Tim and I have a bad case of poison oak/ivy that we picked up from our weekend get-away at Steep Ravine. We are both very itchy although Tim seems to have it worse than I do. I just hope Aoife doesn't get it.

I took Aoife to her favorite park today which is Willard park. She thoroughly enjoyed every moment. It's one of my favorite parks too because it is clean, safe, and not full of junk toys. Aoife ran around laughing, playing on push toys, swinging, sliding and climbing on the play structures. At one point a crazed little curly red head boy roared at her which scared her. She ran over with that-I'm gonna burst into tears face- and then cried. She is at an age right now where she gets scared very easy by things. I comforted her and she was okay after drinking some water. Off she went again and ran around. She likes to know explanations to things such as how she hurt herself, or why the boy scared her. Once I explain things that happened to her she seems fine. We had lunch at the park and then I went to my old place of employment to turn in my key and pick up some books and my triangle. It was strange to be back. Steve had a lot of fun with her playing peek-a-boo and feeding each other fish. He was really great with her. My teacher-friends were having a teachers meeting so I decided to leave. I took Aoife home and she took a nap.

Aoife woke up in a great mood, so we went outside on our "balcony" and I filled a tub of water for her to play in. She took a lot of the soil from my garden and dumped it in their. She got very messy, but enjoyed the fact that I was letting her get dirty. I had to give her a bath to clean her up. She loved to take a bath and can spend up to half and hour in it. I needed to get some fruit, so we went off to Berkley bowl. Aoife has a push cart that she like to pretend play with. She often goes off to Berkeley bowl in it. Aoife loves being in Berkeley bowl, but unfortunately for me she loves grabbing things off the shelves. In Berkeley Bowl, Aoife was singing twinkle twinkle at the top of her lung-so cute! People laughed at her.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

This morning there were snails all over our back yard. I thought Aoife would get a kick out of them, so I brought one in for her to play with. She was very very excited and wanted to crush it, so I had to show her how to touch it gently. She watched for a very long time and then got brave enough to touch him. She laughed hysterically when she touched the snails eyes-they popped right in. I used to love snails as a young kid, but on closer inspection they are really quite creepy. We eventually put him outside again. Later that day I let Aoife play with a ceramic snail I bought years ago, and she dressed it up in bright pink play dough clothes.

That morning Aoife and I went to Totland which is a playground dedicated to toddlers. There are tons of toys, space, and equipment to play with. Again, Aoife was overwhelmed by all the people, but she eventually settled in. One of her favorite things to do was climb a spiderweb roped play structure. She's really good at carrying her own weight. I think she's going to be a great climber when she's older. After totland, we went to Solano and had lunch at a fancy vegan fast food place-which for some reason was having a special corned beef sandwich made of what?I have no idea because it sounded discusting. We went into my favorite book chain Pendragon and Pegasus, and I found a book that I had been looking for for ages on sale. I bought Aoife a book too about two farmers. Aoife took a nap in the car and then I bought her a bunch of stuff to keep her occupied on our journey to Wisconsin.

Later that night, we went to a St. Paddy's day party at James and Maggies house. Aoife had a lot of fun playing with the plastic green hats and everyone enjoyed being around her. It was fun but we stayed alittle too late. Aoife fell asleep in the car on the ride home.

I woke up excited this morning knowing that Aoife and I would once again go to Toddler time at the library. I really missed doing these things with her. Aoife seemed a little bit overwhelmed since she had not been their in a while and there were a lot more people then I had remembered from before. She still enjoyed it though and had more fun at the end when people were finally starting to leave. We went home, had lunch, and Aoife took a nap. Another thing that I missed was going to the farmers market every Tuesday to pick up our CSA. We went to the park first and then went to the farmers market. Aoife had fun watching and listening to the musicians. I wanted to buy some duck eggs from the egg man, but he said that a restaurant came buy and bought them out. Oh, well, I'll try again on Saturday to get some duck eggs! I stopped at the Full Belly farm stand and bought the largest carrots I'd ever seen in my life. I also bought some chard and garlic greens. My garlic at home is starting to become infested with little black bugs. It's pretty sad because I planted those cloves from the last of my amazingly tasty full belly farm bulbs. I also bought a nutternut squash at a different farm stand. Aoife was hungry so I bought her a little pear tart that she fully enjoyed. I grabbed a Thai iced-tea and sat down with Aoife while we watched another musician playing Irish folk music. It was a beautiful day. Later that night I made Butter nut squash with parmesan risotto...it was delicious; the squash just melted perfectly.

