about it at first but then got used to it pretty fast and really dug
his feet into it. He was really impressed by the waves.
He couldn't stop laughing at the kids jumping and riding them.
I wanted to get a picture of Caden and John walking out in
the very shallow water so I encouraged him to walk Caden out a few
feet. Unfortunately, he wasn't really paying attention and
before he knew it, Caden was soaked by an incoming wave and covered
in sand. Nice. We had to go buy some dry clothes because
like idiots we hadn't made provisions.
For being people who
live 45 minutes away from the ocean and go there all the time, we
sure acted like we were from Minneapolis.
Y ¯
[ ÿ
Monday, September 8th We went to a little birthday party the other night at our friend's Shannon and Calvin's house. Their son Duncan
just turned two. When we showed up, we were kind of surprised
to see that Caden and Duncan were wearing the same shirt! Oh
well, I guess the two papa's just have the same good taste in
clothes. It was fun to watch Caden play and interact.
It's always interesting to see how kids manage themselves at someone
else's house with a whole different and new set of toys. He
was in dreamland. Duncan has some cool stuff! Anyway,
the adults had fun visiting too.
Y ¯
[ ÿ
Thursday, September 4th
What's this? Looks political. How does the old saying go ...
two things you never want to see in action: making sausage and
politics.
Yes, but there is so much happening
in our country and the world right now. The
current political issues have never been more important - in my
generation at least. And thank God we only have a
short time to
go before new leadership takes over our country.
Click
on the image below and wade into a little political perspective.
I promise it will be entertaining. Or you can just admire the pretty colors,
skip the politics and we'll be back to baby talk tomorrow.
Y ¯ [ ÿ
Wednesday, September
3rd
We went to the
Oakland Zoo on Monday. It's a pretty fun zoo. It's
not too big, making it good for people with little kids. They
have the usual lions and tigers and bears as well as elephants,
giraffes and zebras. Some of their more unusual animals are
the Lubee Bats
which are massive, about the size of a dog and a six foot wingspan.
Creepy! They also have a kids petting zoo with a variety of
very tame goats. I think they must just put Ativan in their
feed or something; the goats all seemed like they were in their own
calm little world. Caden really liked the petting zoo although, as you can see
in the video, he gets a little distracted by other kids (not sure
which is more entertaining). We know he has quite a conscience
already because before he does something he knows is off
limits, he shakes his head "no" first (and then does it anyway).
They
say this is the age when toddlers start to exhibit separation
anxiety. I can't say we've really seen it with Caden yet.
In fact, in the past few weeks when I've dropped him off at my
parents house before heading off to teach, I would hand him over to
my mom and Caden would start waving goodbye to me as if to say,
"Don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out Papa."
He seems pretty secure in himself. Same thing at the
supermarket and other places where we get separated from each other.
He has no problem sitting in the shopping cart by himself while it
gets pulled through the checkout line. He enjoys flirting with
the employees. I've seen other kids come unglued as soon as
they realized their parent is out of reach. 
Last
night the 
a double take. I certainly didn't win any spelling bees as a
kid but I thought to myself... "Oh how embarrasing. They went to all
the trouble of having t-shirts made up and they don't know how to
spell." And then I realized that those were the free
t-shirts that the Sharks were handing out to the fans!
OOPS. They apparently printed thousands of these shirts and
forgot to spell check them first. It's ok; I'll still wear it.
It was free after all.
The
three of us were enjoying a leisurely Saturday morning this morning
sitting around having breakfast and reading the paper. Caden
was doing his part "reading" some of the more interesting parts of
the newspaper. And then we came upon the Toys-R-Us
advertisement. He looked at it for quite awhile as if he was
already plotting his Christmas haul. He seemed like he was
really comparing and contrasting each item. We got a pretty
good chuckle. 
W
W