Happy Thanksgiving

As a kid, Thanksgiving was a day that I reached with much anticipation, but always felt a little let down. Yes, I loved the turkey dinner, and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade... but as I remember between  all of the school crafts projects, and learning about the first Thanksgiving dinner there was a lot of build up.

Today, it feels like Thanksgiving is bypassed in favor of the more lucrative Christmas holiday. I even saw my first Christmas display and heard my first carol before Halloween. 

Next year we plan to travel to the East Coast, but this year we will be staying at home. My parents are coming for dinner.  The boys love their grandparents so this will be a special treat.

I think it is important to get kids outside if possible on Thanksgiving, and to keep them entertained (without over-engineering activities). I have several surprises and activities planned for the boys. They each are getting some new trains (the Thomas three-packs were on sale at Target), we are watching the movie Up (between football games) and we are going to the park to fly a kite (as I remember my dad is quite the accomplished kite flyer).

For my boys I hope to instill the joy of the Thanksgiving tradition, without over-hyping a simple and wonderful family Holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. I hope you have a wonderful and fun day.

Lil' Putt Putt

I've reached the ripe old age of ... (I say the actual number under my breath), and last weekend was my first venture into Miniature Golf. It was a lot more fun than I could imagine. It also was a great activity for preschooler and adult alike. Who knew?

It was for our boys' best friend's fourth birthday. He is five months younger than our oldest, and nine months older than our youngest, and Caleb and Xander adore him. He also live two houses from ours, and the boys play together almost everyday during the summer, and on weekends during the winter. (My boys are in full-time daycare, and in the winter it gets dark too early to play outside after 6 pm.)

Having no lil' putt putt experience, I didn't know what to expect. One image was my youngest using a golf club to bash my oldest over the head ... but happily that didn't happen.

We arrived at Golfland around 12 pm. The facility had golf clubs for preschoolers and toddlers. I had no expectations that my kids would understand the game. Xander was also super tired and a bit scattered that day, so my only strategy was to make sure that he stayed out of the water feature ... but it turns out that four year olds get the game. Caleb on the other hand is a natural and could whack the ball like nobodies business, but didn't really get the point. He did like the castle, dragons, windmill, and other features.

Jonathan and our neighbor got a little competitive, and happily helped their four year olds accomplish holes-in-one among other feats of miniature golf grandeur. I can safely say that I would take the boys back to miniature golf, and at $6 a game it is an affordable afternoon family activity.

A Big Big Slide

My neighbor told us about a big slide in Burlingame and we were there. The Magic Mountain Playground and Picnic Area at Coyote Point Recreation Area was all that and so much more.

Don't get me wrong, the slide is big, very big. It is so big it is visible from the highway. We still managed to miss the playground, and had a lovely tour of the recreation area. The slide is at the top of an incline, and up a tall playscape tower.

Caleb and Xander squealed with joy when they saw it. The whines of "I have to go potty" were forgotten. By the way the restroom facilities are conveniently located next to the park, and both boys had a visit during the two hours at the park.

The slide has a sign that says six and over once you make the effort to get to the top of the tower (wouldn't it make more sense to put that sign at the bottom of the tower?).  I always evaluate the capabilities of my boys ... they were fine, so we decided to go for it. The slide itself is a long metal tube, and it is engineered in such away that you can't go too fast. For the preschoolers it was less scary, and for the bigger kids they figured out how to zoom down faster.

We hit traffic on Saturday late morning traveling to the park. There was an accident. We also got caught in raining fog, but when we hit Burlingame it was sunny and beautiful. Usually it is the other way round. The weather clears up as you head South.

The park had two giant sea serpents at the bottom of the incline. One in the small kid playground, and one in the big kid playground.

