Moving home, off to a slow start

So, Friday was our day to move into our "new" house. Lucas was off with Kevin's parents for the day, so we could busy ourselves with the task of moving in.

But move-in day got off to a slow start. Kevin took the day off, so we could "move in".

8:30-10 - I went for a long walk in the morning with Kimberley, stopped at Semifreddis for my hot chocolate and came back to the apartment.
10-11:30 - I puttered around the apartment for a little bit, then went to the house to let in the cleaning crew.
11:30-12:30 - Cleaned up a little and waited for Dana's Housecleaning service, who was supposed to show up at noon.
12:30-3 - Hurray, the cleaning crew finally showed up. I went back to the apartment to get ready to move-in.
3-3:15 - The crew was only going to be there till 3, but they were still working on the first floor. I called "Dana" and told her that they needed to stay longer. She gave them until 4pm. I was pissed.
3:15-4:15 - To while away the time, I went down to 4th Street for some dessert therapy. Dark chocolate and coffee ice cream at Sketch. But when I went to Bette's for their usual Friday cookie, oatmeal and chocolate chip, they didn't have any.
4:15 - The house was far from clean. Among other oversights the stairs were not vacuumed, the windows, walls and baseboards still had dust on them, and the bathrooms were not touched. I was livid!
4:20 - I left a message for "Dana" that they clearly needed more time. In my message, I told her that if I wanted a crappy housecleaning job, I would have done it myself and pocketed the $200 for something worthwhile.

Lucky for me and those close to me, the day took a turn for the better.

4:30-5:50 - Kevin and I watched an episode of Lost, our new favorite TV show.
5:55-7:30 - We hurried over to O Chame, our favorite restaurant, for dinner with Kimberley and Dan.
7:30-8 - We made a beeline for Sketch Ice Cream. Since I already had ice cream at Sketch earlier in the day (remember the dessert therapy?), I opted for the delicious mini Meyer lemon bundt cake.
8-10:30 - We decided to really get crazy so we rented a movie and went back to Dan and Kimberley's where 3/4 of us fell asleep at some point during Thumbsucker, which was actually a pretty good movie. (Lucas spent the night at the hotel with Kevin's parents).

Saturday is when we started to actually pack things up and bring them over to the house. Well, no, since I was at my sister's babyshower from 10-3.

Trading naptime for acrobatics

Yesterday Lucas did not nap. He spent the whole time dancing, jumping up and down on his mattress, and performing acrobatic feats. When I told him he had to nap, he laid down and squeezed his eyes closed and said, "Look mommy, I'm napping." Then he would just bounce back up again.

Initially I was pretty pissed off that he didn't nap. But when I saw how much fun he was having, I had to let it go and grab my camera.

Lucas is perfecting the 80s classic dance, "White Man's Overbite" also known as the "Cabbage Patch".

After about 30 shots, I finally caught him mid-somersault. I think it's time to upgrade my digital camera.

Making shapes

This is one of the latest interesting things Lucas has been doing. One morning he caught my attention by saying, "Look, I made a triangle." He can't draw a triangle, but he can make one out of cars pretty quickly and easily.

Then, he started making circles out of these little glittery soft balls that he has.

One word about these soft alls - We were at Mr. Mopps Toy Shop one day. I said he could pick out one toy to buy. He chose a bag of these soft balls. It cost a couple bucks for about 30 of these. And I must say, they have given us hours and hours of play time. Especially if I set them out with a muffin tin, he will spend endless amount of time sorting them and moving them around.

Rocking out, monster style

We spent some time in the afternoon pretending to be monsters. Specifically, monsters dancing to inaudible music. Please note that Lucas created his own wardrobe concept for this concert.

Lucas was the lead singer and Maggie is the reluctant go-go girl in the background. This one is called "Saggy Diaper Won't Get Me Down".

Lucas did a solo here, "Whatcha Got Mama?"

