Yet another day at the office

I have pictures of all of Lucas’ big events, except for what happened today at work. He was at work with me all day. Chris, one of the guys in our warehouse told me that when I bring Lucas in, he will give him a ride in the forklift.

Of course, this was huge news for Lucas and he looked forward to it all day.

Post-lunch we headed over to the warehouse. Not only did he get to ride in the forklift, but Chris let him DRIVE the forklift…yes, drive.

Lucas got to control the gas and brake, steer (though after a couple minutes Chris took over the steering), and he also got to do some real work. Chris had him go over to a pallet of Clif products, pull the lever to lift it up onto the lift, and drove it over to the other side of the warehouse.

Lucas’ mouth was wide open the whole time. I thought he was going to start drooling any minute. I, on the other hand, was sweating. Lucas couldn’t believe it. And frankly, neither could I.

Another day at the office

I'm fortunate enough to have found a job working at ClifBar, yes the company that makes those little bars that you eat when you go for a hike, or in our case, when you're sitting in traffic with a hungry 5-year old.

On Tuesday we had a party at work. Lucas and Kevin came by to check out my new office. Clif has all sorts of fun things for big and little kids to do.

Lucas got to sit in the forklift in our warehouse.And they both had fun on the climbing wall in the office.

As far as my job goes, it's been great so far. My title is "Women's Experience Manager" for the LUNA brand. And specifically, I market LUNA to pregnant women, moms, and other folks who we call "Mavens", who are ambassadors to the LUNA brand and go out in their community and hand out LUNA samples and tell people all the great things about LUNA bars.

Clif has tons of employee perks, which I immediately started taking advantage of:

- on site gym with free personal trainers
- 30+ fitness classes a week, also free
- on site nutritionist, free
- subsidized massages ($30 for an hour, half that for half hour)
- $5 organic lunches on site a couple days a week
- dog-friendly office (Maggie has enjoyed coming into the office with me a few times already)
- on site hair cut appointments
- on site car wash and detailing (I've washed my car more times in the past month than in the last three years)
- and of course, as many Clif products as I can eat (I'm currently trying to wean myself down to 1/2 a bar a day)
- beginning mid-October, I'll be able to take half days on Friday.

Anyway, that's where I am during the day. Not too shabby for a full-time gig.

Kindergarten jitters

With kindergarten starting up this Wednesday, Lucas has been dealing with leaving his friends and teachers who he loves behind and starting up at a brand new school with all new kids. Unfortunately, none of his friends will be going to his school.

A couple weeks ago we had a informal picnic at his new school with other incoming kindergarten kids. There were about 10 kids there, all girls, but a couple in his class. He had a great time and on the way home asked, "Mommy, when can I go back to that school?" I assured him that in a few weeks he would be going Monday-Friday and seeing those same kids plus many more.

Then last week I made the fatal error of having one of his preschool teachers babysit. They had a wonderful time, but the next day he said, "I'm never going to see Catherine again!" And it kind of went down hill from there.

• When he said, "I want to go back to Growing Light," I told him that all his friends are moving on to different schools so we went through his class photo and talked about where all the kids are going. I assured him that we would still do play dates with his friends and continue to meet up on Sundays with a few of them for baseball/soccer/sport du jour.
• He asks me at least once a day, "Will I have fun at my new school?" I ask him what types of things he likes to do at school, and for the most part, I can assure him that he will be able to do those same things at his new school.
  
• I also remind him of the other fun things that he will do at his new school that they didn't have at his old school - fencing and playing in the loft in his classroom, both of which he is very excited about.

Not sure if this is related, but it probably is, Lucas has been talking a lot about death. Like "I don't want to die. I don't want you or daddy to die. I don't want anybody to die..." and the list goes on.

On the outside I reassure him that no one he knows is dying or has plans to die anytime soon. But on the inside I'm thinking, "Dude, no one's dying, it's just kindergarten!"

Playdate from hell

This past week Lucas was home with Kevin. Kevin had some work to do so we set up a couple kids to come over to play with Lucas.

The first one went swimmingly. Lucas and his friend mostly made mud pies in the backyard. Kevin fixed them a lunch of yogurt and chips and guacamole (!!). According to Kevin, "They were really good. I peeked in on them a couple times but they were just having a great time." Lucas' friend went home happy, albeit muddy.

Then we had the second play date a couple days later. Throughout the day I checked in with Kevin, these are the reports I got back:

- they were making mud pies using Maggie's pooh
- Lucas' friend picked up Maggie's pooh by hand
- they cut a hole in the screen so they could climb out onto the roof (luckily, they only cut the screen and Kevin caught them before they went AWOL)

We were both anxious for Lucas' friend's dad to come back and get this little urchin out of our house.

