Just another day in paradise

Yesterday was just a normal day.  Wessy had school in the morning, and when he came home he was bushed.  He seems to have picked up a little cold and was a little under the weather.  I managed to get him down for a nap, but he was coughing so hard that he woke himself up after about an hour.  He also seemed a little hot, though I didn't check a temperature.  I tried all the usual tricks (offering to let him listen to Cri Cri, giving a dose of ibuprofen) but he wouldn't settle back down and sleep again.

  I was not mentally prepared to go one-on-one with him yet (I count heavily on him napping for at least two hours so I can get things done and take a break myself), so I let him watch a little Peppa Pig in Spanish.  To my eye, the Peppa cartoons seem a little basic.  The characters are anthropomorphic pigs.  You can see both of their eyes even though you are viewing them in profile, giving the impression that they are flounder-pigs or garishly colored Picasso drawings.   Every building in the cartoon is perched, lone, on the top of a green hill of grass with a cornflower blue sky with fluffy clouds in the background.  They also snort periodically to punctuate their conversations.  In short, it looks like it was drawn by a second-grader--which is maybe why kids like it so much?

Notwithstanding, Wessy really likes Peppa.  He prefers it to Daniel Tiger, for which I can't blame him, given the persistent, overly self-aware moralizing of that giant-headed toddler-tiger .  I don't mind letting him watch some cartoons here and there, especially if they are in Spanish, as (rightly or wrongly) I feel that this offers a little bit of extra educational value.  Anyway, I digress.

                                  

Eventually, though, as cozy as this was, we had to take Bubba out.  There were also some sundry items on the grocery list to tackle.  Ideally, I could get Wessy to run/play a bit too.  So we headed out on a neighborhood walk.  Due to the necessity of taking Bubba out, we end up on these neighborhood walks at least 2-3 times weekly.  So I thought I might document one.  The Neighborhood Walk allows me kill about five birds with one stone: get myself a coffee, take Bubba out, get groceries, get Wessy out and about before dinner/bedtime and get some fresh air and exercise myself.

Today Wessy was on the sick and obstinate side of things, so getting him off the couch and into the stroller required a small bribe.  I offered to buy him a treat at the bakery, which worked beautifully.  We frequent the bakery for their 4-6pm "Happy Hour" where you can get fancy coffee drinks for $2.  My standard is a decaf soy latte if I'm not working and a vat of black coffee if I'm going in to work in the evening.  I never feel more "San Francisco" than I do walking out of the cute little boutique bakery with my decaf soy latte on my way to Whole Foods at 5pm.  Usually we don't let Wessy get any treats at the bakery (otherwise he'd be eating several cookies a week), so the bribe of a cookie retained its power.

                                  

From there, it was on to Whole Foods so we could buy some bananas and avocados to throw in the black hole in our kitchen.  A black hole is the only explanation for the fact that, though we buy bananas and avocados daily, there are never any in our house.  The Whole Foods in our neighborhood is turned to 11 at all times (long lines, stroller traffic jams, a disproportionate
number of people with impaired proprioception in one place), so I felt lucky to get in and out without too much trouble.
                           
Afterwards, we headed to the little park a block away.  Calling this area a park is a bit of stretch given that really it's just a slide and a large area covered in paving stones, but that didn't deter Wessy.  Typically when we go to parks (or anywhere really) he doesn't want to play on the playground equipment in any conventional way.  He prefers to inspect railings, uproot plants, look underneath and around the equipment and move things around.  At this place, he enjoys running up and down the foot path and trying to find "seeds" on the ground.  There are also toddler-scale owl statues and he likes to stick his arms through their eye holes and put things inside.

Not a natural Wessy pose--I made do this for the picture

                           

toddler-splaing 

After playing for a spell, it was starting to get a little dark and late, so we headed back home.  Upon arriving home, it was time to make dinner.  I made the executive decision to cook something for all of us rather than feeding Wessy first and then scrounging something for Stevo and myself afterwards.  Cooking dinner sounds simple, but with a curious, danger-loving midget around it can get tricky. 

 Of late, he is very interested in "helping," so we pull up his stool to the kitchen island and I let him watch and occasionally throw things into the cooking pot.  This backfired spectacularly the other day when I had all the ingredients for a soup chopped up and in the pot and turned around briefly only to see that my lil sous chef had dumped half a canister of salt into the pot when I wasn't looking.  That day, he looked up innocently and asked, "HAY QUE ECHARLE MAS SAL?" Yesterday, however, I had my faculties about me and did not take my eyes off him.