Here he is in some kind of Jim Morrison hand-trance during a spoken word performance.

And finally, after the concert Lucas graciously posed with one of his backstage groupies.

Best of luck, Brother Claus

This morning Brother Claus (aka Miko) paid us a visit in our apartment. I thought that Lucas' early morning jumping routing finally broke his patience, but I was wrong again.

Miko came up to show off his outfit "to the one person who would appreciate it", meaning Lucas. Lucas was fairly nonchalant about the whole thing, as if he sees guys dressed like Uncle Sam all the time.

Armed with his funny pants and a "Make Love Not War Sign", Miko was off to the peace march in Walnut Creek. His prediction was that the peace marches around the country would put an end to the war in Iraq by the end of the weekend.

We hope you're right Brother Claus.

Two peas in a pod

Lately, Lucas has been really interested in things that are the same, particularly similarities between me and him.

"We have the same color white," and he'll point to his white socks and the white stripes on my slippers.
"We have the same color pants," his navy sweats and my black pants.
"We have the same plate"
"We are both drinking water"
"We have the same color cheeks"
"We have the same color eyes"
"We have the same color hair"
"We have the same color neck"

And on and on, you get the picture.

Once he's exhausted the list of similarities, he'll say "We must be best friends."

Our house, a photo history

Okay, so it's only two photos, but here is what we started with, and here is where we are today.

This picture was taken in May, so most things were in full-bloom.

Taken on a cold March day, wisteria and maple are still in their winter threads.

Moving day is the 25th, so if you have a truck or mini-van, we may call you!

Lucas' sleep revelation

As some of you know, we've all been challenged in the sleep department since Lucas first escaped from his crib and has in a regular bed, which was July 2005. It's been a long long time since we all got a good night's sleep. And it was especially bad in the past month.

But I think we turned a corner two weekends ago. When I was tucking him in, we had a meeting of the minds and came to a happy meeting place, which I'm probably jinxing as we speak:

Lucas: Mommy, please don't close the door.
Me: Okay, if I keep it open, will you stay in your room?
Lucas: Yes, I will.

And that's pretty much been it. Even for his naps, which have always been a challenge, he stays in his room and falls asleep fairly quickly. He still gets up in the middle of the night and comes into our room. We'll see how that changes when we move back into our house and we're upstairs and he's downstairs :(

Yay for Lucas!

I was humbly reminded by Lucas, who's 2.5, of some of the basic things in life.

1) Be happy
2) Don't give up without trying

Yesterday, as we were walking back to the apartment, he suddenly started skipping and jumping, yelling, "Yay for Lucas! Yay for me!" When I asked what he was doing he said, "I'm happy, look!" and continued to skip around.

Then, we were in the kitchen and he convinced me to get his dump truck out of exile (It had been on top of the kitchen cabinets for months since we saw him chasing Maggie around with it). I got a chair to get it down and this discussion followed:

Lucas: Let me try to get it down.
Me: No, it's too high for you.
Lucas: Maybe it's too high, but at least I can try, okay?

What could I do or say? So I let him try, even though it was still about 3 feet out of his reach.

The other Mr. and Mrs. Claus

Two people who will be missed from the apartment, not Santa and his missus, but the other Mr. and Mrs. Claus, also known as Milo and Jennifer. It's hard to believe, but the Berkeley Claus' really do live in the apartment directly below ours.

How do we know? First of all, they bear a striking resemblance to their relatives up North. I'm sure they're at least first cousins. See what some tie-dye, sunshine, and illegal substances can do to people. (These aren't really them, but close enough.)

But the resemblance is more than skin deep, and this is how we truly know that they are related.

Lucas loves to jump - off chairs, on his bed, or just on the floor. Up and down, all day long. Sometimes he starts his jump-a-thon right when he wakes up. If I'm in the kitchen getting his breakfast ready, he says "Wanna see something cool?" Then he'll jump and twist in the air and fall down on all fours, just to get up and do it again. For all our neighbors' sake, we were trying to limit his jumping, only in the afternoon, or at least to his bed.

