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.

Trying to get a near 22-month-old to entertain herself while I, sick as a dog, laze about on a chaise is harder than I thought. I asked Charlie if she would like to play outside in the water, us being house-bound and sick and the house being way too hot. She sounded very excited. So we put on her suit, lathered her in sunscreen and turned on the sprinkler. What kid does not love to run in sprinklers? Ours, apparently. The closest I could get her to go in the water was to put her ponies in there. Then she ran away. Oh well. She did consent to sit on the chaise with me and read books and she took a couple turns on the slide. Hopefully we’ll both be better next week so we can actually make contact with the outside world and go to the park. And it’s time to invest in a kiddie pool.

Yesterday we went to the petting farm near our house. Charlie was super excited to see the ponies and immediately said she wanted to ride one. And I thought to myself, this is fantastic, I’ll snap a cool picture for the blog. So they put her on a nice black pony named Becky. Charlie was diggin’ it, holding on to the saddle and looking at the nice pony. Then the pony did a horrible thing. It walked. Slowly. Tears start flowing, Charlie looks around asking where I am, I run in to walk along side her and hold her hand and she cries even more. She’s hysterical at that point, her face was so sad. She says, “out the pony!” So they stopped for her and I took her off. We went straight away to see the less scary goats. I did not get the picture I was hoping for.

We got some goat food in an ice cream cone and Charlie happily fed the goats, one pellet at a time. Which was great for me because while the other kids were feeding them handfuls and spilling everywhere, Charlie was able to stay at that fence a really long time on one cone of pellets. When we ran out of pellets, I told her she could feed the cone to the goat. She seemed excited doing it, but then she said, “don’t yike the goat.” The goat ate half her cone. Either she thought the cone was a cup and not goat food, or she wanted it for herself. Hard to say.

After the lengthy goat feeding, we went to look at the ponies again and the man working there asked her if she’d like to ride again. She said no, so he asked her if she’d like to pet one. She nodded and we went into the riding area and pet the tiniest, nicest pony they had. He was very soft. Charlie pet him for a little while and then wanted to leave. The man was very encouraging and told us not to give up on the ponies. He gave us a free ticket for a future pony ride, which I thought was very nice. It was also nice to have a place like that so close to us (it is also an equestrian center). I remember growing up in San Jose there was a tiny farm right next to our neighborhood, which was weird. But my friends and I used to go there all the time and look at the pigs. I think they had other animals, but for some reason I remember being fascinated by the pigs. So maybe Charlie will grow up having fond memories of extremely hungry (acting) goats and vicious walking ponies.

Petting farm photos are here.

The farm was at the Lakewood Equestrian Center’s Pony Adventures Petting Farm.

We went to San Francisco for the Pride parade and festival the weekend before last.  It was Charlie’s first time at Pride and our first time back in about 8 years (and our tenth anniversary!).   Charlie loved looking at all the people (especially the very colorfully costumed people), playing in the kids area and listening to music.  But her favorite thing about Pride was the “man-beads.”  Charlie was listening to some drumming and dancing to the beat when one of the guys giving out plastic beads gave her a couple strands in appreciation of her dancing.  Later in BART, another Pride goer gave Charlie her third string of beads.  Thus began Charlie’s affection for, and fascination with, the “man-beads.”

Charlie didn’t start calling them “man-beads” right away. At first they were just beads. But then out of the blue she starts using the word “man” and identifying men on the street. Like the “nice man with the sticks” who directed our plane out of the gate. A couple days after we got back from SF, Charlie decides to give a shout-out to the men who gave her her lovely shiny beads by calling them “man-beads.” Yes, she did tell us that is why they are man-beads.

She likes to wear the man-beads on her wrists. For about an hour each day, the man-bead wearing goes like this:

Charlie: Where’s the man-beads?
Me (or Papi): They’re over here, i’ll get them for you.
Charlie: Wanna wear them.
Me (or Papi): O.k. i’ll put them on you

I then wrap the beads on her wrist one strand at a time. I now have an exact method and location for each strand, because if they are not wrapped correctly and are too loose and dangly:
Charlie: (crying) No, no! I don’t yike it, I don’t yike it! Mama, fix the man-beads! Mama, fix it!

I then fix the man-beads, she wears them around for a while and then:
Charlie: Wanna take them off.
Mama (or Papi): O.k. I’ll take them off. (takes off the man-beads)
Charlie: Wanna put the man-beads back on.

And the whole thing starts over again.

Thanks, Man.

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Click here for new pics of Charlie eating her new favorite, grilled corn on the cob, playing with her ponies (and doggie) and walking in our shoes.

Technical note: I am trying to better organize the flickr photos. To that end, I am grouping uploads by subject and then dropping those into a collection organized by month. I welcome feedback on whether this is easier to use/find the photos you want to see. You will only see collections on the main page but can click on “sets” at the top of the page (right under the words “lifeofcharlie’s photostream”) to see all of the old sets.

It’s her favorite thing to do… and her favorite thing to say she wants to do. When we ask her, “Charlie, what do you want to do today?” “Class with the babies!” At the end of the day when we call Papi at work, before she can even ask a question, “Class with the babies!”

We just had our semester-end final classes in music, tumbling and side-by-side (a pseudo-preschool class where the parents go too). Charlie will still do tumbling on Saturdays with Papi, but we are taking a little summer break right now and they are missed.

For more class photos click here.