First Postulate of Parenting

Clementine freaked out this morning when I left. She screamed and screamed. I tried to distract her with breakfast; nothing doing. Then finally I left, put my shoes on, put laundry in, and when I got back to the hall I could still hear her screaming. Like screaming.

I decided to call in sick. I’m thinking to myself, “Well this is just the most cliché possible new mom mistake, and here I’m making it with full knowledge of foresight. I know I should go, I shouldn’t teach her to scream when I leave, I’m sure she’ll be fine in 2 minutes, but f-- it. I’m calling in sick.” So I head back in, Ryan already looks like he’s going to lose his mind. I tell him I’m calling in sick. We try to take her temperature but she’s really upset and squirming and we’re getting nowhere near the armpit. So I just nurse her and rock her for... Really, less than 5 minutes and she starts going “Key!” and smiling and pointing and asking for the cereal on her high chair. Totally fine.

And here I am at work.

Just goes to show you that no one knows anything. Audrey’s first postulate of parenting.

Beer Church

DSCN0873.JPG
Originally uploaded by audcrane.

So after all these years living here, we finally find out about a place hidden in the woods of Muir (well, Muir Woods) that serves fabulous beer and "baby cheese" (as our french friends would call it). About a mile relatively flat hike through the redwoods, then a pint on a wooden patio overlooking the valley. As Arin said:

The hike was easy and brief, but the fun was long and extended, thanks to what lay at the end of the trail: The Tourist Club. There you are, hiking along a ridge on Mt. Tamalpais when suddenly to your wondering eyes appears a full-blown Alps-style chalet. Inside, a charmingly grizzled staff of volunteers is filling pitchers of German beer for thirsty nature-goers. Outside, folks chill on the picnic-table-filled deck overlooking Muir Woods. Angels descend from the tops of the giant redwoods singing "Glory, Hallelujah! Come all ye weary travelers and get ye tipsy with your buddies in the sunshine!"

The Tourist Club was founded in 1912 by members of the Vienna-based group Naturfreunde (Nature Friends), who bought some prime land on the side of Mt. Tam for a couple hundred bucks and built the lodge. I'm not sure I agree with the barman's description of the place as the "best-kept secret in Marin" given the full-to-capacity deck by the time our group stumbled out for our return trip, but when you're there, you do feel as though you've come across some kind of hidden treasure.
http://www.hairyalien.com/archives/2005/04/the_german_tour.html

Holy cow! How have we never heard of this??

Anyway, it's a wonderful to spend a Sunday, and the hike is good for napping.

Clementine's First Sign

Since I shot this video, she's already added "kitty" to her repetoire. She also says, "KEY!" whenever she sees Quickly or Tibalt. Does that count as her first word? I mean it is a word...

It's easier to tell with signs, mostly because our own vocabulary is limited so we can't interpret miscellaneous hand-waving as words in the same way we can interpret miscellaneous babbling (which she does *constantly* and delightfully) as words.

If you are a goat, do you believe...

If you are a goat, do you believe...
Originally uploaded by audcrane.

What people tell you about
Goats, and eat
Tin cans?
There’s no goat that foolish.
Or is there?
The goat of the universe believed
What people told him about universes
And came into existence.
Bang! How naive can you get?
Even the scapegoat is not as naive
As (God help him) the universe that
Agreed to exist.
A word to the wise: Don’t eat tin cans.
Don’t listen. Don’t exist.

The Goat
by Aaron Fogel


Mark helped Clementine touch this goat (it was not eating a tin can) but she did not like it when he moved his head. She likes ducks better, though.

Oh goodness, she stands.

A lot. By herself. All the time. In the fridge, by the couch, by the stairs. She even goes up stairs. Oh goodness.

Thanks Gavin!

Thanks to a lot of recent press about San Francisco running low on families and our own Gavin Newsom, we got to do just about anything we want in the city for free today, with just a kid and a local driver's license.

We opted for a walking tour of Chinatown (free fortune cookies from the factory!) and visited the Chuck Close exhibit at MoMa. In the moby wrap, Clementine particularly enjoyed the part where I jogged up close, then jogged far away, then jogged up close, then jogged far away. It's actually a great way to groove on the whole Chuck Close gestalt, and she giggled a lot. We made the security guards nervous, though. :)