Eli and I have been reading Else Holmelund Minarik’s A Kiss for Little Bear quite a bit lately; also, for the most part unrelated, we have been talking about ways to solve conflicts. Hence the following dialogue:

Me: Eli, can I have a kiss?
Eli: No.
Me: No? Why not?
Eli: Let’s talk about it.
Me: OK, let’s talk about what’s nice and not nice about giving kisses. What’s nice?
Eli: It’s sweet.
Me: Yeah, and it make a person feel loved.
Eli: And it’s bee-tiful.
Me: Yes, and …
Eli: And it’s happy! And houses!
Me (momentarily stymied by that one, so moving on): So what’s not nice about giving a kiss?
Eli: I don’t know! Here a kiss!

Ben and Tony are off on the annual kindergarten camping trip, so this weekend it’s just Eli and me, on our own, playing tourist in the city. This morning we made a long-promised trip to the Cable Car Museum. It’s open 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, and yet somehow the 6 1/2 mile drive across town seems like too much to traverse most days, in our short window between school drop off, nap, and school pick up.

But today we made the trip, driving across town to a part of San Francisco that feels like we’ve driven back in time: this is the San Francisco of picture books, of Fly High, Fly Low and Maybelle the Cable Car. It’s narrow one-way streets, steep hills, and small apartment buildings. You can hear the cable cars’ cables ringing underneath the sidewalk, even when there’s no car in view, and you can hear the bell clanging from several blocks away.

We explored the museum, where you can go below street level and watch the huge gears turning the cables, and then we took three (because Eli’s three) short rides on three different cable cars, sitting inside, outside, and then finally standing outside, hanging on to the pole. None of the conductors would take a fare from me, all of them complimented Eli on his stripey engineer’s hat. The last ride brought us right back to our car, and we got home in time for lunch and nap.

Image source.

This is how the backseat looked after we’d extracted the two sleeping boys from their boosters.

And here are some road trip notes:

$4/gallon gas does help keep holiday drivers off the road, so we managed 300 miles today in 5 hours (including a stop for morale-boosting ice cream).

The ice cream sandwiches in King City, California, are so big even Eli can’t finish one (believe me, he tried).

Speaking of ice cream, drumsticks are “a great example of fossil layers,” says Ben.

We passed truckloads of garlic and broccoli, fields of romaine and artichokes, oil rigs (both off-shore and on land) and wind farms.

Visiting family is terrific (especially when there are young cousins to play with and a new book –no, for a change I don’t mean mine! — to talk about), but it’s always good to be home.

I had to pause a little bit when my friend offered to make Eli’s birthday cake this year–after all, I do kind of like to bake cakes. But then I recovered myself and said, of course! Besides, she wasn’t offering to make just any cake.

“Whoah,” said Eli.

Indeed:

As you may know, San Francisco is sweating through an unusual heat wave this week. Even here in the fog belt, the temperatures are in the 90s. I love it — I get to wear the sun dresses I buy (against my better judgment) each year and which then hang in my closet, mocking me. Don’t I know by now that I only get to wear sun dresses once or twice a year? But when the weather’s like this, I revel in it: we ride bikes after dinner; we barbecue on the deck; we go out without jackets and scarves.

But much as I love the heat, I know it throws us all off. Tony doesn’t really like it, the boys aren’t used to it. And when it’s this hot, even I can get a little crabby.

And so tonight was glorious and hot and we went out to dinner — but, you know, family life… it’s not always such smooth sailing. It was a good night with some bumps along the way, and on nights like this I wonder how we’ll all remember it down the line. Here are two possibilities:

One:

I pick Ben up from t-ball, where he and his buddies sweat good-naturedly through their one hour practice, and tell him Tony and I think we’ll all go out to dinner in the neighborhood tonight.

We park the car at home and get Ben’s bike and Eli’s trike out of the garage; the boys bike happily the several blocks to the restaurant, ringing their bells and waving to passersby.