Slide ranch and Steep ravine

Tim decided last minute to reserve a cabin at Steep ravine. This is sort of our last goodbye to north bay and we had a great time. We left Oakland around mid-day and got the slide ranch after lunch. My friend, Kate, worked at slide ranch and recommended it to us. It was an awesome little farm. Aoife had fun looking at the goats and sheep. The goats had just had babies about 5 days earlier. They were adorable. Aoife couldn't see them very well, but she could hear them. We continued to walk around the farm and ran into chickens and roosters. Aoife spent a long time following them; she really wanted to hold one. She wasn't able to catch one but was happy enough to touch the tail feathers. It was pretty hard to get her off the farm. We made our way over to the Steep ravine cabins and just gasped at the beauty of the place. It is one of the most beautiful places we've ever visited. The cabin was quite big, but didn't have much in it. For some reason we thought that there would be mattresses and blankets, but this experience is camping without the tent. So, we didn't have electricity or anything. This was fine; we've gone camping many times before, but we were unprepared this time. So, I went and bought some blankets and chocolate at Stinston beach which is the closest town. After I got back, we took a walk down to the beach and Aoife played with rocks while I drew shapes in the sand. We spent the night starting a fire, eating our dinner, and watching the gorgeous sunset over the ocean. It was truly paradise. The next morning we woke up to the sunrise which was also very beautiful, made some hot tea and went for a walk along the cliffs. We spent the morning relaxing and finally packed up and headed up to Mount Tamalpais. The view of San Francisco was breathtaking sadly I wasn't able to capture it on my camera. We had brought a kite with us and decided to fly it since there was very windy. Aoife enjoyed it but was a little bit scared. I think I was the one who enjoyed it the most! We headed back to the Bay area and ate at an awesome gourmet delicatessen on the way.

In the afternoon, Aoife and I, went up to Dorries house to visit her. Dorrie was leaving the next day to go to Illinois, and it was the last day that Dorrie would see Aoife before we move away. Aoife had a lot of fun playing in Dorries garden and Dorrie picked some peas for Aoife to eat. I know that Aoife is going to miss Dorrie dearly so we'll have to come back for frequent vacations and visit Dorrie each time she goes to Illinois.

Happy Halloween

Here's Aoife as a mushroom child! I made the little hat for her out of an old pattern that I had. Then, I bought her the tights and she already had the shirt. She looked so cute.Later that night we took Aoife trick-or-treating on Hillegas Street. Every year the neighbors block of the street from traffic and have the kids from surrounding neighborhoods trick-or-treat on it. Aoife was unsure at first about what to do. I gave her a little green paper back to put her treats in. She thought we were visiting people and would proceed to enter peoples home; after awhile, she figured out that people were putting things in her bag and then we would leave. She's still learning to talk but managed to get out a treeotwee...so adorable! Later that night Tim and I ate Aoife's chocolate but don't worry we wrapped up individual crackers in aluminum foilfor her so that she could eat something healthy!

Monterey Bay-Asilomar

last weekend, we went to Asilimar. Tim had an immunology conference, so he invited Aoife and I to come along. We had so much fun. Asilimar is situated right along the southern california coast. Our hotel was a five minute walk from the beach. We had a really big room with a fireplace. I love fireplaces. Aoife and I went to the beach everyday. As well as there beong an immunology conference, there was also a midwifery conference, and I dropped in on a couple of speakers. The midwives were an interesting bunch of women. A lot of them had little babies. I even got a peek at Ina May Gaskin who is the writer of many birthing books which I read while I was pregnant.

On Sunday, we went to Monterey Bay aquarium. It is one of the largest aquariums in California. Aoife LOVED it. She loves fish tanks as it is, but the aquairium really blew her away. She loved watching all the fish, jelly fish, and sea horses. They even had a childrens section. Here is a picture of Aoife playing with a fish in water. I really don't know how long she spent playing here, but it was a very long time.
On our way back, we stopped by Santa Cruz and took a walk on the beach. Aoife was a little afraid of the waves, and was pretty tired by this point, so we headed on home.

