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Shhh… It’s a secret!

When we were looking for a house, we wanted to live some place where all of our necessities were within walking distance – much like our child-free pad in the city. Where it was easy to get to the places we wanted to be, in the way we wanted to get there. This was long before we understood how important strollability is to new parents, or scootability to older, wiser parents. And way before we had any concept of how important it is to have grocery stores with good snacks scattered every mile of one’s run, when one must run with kids of any age. This criteria, walkability, brought us to Berkeley, where walking was built into the framework of the town from the day the founders laid the first foundation.

Berkeley sprung up in the early 1900s with people flocking to the University and others fleeing the earthquake. The town’s steep hills were far too slanty for cable car, but consumer cars were not yet prevalent, so the townspeople, apparently organizers from the start, formed the Hillside Club to urge builders to lay out streets following the slopes of the hillside, connected with footpath stairways. In the day, these stairways served as major thoroughfares through the hills, connecting people to rail lines, parks, schools and businesses. They’ve long since lost their importance in the daily commute of most in Berkeley, but thanks to a few organizers and the Fire Department, they continue to stay clear and mostly maintained, perfect for the weekend and evening walkers.

Inspired by the mystery of secret passageways, the kids and I went exploring on Sunday. There are at least 6 pathways within a kid friendly walk of our house. All of the pathways are marked with small street signs, obscured from plain sight by vegetation, adding to the sense secretness. My favorite pathway is Indian Trail, as it feels the most enchanted with it’s long unkempt grass. If I had my way, the residents bordering pathways would have to plant fruit trees and edible flowers for foraging kids.

It is officially summer. Time to hang up the soccer cleats and shin guards, dust off the barbecue, and air out the summer parkas. And that’s just what we did this weekend.

Saturday marked the end of our official Spring pick up season which we commemorated with obligatory soccer pictures. It isn’t official unless it ends with pictures! We started the pick up league at the beginning of Spring after talking to other parents who had sprung for the fall season of under 5s in the official league only to find out that the kids spent as much time on the sidelines watching as in the game. We’ve had a pretty good turnout over the course of the season – as many as 15 kids and as few as 3 (this past weekend), averaging 6. Some Saturdays we had productive pick-up games, others quickly degraded into child herding exercises. As you can tell, we are way beyond wearing uniforms and shin guards. In fact, our past two Saturdays, the kids spent more time each practice at the playscape than on the pitch. After practice Saturday, we put away the orange cones and soccer balls for June. Hopefully when we start back up in July, the kids will hit the pitch with renewed enthusiasm and fancy footwork.

Monday was unseasonably summery, and we actually got to break out the slip and slide. Albeit fed straight from the hot water heater. But, hey, this is Northern California. We grow our kids with great resolve.
The enthusiasm of youth:

The wisdom of age:

The post slide sunning:

Mom: What color is this dot?
Sylvie: Pink
Mom: What color is this dot?
Sylvie: Blue
Mom: What color are your eyes?
Sylvie: Polka Dot!

While I won’t claim to have well formed career goals, and my life goals are few, I do have reasonably well defined goals for the rearing of my children. I became a parent because I wanted someone with whom to share all the coolest things in life – steam trains, warm rain puddles, s’mores, cherry tomatoes… And like all parents, I want my children to grow up happy, healthy, and polite, and to become successful. But, along the way I want to nurture in them a passion for endurance sports, a love of science and an appreciation for music and the arts. The latter is the hard one for me, having been raised by engineers who were more biased towards science, and having had little formal training in either music or the arts. Not that our household lacked creativity. Quite the contrary. But, I lacked formal training. So here we are – the kids enrolled in swimming lessons, running off to soccer, running, riding, doing science experiements, and just about ready to begin their music training, but I am at a loss. I want my children to learn to play an instrument, but when and what?

I’ve been eyeing these kid sized guitars from First Act. I think we’ll have more success in the long run if we can get the kids started playing an instrument that we find interesting, that is fun at parties and looks cool.

Must I really go the conventional route and start the kids with violins? Even in second grade, I found the screech and whine of the third graders’ untamed violins haunting. I’m not sure I can handle the learning curve. And besides, only Yo-Yo Ma makes strings cool.

Although researchers identified the gene known to dramatically increase the risk of hereditary breast or ovarian cancer years ago, doctors aren’t really pushing the testing. If there is a history of either cancer type in your family, you should probably ask your doctor if this testing would be appropriate for you.

More about the test.

I’m still exhausted from the last two weekends and here we are on the crest of another.

