Jack London Square

We went to Jack London last weekend to let the kids run around. It turns out that Jack London Square is getting a facelift. They're going to do major development and transform it into Oakland's answer to SF's Ferry Building. They're calling it Harvest Center, or something equally hokey, but it looks nice.

The gutted first floor of the building in the background used to be The Old Spaghetti Factory where I waited tables for about 6 months 17 years ago.





Miranda had fun exploring along the waterfront.

Friday with Mac

I met my very pregnant friend Amity today. She is due on Sunday. They were worried about pre term labor stuff, but now it looks like her little girl Emily isn't coming anytime soon. I couldn't move two weeks before I was due with the girls, but Amity was running around, carrying babies like she wasn't pregnant at all. Crazy girl.

We first went to a park. Elizabeth found a little hill which she went up and down for about 20 minutes, laughing the whole time. Miranda enjoyed climbing up the slide. And Parker, of course, played with some numbers.






They had one of the suspended bridges which are like little death traps for little kids. Miranda headed for it and although I got to her pretty quick, I wasn't quick enough because she totally fell off it. Scraped her face pretty bad. Tears. Blood. More tears. Then she was fine. Thank god.




After a bit more playing, we went off to the Zoo. When we walked up Mac, Amity's son said he wanted to see the animals. I, of course, thought he was talking about the Merry Go Round Animals. But no...he was talking about actual animals. Apparently Amity takes Mac to the Zoo to see animals. I should try that.

But today Mac enjoyed Parker's favorite Zoo activity. The rides. First the cars, then some gross turny thing, then the roller coaster. The roller coaster requires parentl supervision, so I got to go twice...once with Parker and once with Mac since, even if they had let pregnant women on it, they would have never had been able to close the seatbelt on poor Amity.




Then Miranda got cranky, so we went home.

Sassy

I'm taking care of a dog for a friend for a few days. She's a new dog (aka she just came from the shelter). For a variety of reasons including the shelter was going to PTS (put to sleep) the dog for a lameass reason, my friend adopted the dog, but couldn't bring her home for a few days. So here she is. She's a nice enough dog. Small, relatatively quiet, and sweet. She is also very jumpy and can find tiny holes in fences (but we won't discuss that here).

Miranda seems to love her. Parker likes talking to her and about her (Sassy, come here! Sassy wants to go on a walk.), but doesn't like getting near her. (Mommy, I need help getting the letter from Sassy!)

Elizabeth is sort of in between. She either squeals with delights when she sees her or immediately starts screaming. And there is no way to tell in advance which one it will be.

All if this reminds me that I'm not ready for another dog again. They are a lot of work and management and I think I can only manage myself and three other beings these days. And even that is questionable at times.

She sure is cute though...

Time to learn to cook?

Parker announced today that...

"Pancakes go in the microwave and waffles go in the toaster."

This was followed up by the comment that

"It's not a Michaelwave...it's a miCROwave."

Bookshelf

Since Parker was able to hold a book, I've wanted to get those bookshelves for kids. The kind you see at libraries and preshools where the kids can get the books easily and then put them away themselves.

But they are expensive and not really a necessity so I gave up that hope.

Until this week when someone on Berkley Parents Network was selling one cheap.

I doubt my fantasy of the kids sitting around reading books and putting them away after will come to life, but I like it nonetheless.

Playtime

It's a three, mommy.

Parker notices the rug.

Crazy Eli

Elizabeth will pretty much try to stand up on anything she can find. Chairs, toy cars, boxes. Anything. It's cute and totally scary.

She found toilet paper today.



She then used the toilet paper to hoist herself onto the normally too high couch for a little standing.


She usually tries to stand on the 'beep beep', but today she didn't. (Check out Miranda in the background.)

Parker plus Clay

=

Math

Hat follow up

When the girls were born, a friend of Michael's gave us these hand made hats. They were adorable and not pink, which was wonderful.
The girls wore them a lot, but as they grew it turned into spring and summer, we didn't use them much. I've given away tons of bags of clothes over the last year, but I have kept those hats. They seemed too perfect to give away or even sell. They should go to another set of twins, but most people that have girls want pink and people that have boys don't want oranged. So we kept them.

Today, I found those hats and tried them on the girls. Miranda just loved hers. Elizabeth enjoyed taking hers off and asking Mommy to put it back on. Too cute.

A bad fort

I have strong memories of building forts and tents when I was young. You know with sheets and blankets and bunk beds, where you could hide and play for hours. I remember them being huge and fantastic.

I tried to build one this morning for the kids and it was far from huge and definitely not fantastic. It was quite lame and fell apart almost immediately. Parker seemed to like it nonetheless, so perhaps the ones I recall weren't as great as I thought.

Monday Co-op

With traveling, thanksgiving, sick kids, and other nonsense, we hadn't had our Monday co-op in about a month. But today we were back on track at Ebba's house. Her girls were napping when Susan and I arrived. Susan and I chatted while the kids played and ate. Allison woke up first and seemed glad to see me, giving me a "Hi!" from the crib. About 20 minutes later, Fiona woke up and she seemed totally fine with Susan. Everyone played nicely until Ebba got home a bit later. Had Elizabeth not throwned poor little Sebastian to the ground and fallen over numerous times after trying to scale chairs and table and other furniture, it would have been a complete success.