When I got home, I asked Lucas how his play date went. He told me most of what happened. Then he also added in this tasty tidbit, "And my friend ate Maggie's dog pooh." Some other things this wild child did:

- climbed to the top of Lucas' closet and opened up all my new cans of tennis balls and left those sharp little lids everywhere
- ripped photos out of a book
- ripped some pages out of a book
- smudged the walls along the staircase

Granted, it could have been Lucas who had done these things, but I highly doubt it.

He did it!

Lucas graduated from his preschool today. There was a big celebration, each of the 4 classes took their turn on stage to perform.

Lucas' class sang a song, which was hard to hear because it was really loud in the room (everyone, including kids, had already been sitting for almost an hour and were restless) and the kids, while I'm sure they sang their hearts out, had masks on, which covered their mouths.The best moment was when they called Lucas' name to get his diploma and he went up and got it. (Last year when they called his name, he refused to go up and get his diploma.) There was no bowing, posing for the camera, or other theatrics on his part. He just went up and took it from the teacher, but that was fine by us.
I wonder if Lucas is thinking, "Yay, I graduated!!!"

Afterward Lucas and his friends had a great time running around and engaging in general 5-year old rowdiness.

Talking politics

Lucas and I walked to the store tonight to pick up a few groceries. On our walk we passed by multiple Obama signs in people's windows or in their yards.

Lucas: Who are you going to vote for? Barack Obama or John McCain?
Me: Barack Obama.
Lucas: Why, is John McCain a bad man?
Me: He's not a bad man, but I don't agree with some things he says.
Lucas: Does he say bad things?
Me: I think some of the things he wants to do aren't good for the country or the world.
Lucas: Is it because he's so old and forgets things? You know, his hair is all white. He's very very old.

Cute as a ...

As of today at 12:25 pm, I have a brand new nephew named Jack. I know his parents don't like me to post photos of their kids, but believe me, he's a cutie!

Crowning around

"What's for dinner?"

For years I've fantasized about meal planning...yes, meal planning. The idea that you would sit down on Sunday night and plan out each and every meal for the week: to shop more efficiently, to diversify the menu, and to mitigate any dramas at meal time (Lucas, not Kevin). I think Mrs. Cunningham and June Cleaver probably did this with their families, and look how easy their lives looked!!!

So three weeks ago, the weekend before I started working again, Lucas and I sat down and mapped out what he would eat for breakfast each weekday morning. We started with breakfast because Lucas is not a morning person, so our weekday mornings can be the most challenging time of the week. It went surprisingly well that week, and he ended up eating something different every morning.

The next week, I was just planning on doing breakfast again, but Lucas suggested we do all our meals. So we did. We had a couple incidents when our plans changed and we had to move things, but overall, it went well. It was the first week without a single quesadilla for dinner, and only one peanut butter sandwich for lunch!

I can't believe I never did this before, but it makes so much sense. Tuesday dinner is chicken, that means Wednesday lunch he gets chicken noodle soup, of course!

And of course, the shopping is so much easier. We just look at the list, assess what we have in house, and go to the store. No more meandering the aisles, lost in a daze about what I should buy. It's very liberating actually.

So this past weekend, Lucas said to me, "We have to make our menu for the week!" (Success!) I think this has worked so well for us because Lucas knows he has a voice in the process and gets to make a lot of the choices. We also have a couple standards...Friday night is macaroni and cheese, and every Sunday morning we have waffles.

My ultimate goal is to get to at least 10 weeks of menus so we can just rotate them in and out.

Now playing on a wall near you

We haven't had a TV in our house since we moved when we redid our house, I guess that was 2005. So we have been watching DVDs, shows on iTunes and other online sources all on our computers, mostly our little laptops.

But a few weeks ago, Kevin came home with a new toy - a projector! So now we watch movies like regular people, the wall in our living room shows the picture at about 6 feet by 4 feet ... pretty awesome! Now we can sit comfortably in a room, instead of huddled together like media-starved monkeys. We also came through on our promise to Lucas that he could watch Star Wars when he turned 5. I anticipated that the morning of his birthday, he would be asking us when we could watch the movie. But he didn't even bring it up until a few days later. So we got the DVD and watched it.

I don't think he was really into the story, he had much more fun asking questions and trying to identify the characters, spaceships, and creatures that he saw on the big "screen".