One morning, we were downstairs and we run into Miko and Jennifer. Kevin had met them before, but it was a first encounter for me and Lucas.

I was nervous as I saw them approach. I thought they would rant and rave about how we should be more sensitive to our neighbors, control our kid from making so much noise in the morning, or at least give me one of those nasty glares you get sometime when your kid has done something awful to another kid. But at the time, I didn't know who we were dealing with.

After exchanging names, I launched into the Apologetic Mom routine, "Gosh, we're really sorry about all the noise in the morning. Lucas just loves to jump. We're trying to get him to jump on his bed or at least on the carpet...".

Jennifer stopped me, "Oh, no. We love to hear the sound of him jumping! I have 3 nephews and I just love the sound of boys running around having a good time. Asking a little boy not to jump is like asking a bird not to fly. We love to hear him in the morning!"

Miko just stood there, beaming. I think I heard a little laugh, like a "ho ho ho" escape from his bearded face. And ever since then, when I run into him when we're checking our mail, he always asks how "the little guy" is doing.

We will never find neighbors like that again. Only in Berkeley.

Apartment vs. house

As our move-in date is right around the corner, I'm getting a little sentimental about this apartment. Here are the things I'll miss about this place:

1) Passing the maintenance buck - When the water heater overflowed onto our kitchen floor during the Thanksgiving weekend, we didn't have to ask around to find a good plumber. We just filled out the maintenance request form and someone was there that day to fix it.

2) Community living - Although there are some odd characters in the complex, most of the people are very friendly. I know Lucas will miss being so close to lots of older kids who play in the courtyard. Someone plays the saxophone in the late afternoon sometimes and it is very relaxing. It's reminiscent of living in SF, pre dot-com when people took time to do things like play music.

3) Multiple loads of laundry - Mostly I just do one load at a time in our laundry room here. But on several occasions, I've loaded up 2-3 washers at the same time.

4) Nearby tennis courts - Lucas, Maggie, and I have had a lot of fun, just walking across the way to play on the city tennis courts. Especially on rainy days, it's a fun, semi-clean way to tire out all of us.On the other hand, I'm so excited to move back to our house. It will be bigger with the addition, and with refinished floors and new paint on the old parts of the house, it will seem totally new.

Here are the top reasons why I'm looking forward to moving back in:

1) Sleeping in a bed - When we rented this place, we thought we could just sleep on the floor, on blankets of course. I'm really looking forward to sleeping on our ultra-comfy mattress again. Although, I don't know what 10 months of storage will do to our latex mattress. We shall see.

2) More privacy - Not that I don't LOVE to be around Lucas and Kevin, but sometimes it's nice to escape for a few moments all to myself within the walls of my own home.

3) Lounging - So we don't have a bed, we also don't have our couches here either. I think lack of other seating has contributed to my reader's block. I used to read two books a month and I haven't been able to finish a book since we moved to the apartment.

4) Easy outdoor access for Maggie - Maggie has been such a trooper in this apartment. But she's spent a lot of time at my mom's. She misses being outside on sunny days. Because frankly, that's all she does during the day, lounges around outside, and pees and poops at her leisure.

5) A normal kitchen - The kitchen here is really suited to a single person, or a couple who doesn't do much cooking. There is just enough working space to dry our dishes and house our toaster oven, leaving no room for cooking or baking. We never brought over our dishes or flatware, so we have Lucas' plastic bowls and plates, a couple pieces of kid's flatware from IKEA and very limited cooking and bakeware. Plus, we will be moving back to a brand-new kitchen with a dishwasher!!!

Jumping jacks - photos

Lucas and his jumping jacks. I give him a 10 for creativity and enthusiasm.

How does he come up with this stuff?

