Mama, where do blogs come from?

Most children at this age are entering into the big "Why?" phase. They use why for many purposes, the most common being an attempt to keep the adult nearest them talking for as long as they can possibly make them talk. I'm sure you've heard conversations like this, wherein the adult finally ends up saying "because I said so, that's why", or something of the like.

Instead, Nikolai has skipped right past the "why" and right on into the "Where does it come from?" phase. We've had some interesting questions so far such as:
"Mama, where do grapes come from?"
or, my most favorite:
"Mama, where does gas come from?"
I had some really interesting answers for that last one, resisting the nearly overwhelming urge to answer "from barking spiders." He's inquired about just about everything we encounter. Where do cars come from, where do bicycles come from, where do cats come from, etc.

I'm waiting for the inevitable inquiry as to the origin of babies.

Reuniting with distant relatives

Today's adventure was at the San Francisco Zoo. Yesterday we thought we'd get there, but at about noon we realized it was too late to start a "day at the zoo", so we figured if we planned carefully we could do a great job of getting up and out the door today in time to get over there earlier.
About 1:45 this afternoon we got on the road headed north. As it turned out, getting 3 children and 6 adults coordinated and headed in a northerly direction simultaneously was not quite as simple as we had planned, and as it turns out only 4 of the adults really actually succeeded in the coordination and ultimately made it to the zoo.

Immediately upon arrival at the zoo, before you even get your tickets, you can see into a beautiful yard that holds some amazing giraffes and zebras. There are peacocks as well, but by the time you're finished with your visit at the zoo peackocks are almost as common place as the seagulls. It's so funny because you see these amazing animals on tv all the time but until you see them (again) in real life you forget they're really living things in this world. At that point it's a lot cheaper to say "Wow, well that was certainly worth the trip" and pack up and go home, but you don't.

We headed in to the zoo by way of the gift shop (I forgot a jacket) and the stroller rental place (we only had one stroller -- we needed three, but ultimately ended up with only two and three children playing musical strollers for a couple of hours). We whipped through the children's zoo really quick, and saw some really darn cute prarie dogs and the ever amusing meerkats. I love meerkats. They have a really great meerkat display (?display?) there, where they have little peekholes into their "bedrooms". The kids ran around and hid in the tunnels here and got some romping time in.

We wandered around past the kangaroos and around past the bears. The polar bears looked a little unhappy. No, actually they looked downright depressed, so this wasn't really a delightful experience. On our way through the bears, however, we passed the train. Its name is Little Puffer, and Nikolai was immediately smitten. after about 10 minutes of "Mama, I wanna go on the train!" and "Mama, can we go on the train now?", we actually found the boarding station and climbed on the train. Our tickets/memberships actually came with 4 free train rides, and so we climbed on after only purchasing two extra tickets. There was this guy walking by the train wiht a camera taking pictures of everyone, so I made a mental note to grab pictures later. The train ride it self was actually pretty short. It was two short laps around a small track, but definitely plenty to get Nikolai really excited.
At the end of the train ride I went over to the photo booth to see the pictures they had taken and I was absolutely amazed at how good they were. Consequently I spent quite a bit of money getting copies of all the good ones. I got an 8 x 10 of me and Nikolai that was just beautiful. I think it might be the only picture I have like it, since I'm not one for taking him for periodic professional photos. I'll have to digitize them at some point and post them here.

After the train adventure it was nearly closing time at the zoo and so we decided to head in a bee-line to the big cats, which were of course the most exciting thing we could see there.
The first big cat we saw was the lion. She was sitting quietly in a window looking at a couple of people who had noticed her sitting there and come in for a closer look. She was gazing royally over their heads as if to say "you aren't worth my gaze."
We all gathered in the little room looking through the plastic/glass at the huge cat, and she continued to refuse to acknowledge that we were gathering in front of her. I think ultimately she had gotten to her wits' end, because she went ballistic and started pawing and clawing crazily at the glass roughly 6" from the heads of our 2, 3 and 4 year olds. At that point I'd really had it and so I threw down my purse and climbed over the fence and down into the ravine separating the lion's den and the civilians. I marched up the stairs with every intention of teaching this overgrown cat a serious lesson. Who did she think she was, threatening a bunch of toddlers? She was about to get a piece of my mind and a piece of my cell phone.
Once up the stairs I wielded the deadliest of weapons: my stylus. Upon seeing the stylus she threw hear head back and started belching. I think this is when my yellow belly got the better of me. I threw the stylus at her and ran back down the stairs and back up the sheer cliff by way of a grappling hook.
No, but seriously, I did lose my stylus in the lion's den. Even if it was only because I accidentally flung my cell phone 10 feet in front of me while I was trying to pick up Nikolai, shattering it into more pieces I knew it could separate into, while still maintaining the ability to be quickly assembled and useable.
After the pieces had been assembled, I think her boyfriend heard all the ruckus and started bellowing. She answered him with her own mating call. Nikolai said "She's burping!" Indeed it was quite a beautiful, albeit gassy, mating ritual.

After the lion we continued right on through to the tiger display. The siberian tigers were beautiful. Nikolai seemed mildly interested in the siberian tigers. We went on by to the next tiger display, which showed another type of tiger I'm not quite remembering the name of right now. We sat down on a bench in front of the display, and as we sat a large airplane passed overhead, lower than is normal for most overhead aircraft. The tigers were seriously upstaged by the airplane in Nikolai's eyes.

On the way out I stopped at the gift shop again and got a few things.

