Season's Greeting Cards

Santa Sunday

French Toast and the Grinch

A perfect Saturday morning.

Four Picture Friday: Oakland Children's Holiday Parade

After receiving a late tip from Little Chickling, we rushed downtown to catch the Children's Holiday Parade. We parked on the 'wrong' side of downtown and walked a few blocks and found ourselves, unexpectedly, at the headwaters of the parade and a few feet from Chimpy's TV friend (and parade Grand Marshall) Miss Rosa.




The woman in purple is Miss Rosa, PBS Kids' morning block host. Chimpy was a little starstruck but I called to Miss Rosa anyway. The wave and smile Miss Rosa gave to Chimpy affected Chimpy in a way I've never seen before and immediately afterwards she was emanating happiness and excitement.



Another block and we found ourselves suddenly under the parade floats. This had a huge effect on Jojo who couldn't understand why I was taking pictures of things other than the balloons.





We caught up with our friend, M., and sat down to watch the parade go by.



You're missing the balloons again!

Like much of what goes on in downtown Oakland, the parade seems to be overlooked by the rest of the Bay Area, which was great because it wasn't very crowded. Plus, it wasn't unusual for the parade watchers to suddenly rush the Curious George (for example) float. Here Chimpy and M. pose with the dancing Christmas tree ladies.



We took off a little early as the parade overlapped nap time so we missed Santa but we had a great time.

JoJo, Man of Mystery

What happens when you don't blog about your son for three months? He becomes a little man, that's what.

My happy, handsome son.

Sometime around Halloween Jojo's personality, comprehension and communication all shot through the roof. He's using signs now, asking for books, registering opinions (complaints) and has developed the inevitable boy passion for trucks.

Feeding himself?

No big deal.

Lemur attack?

I can handle it.

Merry-go-round?

Well, maybe just a little help.

His relationship with Chimpy is very typical (long moments of peace interrupted by sudden hair-pulling or toy-grabbing). It's obvious he loves his big sister, in this picture they were eating cupcakes when he spontaneously needed to give her a hug.

A perfect moment.

Here we are on our way to pick Chimpy up from preschool. The hand waving is his sign language for 'music.'



That's an update on our wonderful boy. I'd write more, but I often feel like I'm just getting to know him myself. I love this guy!

Twitter Tuesday

Technically, this should be called "Facebook Friday" as these are screenshots from Facebook. I try not to write too much about the precious things the kids do because a) I'd be writing all day and b) I don't really want to be that person. Still, it's inevitable that most of my tweets will be stay-at-home-dad-isms. Here are a couple for those of you not linked to me online.

I could probably write some variation of this twice a day, everyday. Such is my life.



This was a proud moment.



It's hard to out-wit cousin Lisa but she sets herself up here. The joke's on me, though, the deck still isn't finished.



Jojo's costume was awesome, see below.

We're Thankful

photo by Lara El Khazen, via Tom Reid (Thank you!)