Merry Christmas!

Christmas began at 6:34 am this morning, which, in case you were wondering, is no earlier than any other day begins for us around here. Our young heroes are early risers to put it mildly.

Merry Christmas to all of our friends and family. We hope Santa was good to you!

Santa came to San Diego!




Thank you Uncle Steve! Let's hope this isn't the beginnings of a Sigfried or Roy.




The Pirate loves Jorge the bouncy horse.

Aw yeah!

The Pirate is my sidekick. Where I go, he goes, roughly 97% of the time. This is partly out of obvious necessity and partly because until very recently, he would have it no other way. Yesterday I broke with our usual mode of public transportation and instead of throwing him over my shoulder like santa's sack of toys and tying him onto my back with 8 feet of brightly woven fabric, I decided it was time for The Pirate to take a ride in the shopping cart. His first time!

Oh my word was he a happy corsair. Just take a look at this smirk, you can almost see the future posture he'll adopt when he's sitting in his dad's car at 16 trying to swoop on the hunnies.

Oh right...We have a blog!

Thank you to Pattycake Girl for reminding me that I needed to get off my pompín (the word in our house for butt, doesn't it sound so much better?) and post something new! In a gallant attempt to make up for my lack of posts recently, here's a whole slew of goings on from our past month...

Someone received a professional haircut! Mama and Daddy are just now adjusting to the new look. Adorable as he is, I think I might need to see those bouncy baby boy curls again at least one more time.



We got a Christmas tree which, as you can see, has to live behind a gate to protect it from grabby hands. Darn it, when is Daddy going to learn to look with his eyes not his hands?



We had some photography lessons. Not a bad pic for a two year old study I'd say. Now if I could only manage to not look loopy we'd all be doing pretty well.



A surprise Christmas box arrived on our doorstep. The boys haven't seen the contents yet (Santa promptly hid it away) but the box itself has proven to be a fantastic diversion from all the rain we've received recently.













There's been plenty of bike riding! Don't worry Grandma, when he rides his bike anywhere other than our patio, he does wear his casco.



And of course, we've watched many sunsets from our front yard.

Let's get to work!

One of G-Funk's favorite books is Machines At Work. He can't seem to get enough of big trucks and that book delivers perfectly. Recently we had a crew of workmen working on our block and he was beside himself with excitement as we watched all the machines and trucks but the highlight of that week was probably when he got to sit in the bobcat.

Growing rockstars

It's a big day in our house when Daddy's drums are made available to the boys. The Pirate is always happy to explore anything he might be able to pull up to standing with and possibly pull down as well.



Of course G-Funk loves the opportunity to bang anything with sticks as loud as he can and he has a surprisingly good sense of rhythm. You should see him shake his booty!



In addition to working on his chops, G-Funk is perfecting his rock star/So Cal boy personae. I swear this outfit was entirely his choosing.

Out of the mouths of babes

You knew that title was coming at some point right?

Chris and I are quiet people. There's not a lot of mindless chatter flying around our house. At least there wasn't until our heroes arrived on the scene. G-Funk and The Pirate are, to put it bluntly, LOUD!

G-Funk spends a lot of his day checking in on the activities of each family member. "Da-da what doing?" is in heavy rotation. When we ask G-Funk what he's doing, we often hear, "You playing with dat!" Most of the day's play is served up for us in blow by blow narration. So I know without looking that right now he's driving Matchbox cars around the sink in the play kitchen saying "truck got wet too yeah!" This statement prompted a full on belly laugh and a "hah, that funny yeah!" He has a sense of humor that one.

The Pirate is fond of screeching, clicking his tongue at Daddy and loudly shouting Gah! at everyone and everything.

Brrr...it's chilly here today.

The weather has changed! It is raining and cooler. We close windows when the sun goes down and we're all wearing long sleeves. I try not to rave about this too much but it's impossible not to say, yet again, the weather here is simply perfect.

We spent the morning playing at our neighborhood beach a short 1.5 block walk away from our house. The tide was out and the beach was empty save for a few sea birds. G-Funk had a blast. We saw a dune buggy and he was still talking about it at bathtime.



No pics of The Pirate from our time at the beach as he was sleeping soundly on mama's back the entire time but here he is (according to G-Funk) washing dishes after lunch.

Wasabi is for babies

The Pirate is a charming lunch date when he's full of milk and well rested. (Dinner is another matter but I digress.)

I recently took him along when I treated myself to an impromptu sushi lunch. Yummy! Excuse the exposure on this pic, I only had my cell phone on me at the time. While it's not the best, I think this photo shows a new change in The Pirate's countenance. His personality is peeking through more and more each day and Daddy has summed up The Pirate with one well chosen word: tenacious. Here you see him simply happy to explore the delights of chopsticks.

If chickens are free, shouldn't we all be?

