Josephine Street Kindness

Thankfully, today we received a rain-free and kind of sunny day. After the very wet week that we had, we needed it to air out! The basement, which flooded on Wednesday setting loose a gas leak and killing out hot water heater and our heater, is now cleaned out, aired out, and hopefully successfully dried out. Pilot lights are relit, the sump pump is replaced, and we think that our landlord is going to sleeve the asbestos insulation around the pipes down there, making it safer for us to store items down there and improve air quality in general. It was a long week, but now things are taken care of, luckily at no expense to us - the joys of renting.

We have to give a lot of credit to our incredible neighbors for pulling through for us in a pinch. Mike and Leila gave us shelter and a delicious steak dinner; Marnie and Patrick gave us a place to stay and wine and chocolate. I think we should have to evacuate more often. It was kind of fun! Adults don't get to do sleepovers anymore. ;)

You can tell that our Cam is testing out her lungs... America's Next Idol? We like her jazz-like improvisation on the end of this one. Such authority!

We're in those February/March doldrums: boring in their lack of good weather or plans, but delightful in that we can be spontaneous and don't have very much going on. That said, all the rain and lack of plans means that Cam gets lots of time to play with her new kitchen. One rainy Saturday ago, I caved and got Cam what I've been wanting to get her for a while now.

Cam loves her new kitchen. She is always cooking up burgers or soup or something delectable for us to eat. Her newest word is "delicious."

Having so few plans lately has afforded us the time to have a couple of local outings that we've all really enjoyed. We took a hike outside of Fairfax to Carson Falls that Cam really enjoyed. She got to see a waterfall, a lizard, and the "forest." She talks about DooDoo the lizard quite a bit.

We also took advantage of our Oakland Zoo membership partial reciprocity with the San Francisco Zoo. Cam really enjoyed seeing the penguins get fed, but mostly talked about the rhino's butt for the next few days.

I think her favorite part of the whole zoo was this kid-sized picnic table where we all enjoyed a snack.

We were invited to the family of a little girl named Annabelle on Saturday night for a traditional Irish feast: corned beef, mashed potatoes, and soda bread. We've never seen Cam in her friend setting before, and so seeing her run around with her BFF, getting into mischief and in general being more content to play with her than hang out with us, was pretty cool. Technically, Cam spends more of her waking life with Annabelle than she does with us, so it was nice to see a glimpse of her week day life. The highlight of our visit to Annabelle's house for Cam was the stairs; they have indoors stairs. Annabelle quickly demonstrated the art of the backwards tummy slide down the stairs, and Cam did her best to get the hang of it. You can see why all day today, Cam has been saying, "I want to go to Annabelle's house!"

This is indicative of the level of craziness they sustained for the better part of 4 hours. They have their own language that really only makes sense to the two of them, making them burst into hysterics and giggle fits like we've never heard before. So cute.

I'll go out with a few pics that are just my current faves. This gal is growing up so quickly. I do take moments to just savor where she is right now, even if where she is isn't always a ton of fun. She is challenging us more and more, requiring us to have boundaries we didn't know we'd need. But she's such a treat. I won't say that I don't cherish the 7:30pm time when Joel and I get to have an uninterrupted conversation and adult beverage, but I really miss her so much during the week that I get to be very present for all the time we get together. I guess that is the upside of being a working mom: I don't ever get sick and tired of being mama.