The swings in the big kid playground were refreshingly low. This meant that my wee lads (my oldest is about 42 inches, and my youngest is 40 inches tall) could put there feet down on the big kid swings. Usually you have to hoist them up. It also meant when Jonathan and I tested the weight capacity of the swing (by the way it is just fine) by holding the boys we had to swing with a steep body incline, otherwise our knees were too bent to get a good swing.

There were towers that looked like castles, and bridges and other wonderful play features so unique that I don't know their name. Like a circular wooden bouncy thing ... we simply called it the bouncy thing.

As I mentioned earlier the park is right on the inner Bay. We took the boys for a walk with our friends and their kids. It was low tide, and the kids liked playing along the rocks where the wind surfers enter. Afterward we grabbed lunch in downtown San Mateo about two miles away at one of our favorite taquerias, Pancho Villa.

Restaurants with Kids

In 1998 Jonathan and I traveled to Spain. On our last night in Madrid we went tapas bar hopping. In the first bar we saw a family with about ten people including grandparents, aunts and uncles and two little children. It wasn't the only family dining out that we saw that night, but that image was indelibly etched in my memory. At that point I thought how nice it would someday be to brave restaurants with our little ones, and travel the world.

Every couple of months I see an article titled "Restaurants with Kids." I read it with the hope that it will be a silver bullet, and aha I will finally have the secret to successful dining with a three-year old and a four-year old.

The articles generally cover three main areas, type of restaurants that are appropriate for preschoolers, time of day that you should take your preschooler, and finally activities to keep your preschooler engaged during the dining experience. They generally skip the essentials discipline and consistency.

Discipline for us is a two part strategy. First we role play at home. Every dinner is an attempt, with varying degrees of success, to teach good table manners. Of course these are table manners for a preschooler, no screaming, throwing food, fighting with your brother, whining ... not how to hold silverware.

Second we create a plan with the boys, and set consequences prior to entering a restaurant. "Tonight we are going to a restaurant This is a very special place. The wait staff will be carrying hot food, and it is very dangerous for you to be under toe. Our expectation is that you sit in your seat, and we eat dinner as a family. If you get out of your seat then dinner is over and mommy will sit with you in the car."

The proof is in the pudding with this method. We are currently helping our three-year old to become more restaurant ready. On our late Summer trip to Santa Barbara I spent a lot of time in the car with him waiting for my husband and four-year old to finish their meals. It worked though, he now knows that I mean business. But three-year olds are limit pushers by nature, so I don't think we'll be there overnight.

During the visit with our in laws we went to two cafes for breakfast and a restaurant with the boys. Other than an incident at the cafe where Caleb headed outside the cafe on his own to go to his favorite boutique (they have a kids table and chalk to write on the floor) our dining experiences were without incident.

We want to continue to travel with our kids. Restaurant dining is an essential, and hopefully if we stay consistent our little guys will be world-class diners.

The New Academy of Sciences in San Francisco

The new Academy of Sciences in San Francisco reopened a little more than a year ago. I hadn't been since I was in high school, but I was curious ... so this last weekend we took my in-laws and our boys to the museum.

First off, the space is absolutely beautiful, with great natural lighting, high ceilings, and even though it was crowded you wouldn't know it.  Preschoolers don't do well with crowds, or waiting in lines, so architecturally the Academy of Sciences is designed well for small children.

The Academy of Sciences is four museums wrapped into one.  It has a four-story rain forest, the small Kimball Natural History Museum, the Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium.  The planetarium is only open to those four and older, and not recommended for children under six, so we didn't have the opportunity to explore it.

The natural history museum is small and low key, it isn't the focal point, but the boys appreciated seeing the dinosaur bones. The real gems are the four-story rain forest and the aquarium.

The rain forest is encased in glass. It winds it way up from a swamp with large fish to butterflies among the tree tops. The exhibit features a beautiful and colorful array of lizards, newts and dart frogs. Caleb who loves looking at little things had a blast. Xander was a bit bored, and I think Jonathan and my mother in law thought it was a bit warm (which it was).