Lucas says the most random stuff. I'm not sure where it all comes from. We know he has an active imagination, but since his preschool teachers have mentioned it several times, I'm assuming his imagination is more active than most.

The other day, "Puff the Magic Dragon" was playing on the radio. Lucas said, "When I was a baby, my friends used to sing me this song when I was sleeping in my crib." Luckily, I was not around when his so-called friends serenaded him with Peter, Paul and Mary.

Today, I had to pick up Lucas while he was still napping and put him in the car. Naturally, once he woke up, he was pretty grumpy. After about 20 mintues of non-stop grumbling, he suddenly stopped and said in a normal, non-whiny voice, "I like apple peels. They're my favorite because they have vitamins. Did you know apple peels have vitamins?"

This morning, we were at the tennis courts. Lucas got distracted by some dried up worms on the ground. He stopped to examine them. After I told him what they were, he said, "They're kind of like dog pooh. Or maybe noodles. They're kind of freaky." Yes, they sure are.

Update on the house

So, the countdown is on. I've given our 30-day notice for this apartment. We'll be back in our house in less than a month.

The latest developments:
The exterior has been painted. We love the main color, but not the trim color. We already repainted it once, and I think we will repaint it again. Maybe a burgundy, against our contractor's advice.

The tile has been set in the 2nd floor bathroom and kitchen. There are small glass accent tiles in the shower and on the floor. Plus, we have radiant heat under the tile in the bathroom. As Lucas would say, "Ooh la la!"

The backsplash for the kitchen is made of white subway tiles with glass accent tiles.

The newest news is that we are redoing the 1st floor bathroom (thank god!). We will do plain white subway tiles with black accent tiles. And finally we will get rid of the horrid brass shower/tub fixtures.

Also, most of the lights are in. And so is the front door, but it still needs to be painted and installed. More to come.

Master storyteller

Lucas is really into hearing stories these days. In these stories, Lucas is the hero, with his faithful sidekick Maggie. He loves them. He used to say, "Tell me the story about me and Maggie in the forest."

But now he says, "Tell me the story about me and Maggie in the forest and we're running around like a couple of monkeys, and Maggie gets lost, and then I look for her, and then I tell her we're playing hide and seek and she comes to look for me and I give her a carrot and we run around and go home. Tell me that one mommy."

No two are alike

Today we went over to Jennifer and Ella's house for a late afternoon play date, which turned into a dinner party (Thanks Jennifer!).

Ella and Lucas had a lot of energy to burn, so I said, "It's jumping jack time". So they both faced me and we all started to do jumping jacks.

Jumping jacks is a loose term with little kids. Lucas was doing some kind of weird side step, with random hand-clapping. And Ella was jumping frantically, clapping her hands as she went. They were so excited and uninhibited, just having a great time. I watched until they ran out of energy and realized that no two jumping jacks were ever alike.

I thought I was going to pee in my pants, they were so funny. No words of pictures can capture what I saw, but I will try to capture one on film and post it here.

Happy Valentine's Day

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, this morning I stayed at Lucas' school for a little bit to read a couple books to him and his friend.

There was a cute little book with bees called, "Being a Friend". I thought this was an appropriate choice, being Valentine's Day and all. Basically, the message is that to have good friends, you need to BEE a good friend.

I asked Lucas and Ian to talk about what it means to be a friend. They started off innocently enough.

"Share toys with your friend"
"Be nice to your friend"
"Play with your friend"
"Draw with your friend"
"Play trains with your friend"

It was really cute to have these two little kids talk about all the things friends should do. But I should have stopped there, because the mood suddenly turned:

"Don't kick your friend"
"Don't push your friend"
"Don't grab things from your friend"
"Don't hit your friend"
"Don't call your friend a baby"
"Don't call your friend a blockhead"
"Don't call your friend a poopyhead"
"Or caca"
"Don't call your friend stupid"
"Don't call your friend diaperhead"
"Don't call your friend..."