New Bed

We got Aoife a new bed!!! It's a toddler bed. We got this amazing bed off of craigslist for $20. She loves it so much. She slept in it all night last night. Yay, maybe now we can get some sleep!

Here are some pictures of our sunday morning. Aoife at her internet cafe/skype center.

Tims chalk drawings of various unidentifiable things.

Can you find the: mama? corn? star? baby? grass (Aoifes contribution) , pumpkin? bunny? giraffe?

Saturday Morning

Tim needs to really focus on writing his thesis so that he can graduate this December. So every weekend, we have started a morning ritual of going to Tumble and Tea which is a cafe/kids indoor play space.

.........

Harvest Festival

We went to the harvest festival at a turn of the century farm called Ardenwood Historic farm in Fremont. The farm has been restored to its original condition with some additional features added to it. There is a train that transports people around the farm. There were many farm animals including an aviary. There was a free tour of the Victorian house which was absolutely gorgeous. There was a blacksmith shop, a milk house, and a lot of antique farm equipment.Aoife was extremely excited about the pumpkin patch. Here's a picture of her sitting on one of the many pumpkins they grew and sold on the farm.

Here's daddy as a lady....very pretty?

Aoife loved poking her head out of the holes; it was as if she knew she looked funny.


Aoife really enjoyed climbing up and down the hay pyramid and also walking around it. She also enjoyed walking through the corn maze.
After going to the pumpkin patch, we went into the historic part of the farm. We rode the train to the corn field and walked around looking at the animals. Aoife liked the smelly pigs, but especially enjoyed the chickens. The chickens were her favorite to look at. Tim wanted to look at the cider pressing, so we watched a demo of that. We also watched how to make corn husk dolls. Tim and I got hungry and grabbed a pork rib meal. We sat down and listened to some folk music. It was such a wonderful experience. After lunch, we toured the house, and then went to the corn field to pick some popcorn and Indian corn. We had such a great day. We all enjoyed ourselves and on the way home treated ourselves to some ice-cream.

Mushroom Child

This is the halloween costume that I'm thinking about making for Aoife. I have a pattern for the hat. I just need to find a long white gown and make a petal collar for it. It's so cute!

Aoife's favorite book

Aoife loves this book that Gramma Rachel gave her. She loves rhymes and songs. She can actually hum pretty well to the tune of some of these rhymes. Her favorites are: rain rain go away, it's raining it's pouring, baa baa black sheep, humpty dumpty, 1,2 buckle my shoe, ring-a-ring a roses, jack be nimble, mary, mary quite contrary, see-saw margery daw, hot cross buns, and hush a bye baby. She also loves twinkle twinkle little star, and elmo's world song

Fall is here!

Aoife is really starting to fill out. She's getting thick! Also, her hair is coming in. It's very curly at the back, and wavy on top. This week I bought a variety of mini pumpkins and some Indian corn for our fall table display. Aoife really likes the pumpkins. A few weeks ago we went to Green Gulch farm and the pumpkin patch really made an impression on her. I think the little orange balls must have looked pretty exciting sitting amongst all the green plants. Orange isn't a color she has seen much of naturally.

Typical day:
Wake up together
daddy makes breakfast (oatmeal with milk/yogurt/banana)
mom gets dressed
Light a candle (sometimes put on music)
sit as a family for a while while eating/drinking
dad clears table/ get's ready
mom cleans Aoife/ changes diaper/ get's her dressed
Aoife plays/ mom and dad chat for a while
Mom goes to work/ Aoife and dad go to daycare/ dad goes to work

--------------

Mom picks up Aoife
Aoife and mom take a walk in the garden
Aoife waters moms container garden
mom gets Aoife a drink and makes her dinner
Aoife eats dinner (light a candle)
mom and Aoife have play time
mom gets things ready for dinner
dad comes home
dad plays with Aoife while mom cooks
mom and dad have dinner
Aoife joins or plays alone
family time
clean up time
Aoifes bed time
Dad cleans while mom puts Aoife to bed.