Sing After Me

T received his first preschool illness. It seems to be nothing more than a pretty nasty cough at this point. But he seems fine other than that. He was singing this morning, interrupted occasionally with his smoker cough imitation. Well he kind of sings along with certain songs, but mostly he knows only a phrase of the song here and there, which he sings with reckless abandon, very loudly. Which is fun when I'm driving and suddenly hear from behind me, "C IS FOR COOKIE!! GOOD ENOUGH FOR MEEEEE!!" Then Lizzie laughs hysterically. Such fun.

I also just got a peanut free snack suggestion list so I can better figure what to send along to his preschool on our snack day. Did you know that Nutri-Grain bars are okay, but Granola and energy bars are not? True story.

Stay tuned kids, next time I'll tell you about the Halloween costume.

Reno

We got our first trip sans kids last weekend. We get these each time somebody we know gets married and has a wedding outside our county. It's the third time we've been away without them. The first was our honeymoon in Vegas, the second was up by Auburn at a buddy's wedding, and this time it was my cousin who got married in Truckee, CA. This allowed us to leave the kids with the in-laws, spend a night in Truckee and then head to Reno the day after. We took Monday off work to sleep in and enjoy the ride back. Well, I slept for a good portion of it. But don't worry! I wasn't driving.

Reno was an experience that I haven't had in a very long time. It had been at least 5 years since I was there last and maybe even longer. We stayed in the Silver Legacy and because we booked with out AAA card, we got a free buffet breakfast. Pretty sweet, yeah? We got all settled into our second room, the first had the horrible reek of smoke in it, and headed down to lose our fortunes. We were just wandering around when we got stopped by a timeshare presentation lady, who offered us $50, free dinner, and 4 days 3 nights vacation at a spot of our choosing if we'd suffer through a 90 min presentation. So of course we did. I'd never done one of these before, and it was as strange as I'd pictured it would be. In the tram on the way to the hotel where the presentation would take place, I noticed that we were the young couple, there was also a black couple, a mexican couple, a retired couple, and one that was in their mid-40's with kids somewhere in middle to high school.

We got matched up with the youngest salesperson there was, the black couple got the black salesman and so on. It was a very awkward first few minutes as our new BFF Camille tried to get to know us. From there we went into a room where Serge, who just got over here from the MotherLand, gave us a group sales pitch in his very thick East European/Russian accent. I think somewhere in it, he said that if you liked camping then you were homeless or something. I wasn't really paying to much attention. After that nightmare, we got back out with Camille who tried to sell us this wonderful program for only $11,000!! Holy Crap!! We said no thanks and got sent to the last chance lady who gave us our free stuff and we were back at the hotel in time for our free dinner. But, honestly, if you ever have the chance to do one of these and the free stuff is good, do it. Instead of blowing our cash in the casinos, we were getting stuff. Plus we came out of Reno ahead from gambling plus the $50 we got from them for free, so it was a very successful, and fun trip.

Also yesterday, when I went to get T up from his nap, he told me, "Don't wake me up, I'm still sleeping!" So I let him sleep some more. Even though he never slept. Check out "Don't Need Anything" by Glen Phillips.

Electric Avenue

Big Bad Ty learned something on Monday about light sockets. That is, it's a bad idea to stick two keys into a plug. I don't know how he reached the keys or what possessed him to try this, but the two little keys (think padlock size) were joined by a small metal keyring and that sucker was toasted. The keys were a bit singed also, as was T's middle finger. He was fine after about 30 minutes, but the initial shock and the lingering burn mark and pain should be enough to deter this little guy from trying that again.

And for those of you saying, "Well Smart Guy, why wasn't the socket protected?" I say to you, "I dunno." It was where it was and the keys were supposedly out of reach, so we learned that we need to install some more of those plastic socket baby proofers, which we did. So they're now fully stopped up. He now would have to remove the plastic baby proofer to stick something else into the socket...which I'm not putting past him, this kid is dangerous. He's like a 3 foot high Evil Kenivel, just without the full body jumpsuits and motorcycle. Though that would be a good Halloween costume. Hmmmmm....gonna run that one past the wife.

