Gametes In Love

We had a very family-oriented day today. And it was awesome! I know not every day (or even every week-end) can be all about hanging out together, avoiding chores altogether, but it’s fun to do it once in awhile.

It all started with my engagement ring. It’s been in dire need of a cleaning, and an appraisal. Plus after some nagging reminders from friends, a check that the tension is set just right. So S took my ring in and dropped it off earlier this week, but it wouldn’t be available and ready for pick-up until today. To which S suggested “Why don’t we all go to The City and pick it up. And then maybe we can stop by The Melt and try it out”. You see The Melt is a grilled cheese place that we’ve been talking about for what feels like a year now, but we never have cause to go to the city together, so it’s always one of those “sounds-good-in-theory-but-isn’t-realistic-to-happen” discussions.

Plus given the fact that 1) G loves trains; 2) has been asking to take a train to San Fcansisco for ages (and we tricked him once), I thought it was a great chance to combine that into the day. So S and G took the train, S2 and I drove and picked them up at Caltrain, and headed to the Jewelery Center. Since S2 woke up right as we parked, I agreed to haul the kids into the store. Because, you know, what’s better than a 3.5 yr old and a 15m year old sitting in a store surrounded by millions of dollars worth of small, sparkly items? I was pretty surprised how long this event took. But the kids did awesome and there were lots of ladies oogling the cute, (shockingly) well behaved boys. The last time I was in this place was when S and I were picking out my engagement ring. There’s something poetic about coming back with the family that resulted in that proposal.

Then came grilled cheese. OMG, holy good. I’m glad there’s not one of these places in our near 5mi vicinity, because I’d be in trouble. G ate 1/2 his sandwich, after he claimed all our chips bags, and then had an incredibly delicious choco-chip cookie to follow. My only complaint about the SF location was the lack of kid seating. However, given that they’re located in the heart of the financial district, where children are more or less mythical creatures, it’s kind of excusable. Hopefully their Palo Alto location (damn cashier had to tell me there was one reasonably close to me after all) will be a bit more child-acknowledging.

As we finished lunch and exclaimed how we were deprived of a $50 in quarters to pay for parking (I’m exaggerating… but not really — downtown SF is $.25/3 min worth of parking), we debated whether or not to hit up the Yerba Buena playground. It’s something S has been asking to do, and it’s literally blocks away from where we were. But given that it was now 12:30 and I was hoping I would not battle kids asleep IN the car, I asked to go home. It was well timed with the following G conversation:

G: Daddy! Look at that clock (pointing to a tall outside clock on one of the SF skyscrapers)
S: Yeah, that’s right
G: Is it saying it’s time to go home???

Today, yes, it was.

We managed to have both kids stay awake the whole drive home. From time to time, I’ll take a car nap, but I result to car naps as a last resort. The boys will sleep in the car, but no more than an hour and we HAVE to drive for them to stay asleep. This means that nothing gets done while this sleeping happens. On the other hand, if they manage to sleep at home, we can still get 2-3 hours worth of napping out of G, and 1.5-2hr out of S2. And quiet. At home. So I’m willing to act like a fool in the car just to keep the monkeys awake.

By 2pm they were both down in their beds and asleep. Until almost 4 when it was time to leave and head to  one of my mom’s club annual events: The Winter Family Gymnastics Event. We did it last year, G had a blast, and we ended up signing him up for gymnastics for awhile following. But even though we have no plans to re-enroll him back in gymnastics, we went anyway, because 1) it’s free; 2) it’s a TON of fun. Both boys had a blast. I was a little worried that S2 would be pretty pissed off because he’d either not be allowed to participate since he’d be too young, or there wouldn’t be enough for him to do, but that was certainly not the case: he really stuck in there. We ended up with pizza (provided by the event) which S2 devoured, and two pooped out kids.

Major success of a day.