Spring break (forever), Francophile, FB dissident

SB Forever:

Spring break began and it is awesome.  I already feel my freedom spirit returning!  It helps that we’ve already filled our time out nicely.  On Friday, we went to the Elkhorn Slough, which might be one of my new favorite places to go in the bay area.  It was completely empty and beautiful.  We saw lots of colorful birds and marshy lands; the baby was happy.  

 

On Saturday, we went to the mall for Theo’s mandatory (by me) easter bunny picture.  The great thing about these pictures is that they already look dated.  If it didn’t say 2013, you might think it was the seventies.  Everything in the picture seems to stand outside of modernity—the costume, bench, pillows—nothing says 2013, except what’s written on the paper.

 

We spent Sunday morning with our friends who have no interest in easter egg hunting and candy.  I hid eggs for their kids and bought them plastic toys.  That’s what you get when you’re friends with me, I guess.  Their kids had absolutely no confusion about a mythical bunny--they simply asked if I’d hidden the eggs.   

Like mother, like son?

Francophile:

To kick off spring break, I saw both Spring Breakers and Oz: The Great and Powerful.  Franco to the maxx, I say.  He was  truly out-of-this-world amazing in Spring Breakers, even though the movie was completely nuts and confusing (did the girls lying down in the bus as they went home indicate that it was all some sort of elaborate fever dream?  Who is Gucci Mane and why don’t I have a pseudonym that awesome?).  I don’t know about Harmony Korine, man.  I did see Kids in the theater when it came out, and I remember being unimpressed and slightly confused, but I was 19!  What did I know about high art?  I had the same feeling when I left SBers:  I think he has some sort of world view/vision/sense of irony that he feels strongly, but I think he might have ADHD, which prevents him from turning his thoughts into coherent art.  Carry on, I guess.  My verdict on Oz:  wasn’t awful, but a little boring.  I don’t know how I feel about the whole “The wicked witch is evil because her heart was broken” trope.  It seems really anti-woman and lazy (she’s ugly now that she’s a man-hater (Yawn)).  Was that in the book?  Maybe it’s OK if the movie was being faithful to the source material, I don’t know.

FB Dissident:

My discomfort with facebook is reaching a breaking point.  In the past few months I’ve learned that a former classmate (with whom I was only a very distant acquaintance at best) died and also that a childhood friend’s mom (who was involved in our girl scout troop) died.  Death really bums me out, and I sort of feel like as we go through life we are not meant to know about the death of every person we’ve ever met in any context (or their trials and tribulations, for that matter).  That seems to be what facebook does though--it connects us to far-flung random people, and then it makes us take in more about their life than we ever would.   What’s going to happen when everyone is old and starts dying?  It’s going to be painful, sad and cause old-age depression.  Social media is the worst.

   

It’s also really hard to draw the line of who to keep and who to get rid of, so paring down my (very modest) friend list gives me great anxiety.  There are some people that I haven’t talked to in years, but I still feel close and good about them, so I wouldn’t want to not hear about them.  Ugh, I wish I had the strength to quit cold turkey, but I’m too much of a stalker to do such a thing.  All I know is that it’s a good thing it wasn’t around during my youth/college days, as I would have gone insane. 

curls and storage solution for puffs

First of all, check out the curls on this dude:

I have no advice to give him on the topic of hair maintenance, as my gene pool doesn't have curly hair.  My instinct is to not give him a haircut just yet.

Second--The upside of getting sick and having mucous all over your face is the creation of an entirely new food storage area! (he's saving those for later)

future percussionist?

I bought a Hohner toddler band set for Theo because I am determined to make him into a music lover/player.  Playing music was such an important part of my life as a kid and it's obvious to me now that it shaped who I was as a student from about 5th-12th grade.  It also created some of the most fulfilling experiences of my adult life by providing me with the source material for: 1. my college radio show and 2. my application to what will forever be my all-time favorite professional development experience (Vienna/Opera: summer 2011, which culminated in a whopping 35-page set of lessons for a unit on urban planning that were written while I was sleep-deprived on maternity leave.  What a weird time to be singularly focused--I can't believe I did that).  School cuts to music funding seriously hurt my heart--recorder class is the number one priority when we think about schools for Theo.

Anywhoo, I've been pulling out the little instruments and showing him how to play.  He's a natural!

I just ordered a baby rain stick.

nothing much

Some of our friends have started doing big family outings on Sundays, so we recently adopted that life approach as well.  Our first outing was to a local salt marsh trail.

We tried to get Theo to wear a hat, but he would have none of it, and kept taking it off by himself.

 We happened to be visiting when the local injured bald eagle was getting her daily exercise! AMERICA.

We went to the Cal Academy this weekend.  It was the perfect day in San Francisco--sunny, upper 60s and filled with people/music/art.  Theo liked watching the people (but he will always like watching HIS people the most!).

Near the moss wall in the rainforest--this is my favorite picture of my dudes from the weekend. 

Finally, who doesn't enjoy eating apple skin?

Chinese New Year Dragon

Oh man, am I tired.  I think I've hit that working parent wall that renders me unable to read a book, stay up past 8, or manufacture complex thoughts.  I used to think that my parents were just totally boring, but now I know they were simply exhausted.  I don't really have much to blog about, because, honestly, my brain is drained.  I think about science and education during the day (and was able to conjure up the words thermal conductivity today, so yay? (though I think I might have used them wrong, so boo?)), come home to play with the baby and put him to bed and then try to decompress for an hour before going to sleep and starting all over again.  I am thankful for work, because I shudder to think about what my brain-state might be like without it (would I be a vegetable?  Probably a pizza-and-Starbucks vegetable).  Modern life is hard (from my position of relative privilege, I feel compelled to acknowledge).  I'm so happy to have an expansive 10 week break coming up at the end of May (what would I do without a summer off?), but getting there might nearly kill me.  Some things:

1.  I lost my phone (or it was stolen), which is the absolute worst thing ever.  It was interesting though, because of the palpable shift in my emotional state over the course of 3-12 hours.  I went from being tense, angry and stressed for a few hours to just giving in to the idea that it, and all of the data it contained, was gone.  I had to let go of it and become a phone-less person for about 5 days.  By the time my new phone arrived, I didn't even feel like I needed it (back to feeling like it was 1995!).  These electronic devices really are totally unnecessary (but fun and convenient).

2.  Theo had his 1-year check-up/vaccine appointment and he's still big!  75% height, 60% weight and 55% head.  Getting these stats seems kind of crazy.  We really like to quantify baby growth--when does it stop? 5?  10?

3.  I went to the Chinese New Year parade for the first time since about 2005 (I think).  It was really fun.  At one point, while crossing the street and following the parade, we accidentally became a part of it!  We were just walking to Chinatown when we looked around and noticed that there were tons of people behind barricades, while we were in the middle of the road!  I made a gif of the dragon at the end of the parade (the longest dragon in the western hemisphere, we were told).

Shouldn't every family have their own dragon? I feel like this might be an important project in the next few years.  I got to see it up close for tips on construction (nylon and lights on a string)

4.  I'm thinking of becoming an Elk (for the pool and cheap adult beverages).  They have both an indoctrination ceremony and an exalted leader.  I don't think I need to say more.