Once you go through the rain forest you take the elevator to the basement. The attendants check you for butterflies (which love to sit on hats and shoulders). The elevator puts you under the swamp, and in the heart of the aquarium.

The best part of the aquarium was the white crocodile and the giant octopus. When we asked Caleb and Xander what their favorite part was these two were definitely the highlight of the afternoon.

We've noticed that it costs at least $50 for a family of four to go to a museum or an aquarium these days, even when children under five get in free.  The cost could be prohibitive for many families, and that is a bummer.

When Family Visits

This past weekend my husband's parents visited from Maryland. The boys loved seeing their grand parents. It gave us an opportunity to continue to explore new places like the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and revisit favorites like Pac Bell Park, and the Ferry Building.

With small children it is important to plan family visits like you would plan travel. You need to weigh the needs of the relatives with the tolerance of your children. It would be a mistake to take a three year old who can't sit still for dinner to a fancy restaurant, at the same time you wouldn't select a park that requires a lot of walking for a relative that might have difficulty getting around.

For everyone's piece of mind plan no more than one major activity a day. Otherwise you could easily stress everyone out. At the same time it is important to get out and about, no one wants to spend four days cooped up.

This visit had the right level of balance. The boys had a fabulous time, and although we had our shares of meltdowns and poor choices, the boys on the whole were really very good. I also think that my lovely inlaws had fun too.

Carmel City Beach

The boys love the beach as much as they love camping. So as part of our mini-vacation we took them to Carmel-by-the-Sea.

I always check the weather, and on that Friday reports put the temperature in the mid-60s. Jonathan wisely suggested bringing swim clothing anyway, even if it would be too cold to play in the water.

Turns out the temperature was 79 degrees, clear blue skies, and a mild breeze at the Carmel City Beach. Because it was early Fall, we had he beach pretty much to ourselves. The beach is also a mecca for dog owners. Our boys love dogs, and enjoyed watching the dogs playing in the waves.

The beach itself was easy to get to. It had plenty of free public parking, and restroom facilities. A short walk down a sand dune put you on a beautiful stretch of beach.

The boys spent the late morning and early afternoon building sand castles, and getting their feet wet. Then we headed back home for the weekend.

A Cabin in Big Sur

My husband and I are huge fans of the mini-vacation. One to two nights away to recharge, and then back to the grind. A couple of weeks ago he had to use two PTO days, and we wanted to get away without spending the whole time in the car.

We decided to rent a cabin two hours from our home in beautiful Big Sur. One of the advantages of living in Northern California, is that you are two to three hours away from places people fly around the world to visit.

We picked the boys up at 2 pm on a Thursday, and drove to Big Sur. We stayed at the Big Sur Campground. We considered tent camping, but we didn't really want to rough it, and a cabin was much easier to prepare for. The cabin also came with a stocked kitchen, bathroom, gas burning fireplace, plus a picnic table and fire pit outside.

The Big Sur Campground is a fantastic kid friendly spot. It features tent and RV camping, low end and high end cabins. It also has a wonderful playground with a firetruck playscape, a roller slide (if you haven't experienced one of these you really should seek it out) and swings and jungle gyms.

The boys loved playing in the park, and stretching their legs after the car trip. While Jonathan was heating up dinner (Trader Joe's ribs and corn on the cob), Xander, Caleb and I went exploring and walked to the river. Because of the rains a week earlier, there was evidence of flooding, and plenty of wonderful mud to sink your feet into. Boys do love mud puddles.

After dinner we built a fire in the fireplace and enjoyed being one with nature until bedtime. Because I didn't need to worry about camping equipment, I did bring plenty of toys to keep the boys entertained.

The next morning we got pastries at the Big Sur Bakery (really wonderful), and ate breakfast in our cabin before heading to Carmel City Beach and home. 

Our Big Sur mini-vacation had the right effect, we were very relaxed when we got home Friday evening.