Blog-less

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep track of the memorable moments, and some of the not-so-memorable moments in our busy lives. I wanted to kind of "scrapbook" without the paper, cutting, and glue.  I thought blogging would be a way to capture and share our lives.  But I've come to realize that I'm just not really devoted to keeping it up. 

I hoped this would be a way to easily record our baby's milestones, but so many have come and gone and I never got around to writing a post about it.  I'm kinda bummed about that.  Oh well.  I'm just not that person who can manage to at least look pulled together in all our madness.


If we were a reality tv show, I don't think we'd get a second season.  You'd find us uneventfully just trying to live day by day, enjoying as much of our little man, each other, our friends and animals as possible.  And doing a lot of recovery from only somewhat successfully cramming in too much.

After a highly stressful two week audit at my work and a trip up to my parents which was super fun, but also super hard on Rowan's {and consequently our} sleep schedule, we've been passing around some bug between the lot of us and since we can't get the rest we need to kick it.....it.just.sticks.  And of course when you're not feeling even 25%, that's when your horse colics, work gets even more stressful, and all the things that you normally enjoy doing, or at least are able to pull off, become daunting and unmanageable.  And, you know us, we don't like to get too comfortable with what we've got.  We have to go and throw something more into the mix! 

Rogér and I have pretty much been taking shifts in order to barely pull together all the things that need our attention. THANK GOODNESS it's all starting to come back together....ever....so....s..l..o..w..l..y.  I guess patience and low expectations are the key here.  Unfortunately, I'm severely lacking in BOTH of those areas!!

Anyway, that's just how things go.  I suppose I'll still post now and then. Better to capture some moments than none at all. I am, however, relinquishing any plans of over-achievement I may have once had.  You, obviously, will not be seeing a onesie announcing Rowan's age in months, or even get a glimpse of his two-tooth grin before he has four more pearly whites coming in.  I guess when it comes down to it I just don't really feel inspired to document, since there's so many other things to be doing. 

And when I'm not doing anything productive, I want to REST.
 

Adventures in Outside Lands

Outside Lands comes and goes and we always think how fun it would be to go but ultimately never pull it together. Go figure, that this year, the year that we have a small child to take care of, we got free tickets for one day at Outside Lands!  Of course, we didn’t want to pass it up! 

But, oh yeah, we have a 7 ½ month old baby.  Who we’ve never got a real babysitter for.  And it’s gonna be a late night.

Time to call in the reserves!  Lucky for us, we have amazing friends that jump at the chance to practice their baby raising skills on our little guy.  {We try not to use and abuse our friends for this kind of situation.} So now that Cubbie is all set to spend the evening with his Aunties and Uncles….

Let the adventure begin!!

We’ve always heard parking for this event can be a real pain in the butt .  SF doesn’t exactly boast a plethora of parking in the first place.  But we decided to drive and park on a familiar street about a mile from Golden Gate Park {the venue}.  We found a parking spot insanely fast but there was an hour limit, until 6pm.  Okay, it’s 5:50pm.  Let’s walk around for 10 mins, come back to the car, and fill up the meter.  Check.  Good to go.

The *mile* to Golden Gate park seemed like a lot longer than that, and by longer, I mean it took half an hour to walk!  When was the last time it took you half an hour to walk a mile?  Yeah, it was waaaay more than a mile.  We trucked our way through the “panhandle” and were filled with joy to see a sign welcoming us to Outside Lands with an arrow pointing straight ahead!  We’ve made it!  However, we’ve seen soooo many parking spaces right at the entrance to Golden Gate Park. 

WTF?! 

Why didn’t we try to park here first?  FF a few steps and we see another sign informing us that the box office was just a mere 30min walk….further! This is where we stopped to make a crucial decision, weighing our assumptions: 

1 hour in ≤ 1 hour out.  MUSE closes at 10pm + 2 hour walk to the car {additional hour for extra crowds, confusion, darkness, and finding our way back} + 1 hour drive back to San Jose.  Uhh….our poor friends.  We’ve already asked enough of them and I promised we’d be back around 11pm! 

The other option;  walk back {30 mins}, get the car, drive the car to the park and park closer, but not too close so as to get stuck in the masses, and walk another 30 mins in to the venue.  We went with the latter. 