Now all we need is a sticky floor and the smell of popcorn drowning in butter, and it'll really be like we're at the movies.

Welcome to the year 2008!

My mom made her first online purchase. I'm so proud of her.

Where did that come from?

I'm embarrassed to even write about this, but Lucas has picked up some odd vocabulary lately:

"That's wicked y'all!"
"Chicka chicka boom boom...yea baby yea!"

He said he heard the chicka boom boom thing from his friend at school, who he calls Alex C. Riley, one of the calmer boys in Lucas' class. Whenever I see Alex C. Riley at school, I try to imagine him chanting this, but I can't. It's just wrong.

Spelling bee for the new generation

As we were in the car the other day, Lucas said, "I know how to spell 'dot com'. D-O-T-C-O-M. Or you can just spell it with a dot, then C-O-M."

Lucas' birthday fest

Seems like we spent this week celebrating Lucas' birthday. Here are pics from today's party with his cronies.

Lucas kept flip-flopping on whether he wanted a soccer or baseball party, so we just brought a bunch of sports equipment for whatever they wanted to do. I think baseball won out.There was also some tree climbing and other non-sport activities going on.
Per Lucas' request, he got a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. I had asked if he wanted any decorations, like soccer balls or baseballs, oddly, he said, "No, just strawberries."

Lucas didn't want a pinata, and we decided against doing any gift bags. But we didn't want the little tykes to leave empty-handed, so Kevin came up with this idea of just getting a couple bags of candy and throwing handfuls across the field.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

The kids had a great time. For some reason, Lucas wasn't into this candy free-for-all, but I saved him a couple pieces anyway.

Art excursion

About a month ago, we were on BART and Lucas pointed to a poster and said, "That's Frida Kahlo! She's a great artist. She was married to Diego Rivera." His class studied art for more than a month and he was really into it. He has a special notebook of all his "still life sketches" and would tell me about paintings he saw in class from famous artists like Monet and Picasso.When my friend Jeanne had her baby boy, Jackson, Lucas said, "I know two boys named Jackson. And there's also Jackson Pollock, the artist."

So I planned a trip to SFMOMA, especially to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit. We took BART into SF and dined on peanut butter sandwiches outside of the museum. As Lucas said to me, "We're going art-ing."

On BART, Lucas asked me all sorts of questions about the actual museum - what it looks like from the outside, how tall it would be, and what it looks like on the inside. Lucas was not very impressed by the outside of the museum. He thought it would be tall and colorful and have artwork on it. When I asked what he thought, he said, "It's just brown."

Once we entered the museum, Lucas was very impressed with the lobby. According to him, "It's so colorful. It's crazy!"Lucas wanted to see paintings by artists he knew. We had about an hour and a half to kill before our reservation to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit, so we meandered through each floor looking at art, especially by artists he recognized.

It was fun to see what Lucas was drawn to, mostly really beautiful, colorful pieces, like these.He especially wanted to know the names of different pieces that he saw. Sometimes I would ask him why the artist named it what he did. I pointed out this one by Jackson Pollock, "Guardians of the Secret". According to Lucas, "Jackson Pollock had a really big secret. He painted it on this, then covered it up with all these colors and things, so no one would know his secret." I asked him if he had any ideas what the big secret is. Lucas' responded with, "Jackson Pollock was so good at painting and he put so many colors on this. No one will ever know his secret, but it's probably a really good secret."We looked at this painting by Diego Rivera. Lucas said, "That girl is kind of creepy looking."
Finally it was our turn to go to the Kahlo exhibit. Even with the timed-ticket system, it was super crowded in there. It was a little overwhelming - the crowds, combined with the fact that we had already been there for an hour and a half. So we cruised in and out of rooms (they wouldn't allow pictures to be taken in there) fairly quickly.

I asked him what he thought about Frida, and he said, "She liked to paint a lot of pictures of herself. And she liked to paint animals too."

We went in to see this surreal mixed media and video installation by Alexander Hahn and Yves Netzhammer, which is where we were just prior to going in to see Frida. The video was some computer animation, showing drops of water, primates, and faceless people. It was a little creepy to me, but I think Lucas liked being able to sit finally, on the floor, in that dark and quiet room for a change of pace.

On the way home, we stopped at Specialty's for one of their fabulous chocolate chip cookies. I split the cookie in half and offered him to choose which half he wanted. He started arguing with me that I always get to split the cookies. I told him I was letting him choose which half he wanted and tried to explain to him that it was a better deal this way, since whoever doesn't split it always has the first choice. But he was being overly stubborn about it, and forfeited his right to any of the cookie (lucky me!).

