I am doing some cooking in the kitchen and suddenly I hear the most beautiful music coming from my feet:
Beautiful music from Carrie on Vimeo.
Miss Leyba came up with the whole thing on her own (even arranging the bowls just so) and, oh boy, does she take her music making seriously.
I love it.
I grew up in New Jersey where The City meant New York (obviously!). Now that we’re living on the West Coast and living in the Bay Area, we have a new city: San Francisco. At least that’s what our friends are referring to when they talk about going into the city. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that, but I’ll give it a shot. The City.
Last week Miss Leyba finally got to check it out FOR REAL.
We met up with my friend April who I last saw in August 2003 in Tuscon. (Wow, does that feel like another lifetime ago!) She recently moved to the Bay Area and we (i.e. ME!) finally got our (MY!) act together and met up.
Our plan to see the new California Academy of Sciences FAILED when we realized several thousand people were visiting the museum too (it reached capacity an hour after opening! with hundreds of people still waiting outside! it was INSANE!):
Climbing the stairs from Carrie on Vimeo.
(Sorry about the audio in the middle; I had to mute the part where I said Miss Leyba’s real name.)
Instead we hit the worlds best playground in Golden Gate Park and ate a super tasty lunch at the Beach Chalet with a front row view of the ocean. We all had a great time (and we hope to meet up again soon!).
Miss Leyba loved April from the get go.
I love it when friends move to town. Come westwards, dear readers! Then you too can hang with Miss Leyba!
And us too. We’re not as fun though.
Someone crawled over to the laundry basket before we were finished getting dressed.
I recognize that look.
Mom, I got away from you! Ha ha ha! See, we don’t have to put my pants on!
(Thanks to Alice for the babylegs! Aren’t they adorable?! Miss Leyba’s thighs are so chubby that they only fit as leg warmers! I think they are more cute that way anyhow.)
From my blog in college:
“There is nothing like bouncing around the biology building in spandex to set the tone for my day! Gardening and dancing: the two things I want to wake up to every day of my life.”
January 30, 2001
When was the last time you danced and gardened all in one day?
Better yet, when was the last time you danced around in public wearing spandex?
(photo of Carrie circa 1985)
This is the first in a new feature here: books that we love.
From the very first day (literally!), we have been reading to Miss Leyba. David and I both love to read ourselves and sharing books with our daughter has been such a blessing for our family. We’ve so enjoyed watching her develop a love of books:
We have found that board books are a godsend. No paper cuts. No tearing (though she’s only done this a few times). No bent pages. No ruined pages because of all the drool. And the occasional bites.
Board books are (more) sturdy.
Nowadays most baby books come in this format and I strongly recommend you search them out when buying presents for little ones. After a few months, we packed up all the non-board children’s books –because she terrorized the hell out of them–and have only now (at almost a year old) started reintroducing them to her.
There are also small, thick, sturdy board books which are especially good for teething on, if you can get paste the whole baby chewing on cardboard (which I personally prefer to baby chewing on plastic–eck!). We especially like these Eric Carle ones
They feature words from some of Eric Carle’s books like The Very Busy Spider
We like these because we can read (or tell!) the longer story that these words were excerpted from while Miss Leyba plays with the smaller book; they are highly portable (I always have a few in my purse); the pages are extra thick which makes them very easy to turn; and they are fairly hard to rip apart, though after about 8 months of use ours are finally starting to beat the dust.
With them we practice animal names, animal sounds, colors, and spelling (i.e., D-O-G). We stack them up like blocks and knock them down. They are endlessly fun to play with.
The original books are pretty great too.