About this time, I was getting grumpy, as I do. So we threw in Option C. Option C was a clause to address the particular case in which we retrieved the car, but could not find closer parking.  Option C allowed us to forego Outside Lands entirely, find a restaurant, and enjoy a nice dinner a la San Francisco before heading home.  Luckily, we did not have to resort to Option C because there was PLENTY of parking inside the park by the time we drove back.  So much parking that we wondered if it was really okay for us to park here.  But we decided to take our chances.

As we’re getting out of the car, a young {and super high} man stopped to ask us if this was the way to Outside Lands.  When we gave a vigorous “Yes!”, he proceeded to tell us the story of his own adventure in getting to the festival.  He was on a bus with his friends and had almost reached the venue when he realized he had forgotten his ticket!  He ran all around town trying to find a computer to print his tickets out on.  Oh man, his troubles and tribulations had been much greater than ours, and yet, he was just as happy as can be that he had made it, with his box of 30 glo-sticks in hand. Then we watched and he ran the rest of the way to the gate....which was a long way. This man shone a little light on our day and we shed any negative feelings about our long walk back and forth through SF.  At least it was a beautiful day, and now I can eat anything I want at the concert because I burned enough calories for a feast!

A 30 min walk to the box office was like, extremely optimistic.  We finally made it in {after wading through many a strange folk camped out along the way}, just in time to hear the last song played by The Black Keys while we grubbed on some samosas and chicken tikka masala from the food court.  Then we had about half an hour until Muse started.   We went to find ourselves a nice spot where we both would be able to see at least a little bit of the stage, and if not the stage, at least the big screens.  We probably should have brought a grungier blanket.  I felt kind of bad putting our nice knitted one on the ground.  O-well.

After getting situated, we got a few minutes to take it all in, and we thought what a fun time it would be to actually get to spend the whole day here.  There were all kinds of booths filled with free activities and freelance artists selling headbands and knitted beanies and face painting {sorry, we need to get better about taking pictures....maybe if we had iPhones like the rest of the world}. Of course, we missed out on all of that.  Maybe next time.

Then Muse hit the stage. They didn’t disappoint.  Although I wish that they had some new songs to play.  I can’t say it beat the first time we saw them {probably nothing ever will}, but at least I didn’t get beer or wine spilled on me.  I must be getting old because when I go to a concert, I don't want to come out drenched in other peoples' sweat and beverages.  Anyway, they still rocked.  And I’m pretty sure that Taylor Swift CD in my car {or wait, is it Rock-a-By Baby} will have to move over for one of my Muse mixes!  Rogér will be happy about that.

It took us a ridiculous amount of time to walk back to the car, even though we parked relatively close, and we got back later than we expected.  SORRY!  I feel so bad for extending the “sitters’” watch.  I really do.  Not our intentions at all.  We owe our friends big time, and I’m sure they’ll be calling on us when they have kiddos of their own.  Of course, we’ll graciously offer our help when they need it!

You know, I think we'll hit up Outside Lands again when we have a little bit older kids.  We'll slap some noise reducing headphones on them and make a big day of it.  I also have to point out, that it was our first time truely in Golden Gate Park, and it is so beautiful!!  We have got to go back to experience just the park itself one of these days.

Eten! Eten! Eten

Cubbie LOVES to eat.

Pretty much anything {except carrots}

He's grubbin' it up!

I was really looking forward to making Rowan's food from scratch {not knocking the prepackaged stuff.  We rely on it sometimes as well, but I really really thought making baby food would be fun}

*not cupcakes*

I use our Mini Cuisinart Chopper to puree all kinds of goodness, including:

-Zucchini

-Beets

-Lentils

-Peas

-Squash

-Yams

-Spinach

-Apricots

Almost anything goes!  And it is fun.  But kinda messy.

I pour it into silicone baking cups,

 Freeze,

Then  store in double Ziplock freezer bags.

Ready to warm up and eat whenever someone's tummy needs a fillin' 

 Yumm-may!

 And for his daycare snacks, I just fill up cleaned and reused baby food jars.

Of course, this kind of food won't last like the stuff you buy in the stores {no preservatives and no canning process}...so I keep track by writing the date on the inner ziplock bags.