But once we got outside and started walking back to the BART station, he was all smiles again. I asked him what his favorite part of the day was. He said, "Looking at all the beautiful artwork and going in the elevator."

Obsessed with Legos

Lucas has really been into his Legos lately. I think going to Legoland spurred a new kind of creativity in his Lego-making.

I love this one that he made. I like the way he angled some of the pieces. It's cool in a bug-meets-alien spaceship way.

A new game in town

Driving Lucas home from school today, he asked me if I knew how to play Greasy Baby.

Me: No, I've never heard of that game before, how do you play?
Lucas: Well, I play on the big yard with Jack and Olivia, and Trace, he's in the toddler room. When Trace runs after us, we run away and yell, ""Greasy baby! Greasy baby!".
Me: Why do you yell "Greasy baby"?
Lucas: Because Trace's face is all greasy, and he's a baby.
Me: What do you mean, greasy?
Lucas: He has so much spit on his face that it's greasy.
Me: Well, you know little kids drool a lot, and it probably just gets on his face.
Lucas: It's so gross.
Me: How do you think he feels when you call him Greasy Baby?
Lucas: I think he feels good about it. He just runs after us and laughs.
Me: Do you think it hurts his feelings at all?
Lucas: He doesn't have feelings, he's just a baby.

Lucas hits the big 5.0

Lucas had been eagerly anticipating his 5th birthday for months now. There was much more significance attached to this birthday than any previous birthdays, from his standpoint.

For his birthday breakfast, per his request, he had bacon and a bowl of syrup to dip the bacon in. And then we were off to school.

sun. Lucas walked around the sun carrying a globe, while the kids sang a little song, that starts something like, "The earth goes around the sun, the sun, the earth goes around the sun...". Each time he walked around, the teacher asked him questions, "What did you like to eat when you were one?", "What did you like to play with when you were two?", etc. I also put together a poster with photos of him from every year. The teacher would point to the photo corresponding to the year she was talking about. Then when Lucas walked around 5 times, he gets to blow out the candle. At his school they have a pagan-like ritual they do for kids' birthdays. The teacher lights a candle that represents theAfter the ceremony, we snacked on the blueberry muffins with vanilla frosting that Lucas and I made.

For dinner, we went to Fenton's for his birthday dinner with my family. We told Lucas all about ice cream sundaes and told him he could have one for his birthday. I guess we've been used to getting smaller servings at our local ice cream places like Sketch and Ciao Bella, because even the petite servings at Fenton's were HUGE! Kevin told them it was Lucas' birthday so when they brought out his sundae, the wait staff led the entire restaurant in a round of "Happy Birthday". Surprisingly, Lucas seemed to like the attention, or maybe he was just so happy with the size of his sundae. He ate all the whipped cream, and just barely dug into the actual ice cream.

We let him stay up past nine o'clock so he could play with his new toys. When I asked him what his favorite part of the day was he said, "I liked it all the best," then he added, "But going out for ice cream was really really fun."

Cleaning out the closet

In our guest room/office, we have a closet. This would be the perfect closet for parties, where guests can hang their coats and bags. Or a closet for any overnight guests we may have, so they can hang up a couple things during their stay.

But, thanks to me, this closet has not been used for any of the above. Since we moved back into the house in spring of 2005, this closet has been crammed with stuff...mostly photos, Christmas decorations, Lucas' old baby stuff, and any other miscellany that needed some kind of half-way home before getting organized and shuttled off to its forever home.

After many fits and starts for taking on this project, I finally did it this past weekend. I threw away so many photos, mostly pre-digital photos with a cameo of my thumb, or people with their eyes blinking. It took me a long time, but it was definitely worth it because there were some keepers in there. I found photos that I had taken with my 110 Kodak camera back in elementary school, and my Kodak Disc camera in middle school. Once I get them organized, I'll post some here.

In the mean time, I'll have to have a party since I now have a place where people can hang up their coats.

Patriotism -- Berkeley style

Our little town had a 4th of July celebration. It felt very small town, which was nice. There were old men in red-white-blue hats handing out little American flags to everyone. To show our patriotism, Kevin and I sported our Obama shirts. Typical Berkeley, I got tons of positive comments about my shirt.Kevin participated in the watermelon eating contest. Surprisingly, he did not win.

Lucas spent most of the time at the dunk tank. He was on a roll. Everyone standing around was impressed by his ability to hit the target again and again.
We had a great time. And topped it off with watching Finding Nemo till the wee hours (okay, just till 10pm, but that's late for Lucas).