Zach hearts Riley...Riley, not so much

Julie, Luke and Riley came over the other day to play for a bit. Riley is 3 weeks older than Zach and big brother, Luke is 4.5. Zach's new thing is to "give loves" by leaning his head into people (not onto, INTO). If that doesn't get his message across, he'll magically gain 20lbs, turn into "Dead Weight Boy" and just lay on you. Riley's just not that into him.

The "Big Loves" pose.

 

The "Get the He** Off Me" pose.

 

The "Feed Me Grapes" pose.

 

And the ever popular "I'm Going to Scream Bloody Murder if Someone Doesn't Get This Freakin' Kid Off of Me NOW" pose.

 

The infirmary...

AKA my house.
Zach was sniffle/snot free for 2 days. I kid you not yesterday, he started the snot process...AGAIN. My kid doesn't even go to daycare and he is sick almost constantly. I guess we're paying for it now since his first year he was sick maybe twice.
Ugh.
Guess I'll dig out the booger sucker.
Again.

Independence Day (Zach's, that is)

We have some new fun firsts to report!
Today, Jeff took Zach to freeplay at My Gym. While there, Zach decided to show off his fabulous CATCHING skills! He can now catch a ball! I came home and they showed me...I swear, all sorts of fun stuff happens when I'm at work. (sigh)
Also, tonight I was sitting on the floor playing with Zach and eating a bowlful of pasta. Zach came over and took my fork and had fun stabbing the pieces and feeding me. He decided to try it out himself and ate 3 pieces of pasta off my fork! For those of you rolling your eyes thinking, "Woooowwwwww...exciting...." you have no idea! This kid has fought me tooth and nail when it comes to eating noodles! What kid doesn't like noodles?? Mine. That's who. The other day he ate string cheese for the first time without me making a big ordeal about it. I just set it on his tray, knowing I'd be the one eating string cheese in 20 minutes, and voila! Right in his mouth! This Momma is so proud of her picky eater!

Pismo Beach is my Disneyland

This past weekend, on a whim, the three of us went up to Pismo Beach. Lucky for us, we missed out on all the fire chaos. Apparently, with so many freeways shut down, it made traffic in our valley a nightmare. Plus it was in the 90's! In November! Craziness. We stayed (invited ourselves) with some friends who live in Arroyo Grande, which is right next to Pismo. They have a restaurant in Grover Beach...all of these little towns are super close to each other. This area is my absolute favorite place in California. The beaches are shallow, and the waves break five different times before washing up on the sand. Also, the sand is so soft, yet hard packed. It's the only beach you can drive a car on. (It's actually Oceano/Grover Beach). The other great thing is the entire area, including the beaches are all dog friendly. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible to find a beach you can take your dog on in So Cal, which is a huge bummer. The stores even have dog bowls of water just outside their doors. The weather was amazing, high 70's, low 80's in the daytime. On Sunday, even though the water was quite bone numbing, people were out swimming in bikinis!
We got up there on Friday night, and pretty much chatted with our friends, Chris and Karen, and then went to bed. Saturday we went to their restaurant, The Station Grill (shameless plug) and had a wonderful breakfast. From there, Chris and Jeff went golfing and Zach and I went to the beach. I immediately lost my favorite brown Old Navy flip flop in the waves...Jeff was not surprised. I usually end up soaking wet when I go "look at the water", so I guess it was really a succesful beach trip...I was pretty dry, just flip-flop-less. Then I went back to the house and Zach had a lovely 3 hour nap. Jeff met us after golf. When Zach woke up, we drove into downtown San Luis Obispo which has every store known to man, in a cute historic area right by the mission. We didn't last too long there, it was almost 90 degrees and we were HOT! So, we went back towards Chris's house and stopped at Shell Beach. It has super coarse sand, like rocks you'd put into an aquarium...helllllo free pedicure! We looked at tide pools and took turns keeping Zach out of the water. That night, after we put Zach down for bed, Karen held down the fort and we went to the Melodrama. It's a small theater, with sawdust on the floor and a snack bar in the back. We'd been there two years ago and loved it! We were excited to see it again. The show is broken up into 3 parts. The first is the Christmas Carol. That's great and all, but I did that show several times, and when I wasn't in it I'd go and see it. I know the play practically by heart. The second part is a fairy tale opera. They took Jack and the Beanstalk and told the story with mostly singing...but at the same time throwing in pop culture tidbits...like the giants were Ivana and Donald Trump and Jack's girlfriend was from the Valley and all she did was text. So funny! The third act was a holiday extravaganza, where the cast dressed up and sang different holiday songs, while making it tongue in cheek. It was great! We stopped off at a pub where they were doing Kareoke and we felt very, VERY sober. And old. Sunday we ate breakfast at the restaurant again and took off to the beach, took a peek at some campgrounds for future reference and stopped at the small outlet stores. You know you're a mom when upon entering the outlets you no longer look for Gap and Banana Republic. It was Carter's and Gymboree all the way for us!
Oh, during this time in this area, thousands of monarc butterflies migrate here and live in the eucalyptus trees until January. It was like a fairy land!