While we celebrated the historic election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, and California chickens won the right to spread their wings at will, we also marked a sad day in this sunny state with the shameful passing of Prop 8 which took away the previously held right of gay Californians to legally marry. Our family believes that ALL families are entitled to the right to live together freely, openly and with full access to all of the rights and legal recognition that heterosexual individuals enjoy. We will celebrate the inevitable overturning of Prop 8. In the end, bigotry is always on the losing side.



We hope to teach the boys to act with integrity and compassion and so it seemed fitting that we all participate in the national protests on November 8 for equal rights and the right to gay marriage. It was a beautiful day and a great thing to witness so many people standing up for equality and basic human rights.

I'm sorry about the dorky hat Pirate.

'Nuff said.
:love:

We'll be having plain oatmeal tomorrow for breakfast.

We are out of cinnamon.

As I merrily typed out my silly attempt at some Jane Goodall humor this morning for your amusement, G-Funk was merrily amusing himself. This was decidedly not good.

Those of you that don't live with a toddler probably do not realize just how quickly their natural destructive impulses can wreak havoc but I currently clock it at two minutes or less. As a parent I know that when my tyke is either unnaturally silent or, as was the case this morning, spontaneously erupting into maniacal giggles, I better go get him FAST.

So imagine my dismay this morning when G-Funk started cackling in his demented 2 year old way and I turned around from my laptop to discover that the little imp had grabbed the container of cinnamon off of the kitchen counter top and was gleefully shaking the entire contents onto the kitchen floor. And then he stepped in it. And then he spread it around more with his hands. And then he hopped up and down in it and ran away with the cinnamon container to his Hiding Spot.

This all took under two minutes. As luck would have it, I had the camera in hand and I now have photographic proof that he's a rascal! See his smeared foot and finger prints?



He escapes! (or so he thought)



I chased him to the Hiding Spot where he quickly put up his hand to tell me to stay out. Nice.



At least while G-Funk is running wild, I still have a few more months of relative calm with The Pirate. Isn't he sweet? Oh Pirate, how I love your immobility!

Field note 1

DATE: 13 NOV 2008

TIME: 0832

LOCATION: Back patio

WEATHER: Sunny with a high of 79

NOTES: After many months of quietly observing oldest subject's inability to procure balls and other wayward toys that have rolled out of reach, I was delighted to witness the use of tools this morning. G-Funk was playing with a wiffle bat and ball when the ball rolled behind a row of heavy planters. Instead of whining and crying and asking for help in a fervent and quickly escalating manner that often sets this field researcher's nerves on edge, subject was observed quitely using the fat end of his bat to fish out the ball from it's resting place. The toolkit of homo habilis has been mastered!

Pics of the day

Here's The Pirate looking jolly this afternoon.




And here's G-Funk from a few months ago in the middle of painting a VW Beetle parked at the children's museum. I love this pic!

Moto!

What's G-Funk up to today?

Mostly he's shouting MEH!! at the top of his lungs while playing with the vacuum cleaner hose as he cleans the floor and vacuums his "amimals". I think the cow has had enough though and frankly, so have I. So as soon as the morning chill lifted, I booted him out where he is now riding his "moto" and generally getting into messes outside.

Here's my favorite recent pic of G-Funk riding his bike. Why do we adults feel the need to change out of pajamas every day?

Boy comb your hair!

The jury is still out on exactly what shade of hair The Pirate is going to end up with. He started out with a great bushy head of dark hair as you can see in this pic from his early days.


















Then his mop began to fall out.

And now he's got this crazy, tufted look going on. Sometimes it looks brown and sometimes it's the color of golden wheat but it's always standing up and out. Here's what he looks like today. The "Owie" you see over his left eyebrow is the result of minor surgery he had last Friday to remove a cyst he has had since birth. Sounds much worse than it was. The Pirate was a champ throughout the entire process. Cysts are apparently quite common with newborns (who knew?!) and the entire removal event was no big deal. Thank goodness.

Imagine the joy

There are many discoveries to be made throughout a toddler's day. There's the sound of the "big chopper bike" revving in the alley to sleuth, a cup of water that should at least once be used for an attempted dowsing of your little brother and then there's The Hiding Spot.

G-Funk discovered that the little space between our stove and the wall is actually useful for something. Turns out it's the PERFECT sized hiding spot for a certain blond toddler. Silly mama thought this space was a terrible and inexplicable waste of critically needed room in the kitchen. I stand corrected.

Better late than never!

Ok, I know The Pirate has been around for 8 months now and you've hardly seen any pictures of him, much less met him in person. And yes, G-Funk is now 2 and there's been nary a peep or an update but mope no more. I'm finally on task and our minutiae will now be out there for the world to see.





Here's the most recent pic of the boys together. For those that think like my husband, the answer is NO! I did not intend for The Pirate to look like a mime. Those were simply the warmest pants I could find at that particular moment. Besides, he's rarely quiet so the kid isn't mime potential anyway.