Charlie turned two yesterday at 2:02pm. She had a great day at school (more on that later) and I made her a yummy dinner that she picked herself: hot dogs, almond butter and jelly sandwiches, watermelon and lentil soup. Then to top it all off she ate an entire chocolate cupcake, played in her sandbox and then ran around the neighborhood identifying everything she saw. It went something like this:

(run run run) “I see a garage. A pink garage I think. (run run run) There’s a truck. Look, a car. Look what I found! (run run run) Going for a walk. We’re walking. Oh I see a tree. There’s a rock!”

For blocks she did this. Then she slept for eleven hours straight without waking up once.

Where’d our baby go?

Last week we went to the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach with our friends Amy and Fletcher. The center has three different loops of varying lengths, a lake, a creek, ducks and other water birds, turtles and occasionally bunnies. Plus it is full of huge trees and native plants. We walked a little ways to the creek and camped out there for a couple hours.  Here’s a synopsis of the day in words and pictures:

After their intriguing conversation about the acorns they found on the ground, they decided it was time to chase ducks. Well, actually we turned around and realized we were surrounded by a horde of ducks, at which point our fearless children ran them off.  Then, with all that hard work, it was time to take a seat and eat some snacks.

About three weeks ago we went up north to the foothills east of Sacramento for my sister’s 30th birthday. My parents threw a great pool party at the house of some long-time family friends and all of Auntie Michelle’s friends were there. Charlie especially enjoyed the toy area that our friends had assembled for her. We hung out with the family for a couple days and then headed to wine country to see our friends Josh and Mara and their 8 month old baby, Tibor (who we’ve never met). The whole time Charlie could not stop talking about “Auntie Chelle” and “Baby Tee-bor.” Now, every time we mention someone else having a birthday and try to practice saying happy birthday, Charlie says, “happy birthday Auntie Chelle.”

The whole set of pictures is here.

This morning Charlie and I decided to go out for breakfast, so we headed off to The Coffee Cup Cafe in Long Beach. It’s a small, independent diner with typical diner booths, tables and local art on the walls. It’s very kid friendly and I reviewed the menu with Charlie. They had what I thought she would go crazy for: pancakes and fruit. The conversation went like this:

Me: Do you want pancakes?
Charlie: No! No pan cakes.
Me: How about French toast and dip?
Charlie: NO! No fench toas.
Me: What do you want to eat?
Charlie: . . .
Me: Do you want beans?
Charlie: Ya.
Me: And avocado?
Charlie: Ya. Avocado.

I guess all that Mexican food I ate while pregnant has really paid off.
(And I had veggie chorizo and eggs, scrambled. Yum.)

Dawn at the tide pools.

What’s worth getting ourselves and our toddler up at 4:30am, driving half an hour, climbing over slippery rocks in the dark, with only one flashlight? A low, low tide at Cabrillo Beach Coastal Park.

Whenever someone comes to town who is new to the west coast, we like to take them to the tidepools at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro. The setting is beautiful and jumping around on the rocks is super fun.  On top of that, Charlie, a frequent Aquarium goer, loves tidepool animals — especially Sea Anemones.   And, Papi’s new colleague at work, Dan, had never been to a tidepool, so when Papi discovered the tide would be a negative 1′4″ (which is very, very low), we had to take Dan and Charlie.

We got to the beach at 5:00am and headed out with our one flash light and sleepy baby in my arms.  It was dark. We started saying to each other, what possessed us to go to a tidepool in pitch darkness? But Papi, our fearless leader, was pretty good at finding interesting stuff with the flashlight and leading us to it.   When the sky started to lighten, we had made it out to the best part of the tidepools and the dawn light was beautiful.

Our first big find was the Brittle Star — or make that 4 Brittle Stars.  They are tiny, delicate little things that move amazingly fast.   Then it got exciting. We were all jumping from rock to rock, yelling out the names of various sea animals, and Charlie went from grumpy pants to excited explorer in a matter of minutes. She was soon walking on the giant rocks, finding animals herself, pointing them out and saying, “wanna touch it,” every few seconds.  Dan, Papi and I were super excited as well, watching the sun hit the tidepools and discovering new, and sometimes disgusting, animals all around us.  Like the fat, slimy, squishy Sea Hare.  (We knew it was some kind of slug-like creature but it wasn’t in our tidepool book so my friend who used to work at the Aquarium identified it for us later.) It was huge, slimy, brown and blubbery. And it had four antennae. We saw them everywhere. We saw Sea Anemones, Sea Urchins, various snails, Sea Stars, Mussels, and Sea Stars eating Mussels. Oh, and lots of Kelp and other sea weeds. Charlie had seen all of these creatures before, but never doing things like eating or moving. The looks on her face as she discovered new animals was priceless. It was a great day for us.

All the tidepool pics are here.