                                                 

The colander entertained nicely..for a few seconds 

 Making spaghetti was simple enough, though the meatballs did need to be inspected prior to use:
                                                     
One of his new things is to ask to smell things.  Of course, he wanted to smell the dry spaghetti, the tomato sauce and the meatless meatballs.  When Stevo got home from work, Wessy exclaimed proudly, "ESTOY PREPARANDO ESPAGUETIS CON MAMA."  Dinner came together well, Papa came home and we enjoyed a nice family dinner.  At the end of the meal, Wessy was covered in spaghetti sauce.  I asked him if he wanted to shower with me after dinner and he looked at me and replied point-blank, explaining to me as if I was dumb, "I'm not dirty."

Nevertheless, we did shower and get him cleaned up, get him ready for bed and put him down after reading some Bizcocho.  He seemed to be feeling better since nap time and went down without trouble.   It was an average, lovely day.

Preschool update

     Well, we have finally chosen a preschool for Wessy.  As I mentioned in his 2.5 year post, his current program only goes through the end of June, so we needed to find something else.  We were looking for language immersion (either Spanish or Mandarin) and preferred a place that makes the food for the children (as opposed to having to pack lunch and snacks), but beyond that we didn't have any hard and fast criteria.
 
   The Spanish-immersion options were all over the place.   We were basically told that the co-op preschool in our neighborhood which had initially been our "dream school" would not have a space for Wessy in the fall because he is not "diverse enough." We were disappointed at the time, but in retrospect I'm relieved to NOT be going there, as I don't really enjoy the parent participation aspect of our current school and I won't have time to do much anyway during fellowship.

  We visited a different Spanish immersion place that was cute and close by, but was essentially a glorified daycare.  There were not many children, and the space was cozy but with toddlers running around it was bordering on claustrophobic.  The teacher there spoke Spanish but none of the other children did, so we were concerned that Wessy would not really be getting an immersion experience.    In the end, Wessy also got off of a waitlist for another school that was close by and decent, but that I had felt was somewhat large and impersonal when I visited.  I looked at two other Spanish-immersion places online, but they were not particularly convenient and I wasn't even interested enough to visit in person.

In looking for a Mandarin-immersion school in San Francisco, it turns out the rabbit hole is large and deep.  There were essentially two pathways that we could follow: 1) Start Wessy in pre-k at a Mandarin immersion school where he could continue on to kindergarten through eighth grades, 2) put Wessy in a preschool-only situation where we would then have to repeat the school application scramble when it's time for kindergarten.

If we were go to go with option 1, there are two major mandarin-immersion pre-k through eighth grade schools in San Francisco: Presidio Knolls and the Chinese-American International School (CAIS).  They are both very nice and we have colleagues who send their kids to each.  We went to a parent information night, playdate and parent interview for each of them.  If you figure in the hours spent doing the applications and the follow up emails/calls, I'd say it was about a ten hour investment in each of the applications.

    Wessy was an angel for the Presidio Knolls playdate (possibly because we took him during his nap and he was too sleepy to fight), but was a crazy man (i.e. more or less himself) for the CAIS playdate.   While all the other children played contentedly, he took a bin of shapes and dumped it on a chair in the corner, grabbed a train out of another boy's hands, and pulled blocks out and tried to play with them during story time, all the while yelling in Spanish.

      In the end we felt more comfortable with option 2.   It presupposes extra annoyance and effort when it comes time for kindergarten, but it leaves the door open for trying for a spot in a public Mandarin-immersion program, which is far less money and more in line with our principles in the long-run.  We still haven't entirely rejected the idea of putting him in a private Mandarin-immersion school for kindergarten, but I like to think of this as more of a break-the-glass type option in case none of our public school options pan out.

     We feel very lucky to have snagged a spot in a very good Mandarin-immersion school.  From our perspective, it's perfect: They cook breakfast, lunch and two snacks a day for the children, they potty train them and they even brush their teeth (!).  Wessy will also have the option to take tae kwon do and dance.  The only downside is that it is not walking distance from our house.  This is somewhat negated by the fact that it is on a bus line that goes directly by our house, so the au pair can take Wessy on the bus and it will be a straight shot from our house to the school.

