It’s always a good day when you get to visit two bookstores and eat a nice dinner out.

My parents have visited San Francisco often enough that they don’t need to travel the tourist circuit at all. Instead, there are a couple bookstores that always require a stop, and since we are celebrating a big birthday soon, we even had a legitimate excuse to spend money.

In the evening, the boys’ beloved caregiver came over and the adults went out for a fine meal at the lovely Woodward’s Garden. This restaurant has been on my radar since I first moved to San Francisco, and I’d never eaten there before! It was worth the wait. Nothing fancy, nothing stacked or foamed (and thank goodness, really), but all of it — from the seared scallops with celery and jerusalem artichoke puree, to the truffled mushroom risotto, to the chocolate ganache-bosc pear tart–was creative and delicious.

Today, we’re off to the farmer’s market to find today’s dinner, and then, tonight, the birthday feast cooking begins in earnest!

After dinner (mushroom ravioli with brown butter; chard from the yard; and ice cream for the boys who figured that since we had dessert last night we should have it again tonight. No point in trying to break this habit before Ben’s birthday, really), Ben asked for some alone time in his bedroom. Dad offered to accompany him, and Ben realized that Granddad time would be way better than alone time. Up they went.

It took Eli half a second to realize that the fun was going upstairs, and to insist on following them, so I escorted him up. Then I closed the gate and headed back down, leaving Dad to relive long-past days with young children.

Mom and I puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up and visiting. I kept an ear tuned to the upstairs. I could hear happy boy voices and the clatter of tinker toys. Then it got pretty quiet. Then it got LOUD! Crazy, giggling and running loud. I took my time finishing up, then went to check out the scene.

I found my Dad at the door of Ben’s bedroom, simply opening and closing the door while the boys ran down the hallway and back. Occasionally he would say “Boo!” Then the tickling began, both boys flushed, their hair curling with sweat, laughing so hard they couldn’t stand up.

Dad headed back downstairs, his work done, and the boys were asleep within half an hour.

And they didn’t even stir, an hour later, when the house was rocked by an earthquake.

The grandparents (my parents) arrived today and everybody is very happy.

Ben made a sign (spelling all the words himself!) that said “Welcome to California! I love you! Love Ben!” and has a picture of a train with a heart on it. After dinner, he lured his granddad up to his bedroom to talk trains and build Lincoln Log structures.

Eli clutched his picture of the six of us (from my parents’ last visit here) and ran back and forth from his Grandma to his Granddad, pointing out everyone in the photograph to them very carefully. He’s added two new words to his vocabulary: Gu-guh and Guh-gah. Context is all with Eli, because those same words also refer to granola, Grover, and Gordo’s Taqueria. We’ll try not to get confused.

And I made dinner! Which I do often enough, but my parents give me an excuse to try breaking out of the “pasta with …” rut. Tonight it was risotto with balsamic glazed mushrooms, a green salad, and braised pears with caramel sauce. Mmmm.

The scene: Ben and his good buddy M, playing trains on the floor, Eli roaming around in their midst. They are pretty quiet, occasionally speaking without stopping the game or looking at each other.

Background information: Eli calls himself “Li-li.”

The dialogue, in matter-of-fact tones:

M: “Eli’s crazy, isn’t he?”

Ben: “Yeah, he really is.”

M: “I mean, ‘Li-Li-Li-Li-Li-Li-Li,’ all day long.”

Ben: “Yeah.”

And when you put it like that, who’s to argue?

Kindergarten: I came home for lunch and my mom mysteriously sent me up to my bedroom to await my meal. Moments later she arrived with cream cheese and jelly sandwiches on white bread (white bread! unheard of!), cut into hearts.

2002: I’m a month from my due date with Ben (but as it turned out, only 2 weeks from Ben), standing in the grocery store’s freezer aisle, trying to choose a vanilla ice cream for the brownie ice cream sandwiches I’m making for Tony. A woman walking by looks me up and down and says snarkily, “It’s a little late to be counting calories, isn’t it?” Cow.

