My Little Koala

Three years ago Thursday I gave birth to a koala.

Sugar Salon

We've been struggling for some time to get Sadie a good haircut. I had dreams of growing her hair out and being able to try lots of different hair styles, but Sadie's hair was not cooperating. So we decided to give up on the kiddie barbers and just take her to the place where J. and I both get our haircut. We had no idea that going to an adult salon would be the most exciting experience of Sadie's life thus far. Sadie was over the moon about the experience of her haircut and the result. She sat through the entire hair cut with this blissed-out giant grin on her face, as if at two weeks shy of three years old she had arrived. She then proceeded to talk endlessly about the haircut and ask to look in the mirror a few hundred times. I guess our little girl may be a real girly-girl.

The Farm

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We had an action-packed weekend that began Saturday morning with "The Farm." The Farm is in a nondescript and very suburban neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. It consists of a variety of ramshackle structures that appear to have been completely overtaken by goats. I have never seen so many goats in my life. It's hard to imagine that it is not a public health hazard to have dozens of goats in a residential neighborhood, but we will most certainly not be reporting the farm to the authorities as Jack and Sadie LOVED it. Jack could not get enough of the retired tractors all over the place. Just as public health is not a big concern at the farm, neither is child safety. The kids had the run of the place and were allowed to climb on anything they wanted. Sadie was thrilled with the ancient ponies, who provided pony rides and let us feed them apples.

We met our friends Dan, Ronite, and baby Maytar at the farm. Maytar was a very good sport about the aggressive goats who were much larger than he. It appears that these goats survive by getting food from toddlers, so they were constantly trying to nibble on anything, and anyone, who might have grain.

While it was far from an authentic farm experience, The Farm proved to be a true crowd pleaser.

Griffith Observatory

We've been spending quite a bit of time at the Griffith Observatory. It's free and the kids love it there. The kids also learn quite a bit about the solar system and planets. They are not so into stars, maybe because we rarely see stars in the LA sky, but the moon is the best thing since M-n-Ms. Jack even attended his first planetarium show today and learned about the potential for life on other planets. The planetarium scared Sadie, so we missed the show, but I hear that Europa is our best bet for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

Cousin Ross

Sadie and Jack's cousin Ross and his girlfriend Sarah came to stay with us recently. The kids love house guests and were thrilled to have Ross and Sarah here. Sarah was brave enough to show Sadie how to use her camera, which resulted in Sadie running around with the camera lens glued to her face screaming "Do you see me?" Sadie is nothing if not a ham.

Zoo Pics

Our babysitter just emailed me these photos from when she took the kids to the zoo last weekend.

Catch up

I've been delinquent in posting. 2011 has proven to be a very busy year. That smidgen of free time I used to have seems to have evaporated. So this post is a catch up. J. is in Austin this weekend at a film festival, so I've been flying solo with the kids. It has not been the easiest weekend, but the kids are asleep and J. comes home tomorrow so I think that I can safely say that we have fared okay. We had a lovely dinner this evening with our friends Troy and Siri at our favorite Salvadoran restaurant. The kids LOVE pupusas. This was the their second dinner of pupusas this week, but what the heck, enjoy it while they can.

I had to work yesterday, so the kids were with a babysitter who took them to the zoo. They saw lots of animals, but oddly they only wanted to talk about flamingos and how there was no turtle. Go figure.

We stood in line for an hour this morning at a fruit tree give away (I'm a sucker for anything free). Another little girl in line showed the kids roly-poly bugs and they were completely entranced. They insisted on picking up the largest roly-poly bug I've ever seen. Despite the gross-out factor I was grateful for their new insect friends. Sadly most of the trees were gone by the time we made it through the line, but we did get a cutting from a fig tree and some tomato seedlings.

So that's what's been happening around here, nothing too exciting, but we do seem to be emerging from the cold winter days into a lovely spring with the potential for lots of new adventures.