 

 

We also stopped at a small lake and went to feed the ducks and geese with some bread Chris gave us. Zach loved chasing the seagulls! He has a thing for birds right now. I was carrying him toward the gaggle of geese (I've always wanted to use "gaggle" in a sentence!) and I swear, as soon as they saw us, they all got up, jutted their heads forward and with determination they headed our way! It was hysterical! Jeff had brought the car around so he hadn't seen this. He gets out of the car and the geese pivoted and started towards him, because he had the bread bag! I hate to tell you this, but I think I heard Jeff squeal...yes, squeal like a 6 year old girl. He ran backwards back to the car, as I'm telling him to come back, I don't want the geese in the street! Apparently, Jeff has been "attacked' by a goose on a golf course before and was nervous. His words, not mine. Luckily, we all came out unscathed from the goose adventure.

 

 

I wish we'd gotten some pictures of the beach, but it somehow didn't happen. Next time!

Stop Divorce!

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

The winner is....

My Gym!
That's where we signed up for Zach's new activity class. They had an open house day today and they had Elmo there for all the kids to sit with and take pics. Very cute. My little monkey was into Elmo, pointing and wanting to meet him and touch his fur, but he didn't want to wait in line. So, we never "met" Elmo. Oh well. We played in the ball pit instead. He had a great time, what's not to love there? Slides, balls and trampolines. Really, is there more to life? Our first class is next Wednesday. They had a free lifetime membership fee, and from Nov. 24th until Jan. 3rd you can go to as many classes as you want. When that is over, Zach can go to his scheduled class and one "free play" class a week. It's $66 a month and since we cancelled our gardener, it's not a budget buster. Yay for us! I can't wait! Oh, neither can Zach!

A Sad Day for California

Prop 8 passed.
52% of Californians agreed that we should ELIMINATE RIGHTS and ban gay marriage.
That means 52% of Californians are bigots.
That means 52% of Californians don't believe in EQUAL RIGHTS.
That means 52% of Californians believe HATE is OK.
Scary times.

First time for a video!!

Some people (Cheri) have been giving me a hard time about not having any videos on my blog. Well, IT'S NOT THAT EASY! It took Jeff and I all day to figure out how to download, organize and find a video. Finally, we won. This is a video from when Zach was a year old. I know this because he has a ginormous scab on his nose and I was bummed because of all the pictures I knew I'd be taking of him at his 1st birthday party. Anyway...I digress. Watch it, hopefully you'll laugh out loud.

Holy Moly, I went to a rally!

I had heard they were going to organize a rally for "No on Prop 8", and I decided to get my butt in gear, get out of comfort zone and participate! Prop 8 is trying to take away gay rights and gay marriage. I went out with my sign and stood at a busy intersection for over three hours yelling at cars, showing my support and waving my signs. Some girl gave me her handmade sign so I did double duty. It was so great! Lots of people honking to show their support, waving...it was so neat to be a part of something and to stand up for something I feel strongly about. I also got to see the ugly side of people...the "Yes" people would flip us off or yell "No to Fags!" Yikes. I guess they missed the message at church this morning. Not surprised.
Zach and Jeff came down to see me while I was there. We're getting Zach started young!

There were people on every corner with megaphones and signs...it was crazy!

The little Dino that could

We invited ourselves over to our friend's house for trick or treating. (Thanks Donald and Amy!) Our neighborhood is older and not very exciting on Halloween...their neighborhood, on the other hand was CRAZY! I've never seen so many kids out! It was great and the people really got into it with their decorations and costumes. Zach had a great time. We took Zach and his little friend out in the wagon and took them up to the doors that way. It was fun, especially because I wasn't pulling it...somehow I lucked out. Zach didn't really get it, and mean Mama doesn't let him have candy, so that whole thing was lost on him...although he did eat a Tootsie Pop (and LOVED it!) and some popcorn, (LOVED it, also!). We were out for a little more than an hour, and then it was almost 8pm and my little Dino had a meltdown because he wanted to walk but would not hold anyone's hand. My little Dino has some SHARP ASS TEETH...yes, charming behavior #253...biting when pissed, or loving, or tired.

Pumpkin carving the night before. Once again, I had a vision of how this was going to go...Zach elbow deep in pumpkin guts, seeds on his head, him laughing with enthusiam...in real life he wanted nothing to do with the pumpkins...except to roll them across the floor like a ball.