2006: My Valentine’s Day dessert does double duty for the Birthday Cake Blog Project I organized to celebrate my sister‘s 45th. It tastes as good as it looks. (But sorry, Libby, I’m not nearly so organized this year!)

2007: This recipe looked so promising, but to be honest, the cake’s a bit too dry, the filling a bit too runny (and why, when a recipe isn’t so great, does it make so much? why??). Still, I will coat them all with ganache, they’ll taste fine, and there’s plenty to share with the preschool staff. Meanwhile, the banner I made (with the hearts Ben cut out to make his valentines) looks just fine. Apparently this year, it’s more of an arts & crafts holiday for me.

The last time I went to the ballet, I was probably about ten. My mom took me to a New York City Ballet production of Petrouchka, and I don’t remember much about the event except wondering what made the ballerina’s cheeks so red!

We’re really kind of film/music people around here… I think dance is beautiful, and I’m always knocked out by the graceful strength of the dancers, but I’ve never seen many performances, or learned very much about it. Meanwhile, Ben’s interest in music started young and shows no sign of abating. He’s got a bin full of instruments, as well as two guitars, a ukulele, and a mandolin. He studies the fabulous San Francisco symphony kid’s website. And of course, we read books about music all the time, from Animal Orchestra, to Meet the Orchestra, to The Philharmonic Gets Dressed to Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin. He even has a 4,000 entry illustrated encyclopedia of music that Tony found at the used book store (Ben reads it in bed).

And yet, we still haven’t been to the symphony! But we recently tagged along with a friend who’d bought a block of tickets to the San Francisco Ballet’s special kid-focussed production of Stravinsky’s The Firebird. We got to watch students from the Ballet School warm up on stage while a retired dancer narrated their every movement; we got to watch an excerpt from the vivacious dance, Blue Rose; and finally, a full production of their world premiere Firebird.

Of course, Ben and I had done our homework. I’d found a picture book version of The Firebird, and we’d been reading it nightly for a week. I’d worried that maybe the story, with its demons and deathless king, would trouble Ben’s dreams, but he seemed unfazed.

We arrived early, in time to really study the beautiful performance space. We walked down to look at the orchestra pit, to note which instruments were already in place (piano, harp, drums), and we got to say hello to the trumpeter when he walked in to put his score on his music stand.
Then the lights flickered, we took our seats, and Ben and his friends watched rapt as the dancers moved through their warm-ups, then Ben leaned back and let Blue Rose wash over him.

When The Firebird began at last, I suddenly realized that Ben has never seen a live-action performance of any kind. The few movies he has seen are animated; he has never seen real people pretending to be characters. And he didn’t know quite what to make of it. He moved on to my lap, a little worried about Prince Ivan when Kashchei captured him. “Is that man real? Is he going to be ok?” And he still hasn’t stopped talking about the scene of Kashchei’s death, which I found beautifully, subtly staged (a flashing light and a brief black-out), but frightened poor Ben speechless. “He’s ok,” I kept whispering into his ear, “It’s just a story. It’s all pretend.”

He’s still at the stage where the line between real life and pretend is a little fuzzy, and it’s an interesting stage to witness. I want him to know and appreciate the difference between real life and stories, of course, but I also — almost even more — want him to be so moved by stories that they feel real. I think I’ll be a little sad when pretend doesn’t have the power it does now.

Sunday morning, early, everyone still in pj’s. Mary J. Blige on the stereo, Ben doing laps around the kitchen, strumming along on the mandolin, Eli sitting and coloring at the table, Tony making a cappucino and I’m on the couch with the newspaper.

A nice way to start the day.

