Memorable Day Weekend

Wow! What a weekend! Where to begin...

The weekend started out fabulously on Friday night. We had To Kill a Mockingbird at home from netflix and I fell asleep watching it. (I ended up finishing it on Saturday morning.) I had niether seen nor read the story before. I don't know how I could have gotten through jr high or high school without at least seeing it in some literature class. The characters are all fabulous: Atticus Finch(Gregory Peck), the single father of two and lawyer to those who cannot afford one. Scout and Jem, his two kids, ever so smart and yet quite innocent. Dill, their new friend who spends the summers with their neighbor, his aunt. (I think he must have been based on Truman Capote). And what a surprise Robert Duvall as the young, retarded Boo Radlee.

It's such a beautiful story of giving and acceptance and simplying doing what is "right". I find it amazing that it was written in the fifties, about a time in the thirties, and is still contemporary to this day, in 2006! Although the atmosphere is not the same today, and racicsm and classism are not as overt as they once were, but when you scratch the surface, its not hard to find it.

We also spent a lot of time working around the house, as well. J cleaned out the storage closet, again, made some terrifically awesome oatmeal cookies and prepared for a Saturday night picnic at the opera and a Sunday BBQ with the Connors. Meanwhile, Kyle worked her magic in the yard, pulling Jades, chopping the palm/yucca thing in the corner, and planting many of the plants that we used to have in pots on the porch of the old place in the inner sunset.

Saturday night, we went downtown to see Madame Butterfly. It was the first performance by the San Francisco Opera to ever be simulcast live. The projected the opera onto a big screen with terrific sound in the lawn out into the civic center plaza in front of City Hall (where we got married ;)) The performance was absolutely spectacular. Butterfly and Pinkerton meshed quite well together...their voices complemented each other beautifully. Furthermore, the image on the screen was crystal-clear, as was the sound. We packed another spectacular picnic of wine, cheese, salami and pasta salad, with strawberries for dessert.

When the sun went down over city hall, and the opera started, something or someone woke Cobalt up and he stayed up and stayed awake for the entire opera. We wondered to ourselves if it wasn't his grandmother, as Butterfly was one of her favorite roles. He only started to fade towards the end, during the musical portion of the night when Pinkerton returned and Butterfly waited up. At that point, daddy and he went over to play on the playground.

Ghosts

Last night, none of us could sleep very well. I think I was battling a cold. Kyle's been up to her ears in work and LEAP activities. And Cobalt, well, I think he's having growing pains! The poor kid is so big, and keeps on growing. He's been waking in the middle of the night crying, but not wanting to get up for anything. We've been bringing him to bed with us and that usually works.

Last night, however, mom started rubbing his legs and knees, and that was the only thing that calmed him down enough to go back to sleep. He's such a big softie. I hope he stays that way, well, maybe toughens up a little bit. After about fifteen minutes of Kyle working the legs and me on the arms, back and stomach, he finally went back to sleep.

On the other hand, the boy hasn't been doing the dookie much lately, and has been eating up a storm. So he might be slightly stopped up. It's really hard to say. I guess he could be using all his food for growth. But the farts that kid has are something else! Its almost as though he has a trumpet in his but.

Anyway, we did all finally get to sleep. I had strange dreams, including some that might indicate we have ghosts...good ghosts.

Talk!Talk!Talk!

Cobalt is now over 18 months old and still not talking. Some days its a bit disturbing and disheartening; others, its just fine.
Yesterday was one of those days where I just wish he could talk. Mom was away at a retreat for the LEAP Board of Directors and I had Cobalt all to myself. Although he can communicate quite well, it would have been nice if he could actually tell me what he wants with WORDS! Instead, he would do things like run to the refrigerator, or point to the fruit basket, or scream his lungs out. After eating Mac 'n' Cheese for lunch, I thought he'd be ready for a nap. But after he asked to get out of his chair, he ran to the front door as if to say "take me to the playground". BTW, at the playground, the little guy climbed the ladder for the very first time!
What got me thinking about this was an article I heard on the radio on the way home from work on Friday. It was about how kids, er, infants, are being taught sign language between 7 and 12 months. I'd heard of this before, but have never thought much of it. The people running the program claim that children develop their vocabulary sooner and read earlier as a result of learning ASL. But then they had some parent commenting on how they now know when the kid wants milk because he makes the motion of milking a teet with his hands, and I thought "shit, Cobalt's been doing that since before he was one, what the fuck's the difference?"
To some extend, communication is communication no matter what form it takes. As long as we know what he wants, it just doesn't make a difference whether he's communicating in english, spanish, sign, german or whatever. He's still communicating, and that's what matters.

Black Jellybeans

Last night, we went to an opening for Julie's cousin, Teddy at the John Spence Gallery here in San Francisco.

Cobalt was fairly well behaved. He ran around a bit and liked one sculpture in particular, which was a square with a hole in the middle. He also got to run around with a little 19-month-old named Hugh. To quote Hugh's father, "We named him Hugh so he'd never sleep alone. But with a name like Cobalt, he'll never sleep alone, either."

In addition to having wine, water, pellegrino, etc for refreshments, the gallery also had a fishbowl of Jellybeans. And thanks to g.ma's easter gift this year, Cobalt loves jellybeans. After eating several, his hands became quite sticky. These must have been the Brach's brand, because they melted in hands. So in order to try to break his new-found addiction, Kyle decided to let him try a black one. Now personally, I don't like the black jellybeans as they taste like licrorice. The only person that I know that likes black jellybeans is my mom (a.k.a., g.ma).

Well, the little experiment didn't quite yield the results we expected. Cobalt actually couldn't decide if he liked it or not. Instead, he kept pulling the black jellybean in and out of his mouth. The dye in the jellybean was so strong, that for the rest of the night, his face and hands were stained black. If you were to see his hands afterwards, you'd swear he had been working on his car.

Click on the image for the complete flickr set.