All in all it was a really great day. We only spent something like 2 1/2 hours at the zoo, but I think it was just perfect.

Squirming

Last night Nikolai and I were laying in bed at around 11:30 or 12:00 and he was doing his typical squirming around and rolling around under the covers thing. As long as he keeps the adrenal glands flowing then that pesky sleepiness won't take over his body.
I told him quietly that he needed to stop squirming and rolling over and lay still quietly and go to sleep. He squirmed a few more times for good measure and then said to me:
"I'm not squirming anymore, Mama, see? I'll just squirm like this"
(moves his shoulder up and down)
"See? That squirming is good, huh, Mama. I can move my arm squirm, can't I?"
(foot starts to jiggle)
"And my foot can squirm like this, huh? When my foot squirms like this it means that I can squirm, right Mama?"
(dialog continues for another 5 or 6 minutes until I finally object)
"Right now it's time for us to stop squirming and stop talking and go to sleep, OK?"
(silence and still for about 30 seconds and then)
"It's a good idea to squirm on Tuesday, isn't it. Tuesday is a good day to squirm. But Friday is definitely not a good day to squirm. Friday we're not supposed to squirm."

I guess this means he has a pretty clear idea of what day it is and what day it isn't. It still doesn't explain why were having the conversation in the first place.

Quick update

It's midnight and this is the first real free minute I've had today. I figured I'd put something here just to stay in touch.

Stephanie (sister living in Bolivia) arrives tomorrow morning at 10:25 am with her two daughters. I'm so excited to see them, and have the privelege of picking them up at the airport. I have to leave an offsite engineering meeting at work to pick them up, but I think it's a small price to pay. ;-)

I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I had hoped I would get done before their arrival. Everything is still a disaster here at the house. It's been worsened by the frantic pace of this week, so I'm praying no one actually comes to my house to see the state it's in.

It only just right now occurred to me that Thanksgiving is only a week away, and I have done nothing (well, I ordered a turkey) with respect to preparations for the meal. Hope no one was really attached to eating food on Thanksgiving. I can make up for the glaring lack of food with an abundance of small metal cars of many types and colors. There are even some small bite-sized jets, for those of you who don't want to make "vroom" noises. The jets make a "neeeeeeeooooowwwmmmmm" noise that can be considerably more gratifying to make, although consequently you won't be making friends with the cats that day.

I'll write something more later in the week when I have a sense of humor back.

A ride on a real bona-fide ATV

Nikolai says: "This is *SO COOL*!!

My lessons learned this weekend

Lesson #1: No matter how many times I sand my skin with 180 grit sandpaper it will not be smoother.
Lesson #2: No matter how many times I've checked the shower today for rogue razors, CHECK AGAIN.
Lesson #3: Plan to stain furniture before the 3 year old wakes up. If this is not possible, don't invite the 3 year old to be your big helper.
Lesson #4: Just because one might have spent the last 10 years making every effort to not speak ill of the children's other parent, from whom you are divorced, doesn't mean said other parent has afforded one the same respect. Suddenly one finds oneself 10 years behind in a battle that wasn't obviously being fought.
Lesson #5: When your heart is broken, Mommy can always help.
Lesson #6: Wood can be very forgiving.
Lesson #7: Very dark stain is a poor wood-worker's best friend.
Lesson #8: Regardless of what you THINK you're going to Costco for, it's not what you're going to come home with. It might be amongst the $500 worth of stuff you buy, but by the time you've gotten home you lost sight of whatever it was because of the shock of having spent so damn much on stuff you had no idea you even wanted.

Visit to Nasa

Some very nice men allowed us to go into the cockpit of an old WWII plane. Nikolai is seen here piloting the aircraft

Halloween 2006

Well, it was halloween again. It came and went with a relatively small footprint this year. Nikolai was *very* sick. He started being sick around the 3rd of October and never got better. Come Halloween night he was *really* out of it. He'd gone to the doctor and gotten antibiotics, but they hadn't had time to kick in. I had to make the difficult call of letting him trick or treat or skipping it this year. Since skipping it was really not an option, unless he was on his death bead, we went ahead and decided to take it easy. A few houses, perhaps, and then we would head home. Obviously I wasn't looking at him in full light. I think I would have made a different decision if I had seen this picture full sized that night.
Here's a picture of him on the way to trick or treating. I think we should have been on the way to the hospital instead:

A few houses turned into about 20 houses and way too much candy. He had a piece or two on the way home (via benny's house), and then some when we got home. For a kid who really doesn't have much sugar these days it was just about all his body could take. He wound up like you wouldn't believe and let go in a sugar induced frenzy. I think the sugar and energy expended kicked his fever in high gear, and by about 10:00 his fever was at about 105.
Given this is near the threshold for brain damage I was panicked and trying to bring it down by all means necessary. I gave him medicine and cold packs and freaked out while taking his temperature until about 2:00 am, when it dropped down to about 102. I figured I could get some rest and it was relatively safe. By the morning hwen I took his temperature it was 96, which had me a little worried as well, but better than 105 in my opinion.
Poor kid. He sure was cute, though. He was a cute little dinosaur. Here he is in his cute little dinosaur costume:

I need to keep up with this better these days

I'm sitting here in front of my computer with writer's block, and it's because it's been forever since I updated this thing regularly. I'm out of the habit of writing, and so now I sit here thinking carefully how to construct each painful sentence. Maybe I'll come up with a good subject for my blog post and then I'll attempt to write something. Let's all hope it's more entertaining than this blog post, for all our sakes.