We’re having a reasonably hot summer, and the kids are at a good age for just about everything this year so we’ve been going overboard with the activities – balancing multiple birthday parties against our standing soccer saturday mornings and several big events each weekend. By Sunday night we’re basically comatose.

This past Saturday was the school’s science fair replete with face painting, a bouncy house, bubble stations, volcanos, bunnies and a dinosaur dig. The school puts this on every year as a way to attract families from the community, and raise a teensy bit of cash for school supplies. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Will enjoyed it enough that he is proclaiming he is going to be a scientist and a worker when he grows up. “Will that be good?” he asks.

Sylvie getting her face painted:

Holding the bunny:

Saturday, after our school science fair was the gymnastics dog and pony show for all the kids who participated this school year. I was pretty impressed with how well these 4 and 5 year olds maneuver on the tumbling mats, balance beam and uneven bars. Here is Will on the uneven bars:

and sticking his landing:

Sunday was the Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. Will asked, “Mommy, is this a race or a parade. I think it is a parade.” I think that question pretty much sums up the event. While there are serious runners in the event, we were far behind with the walkers and costumes and dredges of society. This year bacon was big thanks to the internet meme. A very authentic looking Obama and his entourage made an appearance. We spent much of the walk in the vicinity of a life sized South Park Jesus, passing octo mommies and swine flu. And, as usual groups of Elvis and Ghostbusters rounded out the group. I didn’t see anything especially creative.

Sylvie pushed Will and Jordan most of the 8 miles:

In with the walkers, I learned a lot about society. Thankfully, people are basically decent as even the dredges of society pretended to be on reasonable behavior when in our proximity, clearing the way for us to push the stroller through or watching their language. And though both kids walked/ran an incredible distance, and we generally had a good time, I’m in no hurry to do it again until the kids can run the entire length. By mile 6 Will had had enough and was curled up in the stroller screaming, “I want to go home right this instant!” Sometime shortly after he found his second wind and was able to pull it together enough to survive the walk to the end, the muni, muni to train to BART to BART to car trip home. Sylvie was awfully exhausted by the end, but used the long trip home to acquire jewelry and a baby doll from fellow B2B revelers on their way home. All in all, a nice cap to a long weekend.

Will started his first round of swimming lessons, ever, at the beginning of the month, and it turns out he is a fish. Swimming at this point is an experiment in controlled drowning. He spends the entire lesson under water, not yet swimming, just blowing a lot of bubbles. Practicing the starfish:

On the docket for this holiday weekend? Probably a lot of sewing, running, bike riding, swimming and maybe some beach time. Happy summer, y’all.

I hope your littles take good care of you.

Will grew me a sweet pea seedling, painted something I’m not allowed to open, yet, and made me a necklace. I made the family Molly Weizenburg’s cream cheese frosted cinnamon rolls. I’m looking forward to a long day of running about with my kids.

Look what I’m growing!

I’m a sucker for novelty and my children moreso, so when I saw these floating around the internets, I knew I was going to end up making them, despite the fact that they look absolutely revolting.

This is something the kids can help with, though mine didn’t. I stabbed veggie pup/hotdog pieces with dried pasta, then cooked the hotdog/pups in boiling water until the pasta drooped and the creatures became squid with real tentacles. As you can see, I was feeling guilty for feeding my kids this processed food stuff, so I sliced up strawberries on the side to make the meal seem healthy. Turns out my kids are more interested in real food as the strawberries were gone long before the squid.

You should know, by now, that everything in our house is flaming with habanero infusion. We’re addicts.

As I pondered which chili powder to use in the Sunset grilled chili lime corn, I very quickly came to habanero. Why can’t we seed and devein and pulverize them in the mutilator and slather our ears with these? Cooking with habaneros is a little like gastronomic russian roulette as at their best, the habaneros add a peppery sweet flavor and a reasonable heat and at their worst they are like swallowing fire. All the way through. Sometimes for days. Thankfully, these deveined and deseeded were perfect.

Our recipe (makes 6 ears):
4 tbs room temperature butter
1 tsp lime zest
2 seeded and deveined habaneros, mutilated in the mini chopper
~1 tsp salt, to taste

Peel the husk back on each ear, but not completely off the corn. Remove the silk. Whisk the butter, zest, peppers and salt together. Slather each ear with a little less than 1 tbs of butter mixture. Peel the husk back over the corn. Grill the corn until cooked. ~5 minutes, watched as you don’t want the corn to burn, but it should brown slightly.

The Sunset recipe soaks the corn in water for 30 minutes prior to grilling, likely to keep the husks from burning on the fire. They also secure the husks with twine. We didn’t do either of these steps.