We sit at an outside table, and the boys’ food (plain pasta and roasted artichokes) comes promptly. Tony and I enjoy salads–butter lettuce with asparagus and green goddess dressing– and pizzas (mine’s topped with arugula, goat cheese, sweet peas and mint; yum!) and big glasses of cold wine.

We walk and bike home. Tony bathes the boys while I sit on the couch watching a Tivo’d episode of Nigella Lawson’s cooking show.

Two:
I pick Ben up from t-ball and say we’re planning to eat out. He asks first to eat at the local tacqueria (ok for take out, but I didn’t want to eat there), then suggests Chinese. The Chinese place is fine, but we’ve gotten take out from there too often lately, and I’m not in the mood. I tell him where we’re planning to go–the casual Cal-Italian bistro–and he grumbles and sulks all the way home.

As we pull into the driveway, I try to cheer him by suggesting maybe he and Eli could ride their bikes to the restaurant. He loves the idea. We go inside to get Eli and Tony, who mishears my plan and somehow within a minute I’m sniping at him about I don’t know what.

We get the bikes out and head to the restaurant, a 10-minute trip that restores everyone’s good mood.

At the restaurant, the waiter is harried and inattentive. He brings the boys’ food promptly (big points for that), but the rest comes in slow waves, and my salad comes sprinkled with the speck (smoked ham) that I’d asked him to leave off. By the time my speck-free salad comes back, the boys are done with their pastas, and the wine still hasn’t come. The pizzas arrive; Eli says “I’m done here!” and I take him out for a walk while the pizza cools a bit.

On the walk home, Ben’s so busy waving and ringing his bell that he runs right into me. I yell in surprised pain, Ben starts to cry. I storm off–pushing Eli’s trike harder than necessary–my foot throbbing, leaving Tony to talk to Ben. There’s still a 4″ tread mark on my calf.

When we arrive home, Ben apologizes and asks softly if he can ride up to the end of the block and back, “super-fast.” I finally soften and say sure; he and Eli race down the sidewalk.

We all go inside, Tony takes the boys up for a cool bath. I sit on the couch and watch Nigella make a fondue.

Eli made up his very first story today (and then repeated it all through lunch, chomping his carrot at the end for emphasis):

“Once upon a time there was a rock in the water, and a dragon came to eat it. The end.”

#1: Sleeping in (yes, there was the 1-3 AM visit from Ben and the 6:00 AM visit from Eli, but I remained horizontal)

#2: Breakfast in bed–including freshly-baked scones from Tony– with the Sunday Times

#3: A gift of new lip stuff and chocolate

#4: A mama-centric special at Ben and Eli’s cafe (see photo above) and a most excellent mother’s day banner (if you look closely, you’ll see the letters are all train cars)

#5: A workshop/reading by the wonderful Lisa Garrigues, attended with a new mama-writer friend of mine

#6: Dinner at one of my favorite pizza places, with my three favorite guys.

I hope all you mamas out there had equally lovely days!

Libby tagged me for this meme, and while it’s not required to have any thematic focus, I found an entry forming in my head as I went about the morning. First, though, the rules:

Here are the meme rules:
1. link to the person who tagged you
2. post the rules
3. write six things about yourself
4. tag six people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their sites.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

Now on to the meme, which covers what’s on my mind today:

Six things I am grateful for today, while Ben is home sick from school (the annual Track Day at Kezar Stadium) with a fever and stomach bug:

1. NASA tv

2. apple juice

3. a patient little brother, happy to hang on the couch with his feverish brother (the bug started with him, so I didn’t mind their cuddling)

4. Tony running to the track meet to record “Feel better!” videos from Ben’s classmates (we’ve watched it twice and it still cracks him up)

5. laptop computer and a wireless internet connection

6. children’s tylenol

Finally, I tag Mama(e) in translation, Multi-Culti Mami, Marmee’s Corner, Fertile Ground, Having Enough and LoveBug and Rolley Polley.