Today is his second day of preschool, he loved the first one on Tuesday, so we'll see if that enthusiasm will last. When I asked him if he remembered his teachers name, he just told me, "He's a girl." Which is true, he is a girl, but he's also called a she. Which is something else that we're working on. The whole masculine/feminine pronoun understanding. We'll get there by Senior year, I'm almost sure of it.

Also, for this installment of, "Listen To What I Tell You To And You'll See Your Future" we're going to have a song that T's been listening to almost nonstop for the past couple of weeks, so it's stuck in my head at the moment. It's called "The Ballad of Casey McPhee" It's from Sesame Street, sung by Cookie Monster, or Frank Oz for those of you who've lost that bit of your childhood. Cookie Monster plays an engineer who must get his trainload of cookies, chocolate milk, ice cream, and 'Moo Cows' through a snowed in mountain pass for the kids on the other side. It really kick some serious tail and I can't wait for the tour to come around.

Pre School Musical

Today T had his first little meet and greet for pre-school. His actual classes start next week, but this was his first chance to meet the teachers and the kids and see the room. I wasn't sure how he would do, though I figured he'd be okay. But I wasn't really prepared for how quickly he'd be okay. We walked into the room and he was holding onto my hand and I said, "Look, buddy, they have Play-Doh over there." and that was really the last time he bothered to speak to me until it was time to go. He played with the Play-Doh, he found the cars and got all them out, found some legos, played with some toy turtles, got out the pots and pans from the play oven, rode the trikes outside, found the slide, played with the blocks, discovered the bathroom, and that was all within a half-hour. He really enjoyed it and it was nice to see that he won't be the crier in the class, we all saw him too. His name is Curtis and T was used by the teacher as the kid to put the peer pressure on little Curtis to get him to quit crying and come into the classroom. It didn't work.

Whoa, I thought I posted this last week, bad blogger.

State Fair

The California State Fair has come and gone, and we made our yearly pilgrimage to our Golden State Capitol to see the sights. And I gotta say that this was one of the more disappointing years. I remember when there were tons of animals, and horse racing, and most of the counties had exhibits at the fair. This year we saw only rabbits, goats, cows, and the baby chicks from UC Davis. There were no long horn bulls, no sheep, no pigs, no chickens, no ducks, no geese, no turkeys. It was rather disheartening to see that there is a serious lack of livestock in California. I don't think that it's the vegetarians, because the lack of meat eating would logically cause an abundance of these animals. So I can only assume that the farmers don't care about their state fair blue ribbons anymore. Which is sad because, really, what else do they have to work for?

The counties exhibit was again a let down. The great Contra Costa County didn't participate again. Of course the winners are usually farm counties with years of heritage and old folks to sit on the board and cook up new ways to make their exhibit the coolest ever! Solano County actually had the best one, but it could be because they were giving away free Jelly Belly's.

But the kids had fun in the 100+ degree heat. They got to run around a little and got some really poorly made free sunglasses, so that was good. They also got to make a mess with no reprisal and T enjoyed the Thomas part of the Toy exhibit where he could play on two Thomas tables full of trains almost by himself. That was hard to pull him away from.

Also, on a completely unrelated note. I discovered that I really like Fenton's Creamery, but there is way to much ice cream on those plates! Which, I know, doesn't seem possible, but I saw four very hefty people share what i believe was a banana split and they couldn't finish it. That says something.

Until next time, when there will be a quiz on the implications of me having discovered a song that's been around for almost 40 years. The tune is Goin' to California by Led Zepplein. Give a listen if you haven't yet and just enjoy the thought. Everybody wants to come here. And damn if there aren't a lot more songs about California than, say, Wisconsin, or South Carolina.