Something I wish I could do

Aside from sing in tune, this is something else I hope I can do at some point in my life.

I sometimes poke fun at the odd things that go down in the Bay Area, but there is so much to love about this place and the people in it. People here are trying to make changes to help improve things for future generations, and I truly respect that.

I read today on SFGate.com about one such group of people called the Compact. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/13/BAGH3H7DH71.DTL.

These brave souls have vowed not to buy anything new in 2006. They can buy things used as much as they want, but new purchases are limited to food, health and safety items, and underwear. They have a blog, Yahoo group, and monthly meetings. Members help other members search for things they need, like shower curtains or maps.

This story really resonated with me. If it wasn't for our new addition, I think we could almost swing this. We have purchased a couple of used items for our remodel (sink and bathtub), but I don't know if we could have found enough used paint in the colors we wanted.

I try to do my part in not buying things new all the time. It started in high school when I would frequent the used clothing stores on Telegraph. And Lucas has had lots of hand-me-downs from friends and Hannah's on Solano. When we buy books, we always check the used books first. Berkeley Parents Network has been a great resource, we got a double stroller from there when we needed one for our nanny share.

Things I would have a hard time buying used: shoes, socks, bedding, and towels.

See the above picture of the father and son buying fabric at a 2nd hand store? In the past week, I sent an email to friends to give away that same shirt (see picture at right). I bought it for Kevin many months ago, and he never wore it and said I should give it away. I think that's a little creepy. (The shirt has already been claimed by my brother.)

Here are some excerpts from this story that I find inspiring: From John Perry, who works in marketing at a high-tech company. "We're trying to get off the first-market consumerism grid, because consumer culture is destroying the world."

Says Peter Sealey, adjunct professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and former chief of marketing at Coca-Cola and Columbia Pictures. "It's a crystal-clear statement about what can be done to get us away from being a disposable society."

For more information:
groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact
sfcompact.blogspot.com

Future careers, in pictures

A doctor or dentist - Lucas had his first trip to the dentist last week. After some stalling he sat in the chair and Dr. Bob counted and brushed his teeth! Lucas got a little goodie bag with cool dentist gear, shown above. He also walked away with two toothbrushes. Since then, when we brush his teeth, he wants them brushed twice, once with the red brush and once with the blue brush.

Olympic shotputter - This is Lucas throwing stones into the Truckee River. He liked to hear them splash in the water.

Track star - This is outside the Lawrence Hall of Science, where he loves to run around in the big space before you go inside. Who knows if this is a career he will pursue, but I wanted to include this picture because it really captures his spirit and zest for life.

Architect - I built the first couple layers of the foundation for this stack of sticks at the Lawrence Hall of Science. Then Lucas pretty much took over and was so focused on building this until there weren't any more sticks in the box. I kid you not, it was 20 minutes of silent concentration.

Master ship builder - I'm not sure what the job market is these days for ship builders, but Lucas built this ship completely on his own today. He was quite proud of it, then proceeded to knock it down.

Lucas' sensitive side

Through all the wrestling, staged car crashes, and general rowdy behavior, Lucas' sensitive side has started to emerge.

Earlier this week I said to Lucas, "Lucas you're a good friend to me" and he said. "You're a good friend to me too." Later that day he said, out of the blue, Mommy, you're my favorite friend."

And then yesterday, I was out for a walk and had to just run back in to get my wallet and keys. I only popped in for a second and said a quick "hi" and "bye". When I came back a 1/2 hour later, he said, "Mommy, you left and you didn't give me a hug or an eskimo kiss. And not even a regular kiss and I was so sad." You can imagine my guilt, thank god I was only gone a 1/2 hour.

So today I said to Lucas, "Lucas, I have a good time with you. You're my best friend." He was eating his snack at the time. After a long pregnant pause, he opened his mouth to say something. But instead, like a typical guy, he changed the subject and said, "Mommy look at this. I found a big raisin."