  We are excited for him to start this new chapter and a little scared that will won't be able to understand him anymore when he is a little Chinese-speaker, but mostly just relieved for the process to be OVER (for now).  I can sincerely say that the level of time, effort and money I put into the preschool application process was very much on par with that which I put into my fellowship application.   Great outcome on both fronts, and I have no complaints, but I am very glad to be done with it and moving on with more exciting things.

Trip to Tahoe

Last month we took a family trip to Tahoe to ski.  This is becoming somewhat of a tradition, as there is a "Ski-M-E" (bad play on "CME") conference there every February and we get discounted rates for  the room and the lift tickets.  We went in February of 2016 and had a great time, skipped last year in favor of a snowy trip to Yosemite, and this year we were back again.  Some of you may remember this cool character from our trip in 2016:  

                                        

The ride up was uneventful.  We did stop in Rocklin to supercharge, affording opportunities to impersonate Daddy.  It turns out the mirrors on this lil tiny Tesla fold in just like the ones on the big car.  Just like his pop, Wesley was very interested in folding the mirrors in to make sure he didn't scratch up the paint job.  

                                        

    Once we got there, we were immediately overwhelmed with things to do.  The conference put on meals where all of the physicians and their families could gather.  We stayed busy catching up with old friends from Santa Rosa and saying hi to our current colleagues in San Francisco.  Wessy stayed busy grabbing other peoples' desserts and running amok in the "ballroom."  

       The next day, we ventured out into the snow.  Being as we were veterans of this conference, we knew that the thing to do was to have childcare arranged ahead of time.  Wessy is in the doughnut hole of being big enough to be unruly and to need constant supervision, but not yet old enough for ski school or other day camp-type activities.  Thus, we booked a sitter.  

     The sitter has a three year old son of her own, so she knew the score.  She brought a sled for Wessy to play with and patiently trundled him around on it.  She also brought puzzles and books and patiently let him ask the same questions again and again.  He quickly realized that she did not speak Spanish, so he dusted off his Mexican-accented English and they seemed to understand each other just fine.  

 This year, Wessy actually seemed to enjoy playing in the snow.  In previous years (well okay, last year), we kind of just let him toddle around and touch the snow, and that was enough.  This year he actually made snowballs and enjoyed sledding.  He did seem to have some trouble walking in the snow, though.  Periodically he would fall straight into the snow and get snow on his face.  This would lead to a sudden, intense crying fit that would subside within fifteen seconds, only to recur shortly thereafter the next time he fell down.  

                                    

 The precipitation this year has been spotty, so the first day two days there was not much snow.  Still enough to get out and putter in the sled though: 

       

                           

     On Sunday evening, though, a decent snowstorm came through and we got 4-5 inches of powder.   Not only was this delightful from a sledding perspective, it was great skiing.  Several weeks prior, we had randomly decided to stay on Monday, so we really lucked out and got a powder day where most people had already headed back to work.  The slopes were almost empty! 

shreddin' the freshies                                       

   The other fun thing about this ski trip was that the Winter Olympics were kicking off.    Sometimes it's hard to connect with the Winter Olympics--a lot of the sports are very niche and dominated by a narrow slice of people who have the means to access ski slopes, private ice skating lessons, etc, but the fact that we were at Squaw Valley (site of the 1960 Winter Olympics) and playing in the snow made it seem much more relevant.  When we got off the slopes, we enjoyed a quick hot tub soak, a glass of wine and then a long lounge in front of the TV eating snacks and watching the Olympics.  I really can't think of many things that are more enjoyable.  

Here you see "the guys" hitting the "hot tub" in our room: 

          

It's all about the apres ski! 

All in all, a fabulous and truly relaxing vacation.  We are already talking about "when we come to Tahoe next year," so I'd say that is a success.

                             

Wessy says...

Wessy, after pooping in the potty:
"Donde están mis felicidades?"

A quarter of a decade

   Today is Wessy's 2.5 yr birthday.  Today marks the day that he's closer to three than to two, and thus that much closer to being a real human being and not a lumpy baby.  Every day his facial features are more defined, his personality more evident.  He remembers his past experiences and seeks out things he wants/likes.  The nexus of control of his world is shifting slowly and inexorably away from me as his mother to him as a his own person. Wonderful for him, waaaaaaaaah for me.  He celebrated by going to preschool and then coming home and going down hard for a nap.  The usual.