We took the boys to see Dan Zanes today. I love Dan Zanes – love the music, the politics, the raucous energy of his shows. We have several of his CD’s and a concert DVD. Ben has two guitars, a ukulele, a mandolin and assorted other musical instruments with which we have concerts at least once a day. “Concert in the living room!” Ben will shout, “Dan Zanes and friends!” And he assigns us all roles. He’s Dan, of course; Tony (who actually knows how to play guitar) plays the part of singer David Jones; I’m Cynthia Hopkins, the accordion player; and Eli is Baby Colin, the drummer. We make a joyful noise.

The first time we saw Dan Zanes perform, Ben was nearly three. He sat still for the hour-long show, shushing us when we tried to sing along, pulling us back down when we stood up to dance. He studied the show intently and then, when it was all over and we asked him what he thought, said only “They shined lights on Dan Zanes!” When we got home that day, he asked us to shine a flashlight on him as he strummed his ukulele on the hearth.

Eli was a baby for our second Dan Zanes show, so he mostly napped and nursed next to his quietly observant older brother. I was wondering how he’d react to the show today, given that he’s now at that exuberant toddler stage, running full-throttle into everything. But no, he was pretty bowled over by the experience, too. He moved from my lap to Tony’s, not objecting to our bouncing him or singing along, but not really grooving, either.

Were Tony and I like this as children, I wonder?! Our boys were the only two kids in the theater who didn’t get their wiggle on. But we all had a great time, and I’m sure Ben’s going to bust out a few new moves and a bit more patter for tomorrow’s concert.

It didn’t hit me when, after seventeen hours of mostly calm and gentle labor, my baby, the child I was thinking of as Charlotte (or maybe Josephine), burst out with a splash, my waters breaking with the head’s emergence. I heard my doula exclaim, “Look at him!”

It didn’t hit me when Ben came to visit us in the hospital the next morning. I couldn’t take my eyes off my first born, so suddenly grown-up next to his baby brother, so proud in the button-down shirt Tony had chosen for the occasion. Ben didn’t even glance my way; he went straight for the plastic terrarium and hovered his hand over Elijah’s soft head, unsure about touching this unfamiliar creature.

It didn’t even hit me the day I was changing Eli’s diaper on the bathroom floor while Ben was sitting on the toilet, and Eli took advantage of the diaperless moment to shoot a pale fountain in the air, and Ben started laughing so hard he missed the bowl and oh, it all hit me. But it didn’t hit me.

It didn’t hit me until Tony and I went to see The Squid and The Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005), several weeks after Eli’s birth. Watching the film’s mom talking to her boys, calling one Pickle and the other one Chicken, I leaned over to Tony and whispered, “Hey! I’m the mother of sons.” And Tony gave me a look that said, “Well, duh!” and ate another piece of popcorn.

Read more about The Squid and The Whale in my column at Literary Mama.

Tony and I were talking about morning duty, that is, who rises with the boys and who gets to sleep in. Normally, we take turns, but after both of us being sick so much, the “schedule,” such as it was, had gotten out of whack.

“I’ll get up tomorrow, ” I said blithely. “Getting out of bed when it’s still dark is rough, but once I’m up, it’s fine. Eli’s so sweet and cuddly in the morning, he and Ben play really well together. It’s just about keeping the cereal bowls full and playing a lot of play kitchen.”

I had it coming to me, really.

I mean, I know by now to preface any statement about their good sleep with “Well, right now…” and to conclude with “It’s sheer good luck, truly.” I know not to tempt fate with foolish claims like, “The boys haven’t been sick in ages,” “Ben treats Eli well,” or “The guys are easy travelers.”

I don’t know what I was thinking.

Eli and I got up at 6:30. Ben got up at 7:00. It was all good.

And from some perspectives, the fact that within the hour Eli was bathed and a load of laundry in the washer looks good, too.

But without getting deeply into the very messy, diapery details, it was, briefly, not very good at all. It was, as we’ve been known to say sometimes, a bit of a haz-mat situation.

We’re all good now, thanks. But tomorrow I’m sleeping in.