On Nina’s birthday, last month, we spent the morning with her on Baker Beach. Leila was in school, so Nina had a rare morning alone with us. She absolutely loved it. She’s a very different kid when she’s not in her sister’s shadow. She discovered the wave polished rocks and wanted to pick all of them up.
I took a panorama of the scene, and roughly spliced the pictures together. Take a look.
Nina is apparently not allergic to wheat and bananas, contrary to the results we got from her blood test two weeks ago. She had a skin scratch test done today, where no new allergies were found.
The milk, eggs and nuts trinity still remains, as far as we’re concerned. Maybe she’ll get over some or all of them when she’s older, but for now, it’s business as usual with our new meat eating vegan lifestyle.
All week, I’ve been staying home from work to take care of my three women. Although we got flu shots back in October — all aside from Nina, due to her egg allergy — Leila, Nina and Carrie have all caught some flu like virus: sneezing, nasal congestion, coughing, conjunctivitis, laryngitis, fever, body aches… oh yeah, and more yellowish/green snot than you could shake a stick at (cliché inspired by a tangent in a TVZ episode). Basically more than even NyQuil could handle.
Carrie’s been out of commission and the little girls are going a bit stir crazy — which happens everyday if they’re not out of the house by 11am. On Monday, I took them to the Zeum Carousel for four rides. They really loved the horses. Leila was intrigued by the giraffes and goats, but only from a distance. Nina didn’t care what animal she was on, as long as it was moving. There’s a 4 minute pause between rides, which to a 1 year old seems like an eternity. Leila didn’t want to switch horses, and Nina felt stuck on hers. What can you do?
On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thurday, I took them out to the back yard to push/pull them around on their respective bikes. This was good fun until Leila remembered there’s a hose in the back yard. She had a blast, repeatedly filling up a green watering jug, then emptying it into all of the gopher holes. Lets hope Mr. Gopher has flood insurance.
Then, finally, last night, like you hope it won’t happen to the last survivor in a sci-fi horror flick, the monster caught up with me. Mine is always the French film noir version, where the hero gets the shaft in the end. Despite all of the echinacea, goldenseal, zinc and all that homeopathic “immunity boosting” herbal stuff I’ve been ingesting all week, I caught the mega flu.
We spent the afternoon in Dolores park. It was the first beautiful and warm sunny day we’ve had in a while, so the park was overflowing with San Franciscans. We were there with friends we’d not seen for the last five months. They are San Franciscan expats who now live on the right coast, so the whole crew was there to hang out with them.
You can see the scene of that glorious day in the panorama below. It is actually a 360º spin of shot I spliced together in Photoshop, albeit rather sloppily. Leila was on my lap asking if she could move the mouse or click on the buttons, so I didn’t spend much time trying to blend the edges.
We got the results from Nina’s allergy blood test yesterday. It looks like she may have more allergies, to almonds, wheat and bananas. She has been eating bread and Cheerios pretty much every day, so knowing that, according to the allergist the positive result for wheat is probably a false positive. We’ve tried to give her bananas in the past, but she doesn’t really like them. As far as we can tell she hasn’t had any reactions from them. Maybe that one is a false positive as well.
Now we are in limbo again, waiting for the next skin scratch test, where hopefully, we can get some more conclusive information.
Today, we had a breakthrough. Leila went on the potty at school twice. This is huge, because we normally have to bribe or persuade her to go on it, but today, at school, she asked for it herself.
Yesterday, as my coworker Thomas and I were walking to a team building event at the Fisherman’s Wharf Marriot, down the street from our office, I got a potty reward points call. I had to pretend to be Tyrone, the little moose Backyardigan, while walking around the hotel lobby, trying not to look like a complete lunatic. It was pretty funny.
The other night, I cold called our friend Shelly. I gave her the fifteen second onboarding, and then let her do her improv as Austin, the kangaroo.
The night before that, Leila eagerly followed me around the house, as I frantically tried to call everyone we knew in our timezone. Unfortunately, Austin must have been out partying, because he was too busy to answer the phone to congratulate Leila for having dropped caca in the toilet. She was pretty disappointed. She had to settle for a red lollipop.
I think I can see the light at the end of the diaper tunnel. At least for our first born. Our second born likes to stand in the potty and proudly say “caca” but I don’t think she’ll using it correctly for at least another year. I should by seventhGENERATION stock.