 We are still waiting for the terrible two's to hit (I'm sure I will regret writing that sentence in no time).  Wessy is a touch stubborn and definitely no stranger to screaming and yelling, but the full-on dramatic tantrums have not made their appearance.  He remains an excellent sleeper, a passable eater and an incorrigibly stubborn potty training candidate.

Some of the cuter things he does recently:
-LOTS of hugging and kissing.  Anytime one leaves the room, he will want a hug and a kiss.  Before, he just kind of threw his arms loosely around you when he wanted to hug you, but now he will actually encircle your neck and give a proper hug. He accompanies his kisses with a dramatic MMMMWAH!, sometimes punctuated with a puckering/smacking sound.

-He asks where everything is.  He has picked up the habit of inverting his sentences like a little toddler Yoda and so asks "suchandsuch, donde esta? If you answer him, he will act as if he didn't hear you and ask the same question again.  He may repeat this cycle two or three times, until he feels satisfied with the answer, or until he gets tired of asking.

-He kind of tries to put his shoes on.  Kind of.  Okay, not really.

-He is becoming a more and more fluent and articulate speaker.  Complete, grammatically correct sentence are the norm for him now.  I was kind of looking forward to the phase where he cutely mispronounces everything, but actually his diction is excellent.  He officially has a better accent and possibly a better vocabulary than I do in Spanish now.  He shocked us last night when he started saying "NI HAO NI HAO NI HAO." I asked him where he learned that.  "La mujer." Where was the mujer, I asked him.  "La mujer que corta el pelo," he told me sagely.  Stevo and I looked at each other, astounded.  The lady who cuts his hair is Chinese and did say ni hao to him last time he was there...almost three months ago.  We were both impressed with Wessy's memory and also consumed by a new wave of anxiety about all the cursing we do around him.

-He got a big boy bed.  He had been capable of climbing out of his crib for awhile now so we figured we would just call it and get him a toddler bed.  At first, he believed there was some sort of force field around it and would not climb out of it.  Soon, that farce was revealed and he started getting out of bed and walking down the hall to knock on our door.  That was apparently too much effort, so now he just stays in bed and shouts when he wants to get out.  He will shout "YA ES DE DIA YA SALIO EL SOL!" or sometimes, "HAY QUE CAMBIARME EL PANAL!" He will shout about it being daytime and light outside even when it demonstrably is not.  Little gaslighter; he needs to go look for a job in Washington.

-He is still a fiend for little vehicles.  He frequently sleeps with a large and (to my eye) not very snuggly plastic dump truck.  The truck was a gift from Jeje, apparently it was a surprise because he still calls it "LA SOPRESA."

Our recent doings Wessy-wise revolve around finding him a new preschool.  His current program only goes through the end of June, and even if it continued, I don't know if we would stay with it.  The owner/teacher is not really on the ball (changes the schedule/location often, doesn't send us many updates, has some folkloric/non-scientific beliefs regarding child development).  The co-op/parent involvement model means that we spend at least $1000 worth of our time doing preschool-related things each month, which has been frustrating.

As it turns out,  preschool in San Francisco is like everything else in San Francisco--expensive and difficult to get into.  We have sent in several applications--no spot yet, but hopefully something will come through soon and we can have the privilege of paying 20-30K  a year for someone else to potty train our child (please).  We are planning to continue with language immersion--either staying with Spanish or starting a new language, likely Mandarin.

 I'm aware that this makes me an insufferable tiger mom, but I maintain that fluency in another language is a priceless gift to a child.  Because of the ways our brains work, introducing a language in early childhood means he will learn it better and more easily than he would later in life.  So, the time is now.  Also, should he ever choose to become a doctor in San Francisco, fluency in English, Spanish and Chinese would make him some kind of super-being, capable of communication with almost everyone.

So, my squishy little squish-baby is getting bigger.  He's a lover, a thinker, a tinkerer and he's ours.  We can't wait to see what the next days, weeks, months and years hold for him and who he turns out to be.

Wessy says...

Me: Bye Wessy, I'm going to work now.
Wessy: Pero donde está tu traje?
Me: Que traje?
Wessy: Tu traje de doctora.

[I think he meant my scrubs]

Wessy says...

Me: Cual instrumento te gustaría aprender a tocar?
W: Dinosaurio!!!