Vocal Rest, and Happenings from the Week

We had a wild week, filled with activities! As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have a resolution to do more fun activities with Cal, even if they're simple. This week, we had a lot of fun.

Monday: I discovered Cal has an intense love of popcorn, which means that he is definitely my son. Once a day (sometimes more than that), he comes to me and says "pa-kornnnnnnn!" I unwrap it and put it in the microwave, and then every time a kernel pops he gasps dramatically. After a minute of that, he yells out "Bowl!" and gets one of our big red bowls out from the bottom cabinet. Then we sit on the couch together and fight over it. It's become a daily routine.

Also on Monday, we prepared jello jigglers. I didn't let Cal pour the boiling water, of course, but he did get to open the jello packets, and mix. Oh how this boy loves to mix.
We made lots of different colors, and then put them in the fridge to set, so we could cookie cut them when our friends came over on Thursday:

Tuesday, we got together with all the younger moms from church for a fun luncheon put on by some very sweet ladies from the ward. Cal played in nursery with his friends while I got to hear a lesson and eat lunch with my friends. Afterward, he was very interested in helping clean up the chairs:


On Wednesday, I went to an ENT about soreness I've been experiencing with my voice. He did a scope on my throat (I do NOT recommend that, ever), and determined that the best thing to do would be to go on vocal rest for 5 days. I'm still trying to figure out how to do this. I have a two-year-old and a lot of social commitments. Wish me luck.

Thursday, we got a last minute call that our friends were sick with ear infections, so we jello-jiggled by ourselves.

I had a fun time at book club, and am excited that it seems to be working -- people are showing up and reading the books! Yay!

Friday was a little bit of a boring day. I woke up not feeling too great, but dragged myself to the gym anyway (pat on the back!). We lay low the rest of the morning and afternoon, and somewhere in the middle there, I came upon this disturbing scene:

First thought: "Oh no, my germaphobia is rubbing off." Going to try to be more relaxed about cleanliness this week...

Also enjoyed a fun girls' night out with about 8 or 9 of the girls in my congregation. I'm loving that there are so many fun people living close by!

While at girls' night out, Reed sent me this photo of Cal choosing a book to read:

Every time we tell Cal to pick another book, he has to pull his chair over and ponder his decision.

Saturday, Reed was at MacWorld in San Francisco, so Cal and I took a picnic lunch to the park with friends. He was super excited to pack a brown bag lunch, and insisted in holding it all the way to the playground:

There are huge duck ponds at the park we visited, but they're drained right now. The boys climbed down inside and were running around, and Cal went over to investigate this little opening in the ground (6" diameter plastic pipe, filled with water). Imagine my surprise when he suddenly "fell in" -- his leg disappeared up to his diaper! I freaked out and ran over, but Cal was laughing about it. His right half was completely soaked.

All in all, it was a busy week for me and this little guy:

Hopefully I can keep coming up with activities to keep him happy, curious, active and engaged. Things go better for the both of us when we're having fun together every day. :)

Fun Day in Palo Alto!

I have a New Year's resolution to do more fun things with Cal. On Saturday, we decided to take a family day trip to the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the excursion turned out wonderfully! We met up with Aunt Heather, and the four of us had a total blast.

The first things we saw when entered the little museum were these kinetic machines. The kids could grab tennis balls from the ground and send it through the machines by cranking knobs and turning wheels. Cal LOVED it! Here he is, dragging Daddy along:

There was a wind turbine where you could rearrange the parts to see what the most efficient use of wind energy would be (yes, this is Palo Alto):

Cal loved pushing the yellow "Wind" button and getting blasted with wind:
Next, we went to the bug exhibit. All the windows were toddler-height, so we adults had to crouch down on our knees to see. I think Cal was excited to have everything at his level!

This was the water-energy machine:

Tesla sphere:

At the butterfly cabinet, Cal would hide inside and then pop out like a jack-in-the-box. EVERY picture I tried to snap of this was blurry. Luckily, Heather got one shot:

More bugs:

After the museum, we headed outside to the tiny zoo. It was really cute! Can you see the python in the photo below?

There was a gorgeous, neon pheasant in this cage, but you can barely see it from my photo:
Cal was very interested, and asked for the car keys so he could unlock the door. This is a picture of us explaining that our keys wouldn't work:
All those animals, and of course Cal's favorite thing to do was to watch the ducks:


They had a little observation hole for the badger pen:
Look at this face:

Mommy doesn't like geese, but Cal was very interested.

We finished up at the zoo, but our fun day did not stop there. The four of us went back to Heather's house to pick up Winnie, then walked over to the playground nearby.

Winnie dug in the sandbox for about 20 minutes straight:

We ended the day with a trip to "the Melt", a grilled cheese sandwich restaurant. It was perfect for a cold, kinda drizzly night.
What a fantastic way to spend a Saturday! I am so glad to have found another activity that Cal loved.

Family Game Night

We've developed a weekly tradition of having a family game night once a week. Reed was the one that started it (remember my post about how he's the fun parent?), and we've continued the idea over the past two weeks. Our favorite so far is Yahtzee, because Cal can be involved. As you can see below, Cal is really into rolling the dice -- he likes shaking them inside the cup, and is delighted with how loud he is allowed to be while playing.

Yahtzee is basically a game of chance, but it feels even more that way when you have a tiny tyrant doling out fortune or failure from his booster seat at the head of the table.
Cal can say the word "Yahtzee" now, too. So after dinner is cleaned up on Monday night, we say, "Cal, go get Yahtzee," and he runs over to the game shelf yelling out, "YAAAAAHHHTZEEEEE!!!" Too bad he doesn't give Mommy and Daddy the occasion to yell that during the game!

Gothic Guest Lecture

I got to do something very cool today. One of our friends at church teaches high school English, and asked me to come in and give a guest lecture on Gothic Literature for their Dracula unit. I was totally thrilled to do it. The students were great for me -- four classes of them -- asking questions and participating well. I gave a keynote presentation with clips from movies based on Gothic novels, like Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Psycho, Dracula, and even Beauty and the Beast.

The only problem is, it was so much fun, I want to go out and get my teaching credential now. Ah well, there's a time for everything in life, right? Someday!

Christmas Marimba!

A fun memory from this Christmas season was the marimba! My sister Hannah brought home the marimba from school for the duration of winter break, and boy did we ever take advantage of it!

My mom dug out some of our old Christmas piano books for beginners, and one person would take the treble notes, and the other would do the bass.
Everyone got a turn, and we did everything from "Carol of the Bells" to "Jolly Old St. Nicholas."
For me, the funniest part was when I told Hannah how much fun we were having with her instrument. She replied very somberly, "I really had to pull some strings to get it." Whatever strings had to be pulled, I'm glad she did it, because we all had a blast with our Christmas marimba.

Trains with the Uncles

When my brother Ryan was growing up, he loved Thomas the Tank Engine. You'd think having the Thomas videos playing daily in the house would get really annoying, but actually, we all sort of ended up loving them. The old classic VHSes that we owned featured real models and Ringo Starr's British narration. The trains were really cheeky, too, and the tales didn't even feature a moral sometimes. It was kind of awesome. The more recent DVDs are pretty whitewashed and PC. Oh, and CGI. No thanks.
While we were visiting for Christmas, my mom dragged out Ryan's old Thomas train set. It is as awesome as the old movies. The pieces are all wooden, and the trains fit together with magnets. Carson and Cal were totally enthralled.
The great thing about the train set is that toddlers can actually put the pieces together. It entertains boys age 1...
...to age 21:
We loved hearing the bin of wooden tracks being dumped out each morning. It meant that our little boys were happily playing.