Edited to add:
If you’re interested in ordering That Baby DVD, or That Baby CD, or the set, enter the coupon code “MotherTalk” when purchasing from the website, and save 20% on your entire order! Also, from now until May 18th, all orders using the coupon code “MotherTalk” will be entered in a drawing to win a new iPod nano.

I grew up listening to my parents’ music: Judy Collins, The Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez recordings, augmented by occasional trips into Manhattan for afternoon symphony rehearsals. “Kid’s music” as we think of it now, didn’t really exist, though everything my parents played, of course, was perfect kid’s music: clear lyrics (focusing often on peace and social justice); beautiful melodies. And my tastes now run usually (though not exclusively) toward the unplugged and the solo vocal or small group over the bigger, more raucous sound of a band.

When Ben was born, we didn’t run out and start buying kids music. I played him the Indigo Girls, Tony played him hip-hop. We were doing just fine (and Ben was learning about many different kinds of stringed instruments, plus keeping the beat very well) but inevitably kids’ music started making its way in the door: Dan Zanes, Ralph Covert. We signed Ben up for a music class with a local former indie rocker, Chris Molla, where he banged a tambourine and learned great old folk songs.

I didn’t realize how lucky we’d been with the music Ben, and then Eli, were listening to until recently, when we were given an “educational” CD called Color Train. I’m not linking to it because it’s simply too terrible: over-engineered synthesizers and a chirpy vocal, with inane lyrics like “Where oh where did the dinosaurs go? I guess we’ll never know!” which make Tony and Ben yell at the CD: “We do! We do know! We know because of science!”

I disappeared the CD as quickly as I could and we went running back to our beloved staples.

After the Color Train debacle, I didn’t expect much from the That Baby CD and DVD, but I signed up for the MotherTalk blog tour because something in the description of the CD and its producers made me think it might be ok. It’s a Mom and Pop outfit, literally. Rob and Lisi Wolf aren’t a committee of teachers and child development specialists who have compromised their way to 41 minutes of age-appropriate pablum. They sound kind of like me (parents who think having kids shouldn’t mean turning the stereo off for 10 years), and their musical tastes are right in line with mine. The track list for That Baby CD showcases the groups that created the soundtrack of my high school years: Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, 10,000 Maniacs, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen and more.

But still, I was skeptical. If the music’s that good, why not play your kids the originals, rather than acoustic covers? Well, we very well could, but the fact is we don’t. The CD is like a mix tape made by a good friend, someone who knows your taste well enough to put some of your favorite songs onto a recording, plus some great unfamiliar stuff. So, in fact, while I love Bruce Springsteen, the Springsteen song on this CD, Pony Boy, is new to me, and the cover (by Jaycob Van Auken, a Lyle Lovett-sound alike) is gorgeous (the accompanying video is one of my favorites, too). Stephanie Schneiderman is a terrific discovery for me, as well; I think she’s brave to take on Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game, but she brings something beautifully new to the song. Her cover of Peter, Paul and Mary’s Garden Song is a beauty, as is her take on Paul Simon’s St. Judy’s Comet (honestly, I like her voice so much, I’m going to buy her solo CDs).

The CD is now firmly established in our car music rotation; the accompanying DVD is terrific (except, I have to say, for the kids lip syncing to Brass Pocket, which we all find a little disconcerting!) Although we don’t watch a ton of tv around here, and when we do, it is hard for the boys (or any of us, really) to shake the family Oswald habit, they have started to request repeat viewings of the That Baby DVD, and I am happy to oblige. The That Baby CD and DVD make a great addition to any family’s music repertoire.

We’ve been talking about this for so long, imagining Napa Valley hotels and sumptuous dinners out. But whenever we made a plan, somebody’s kid got sick and we had to cancel at the last minute.

So it’s a wonder we didn’t try it this way before, because this is what worked:

A play date plan with a family we’ve known since Ben was a baby (their son is one of his best friends; their younger daughter has sweetly claimed Eli as her own) — both families together for the afternoon and dinner.

A casual, “And if Ben wants to sleep over…” When I mentioned it to Ben, he said no, but Eli said, “I want to sleep over!” So Ben changed his mind (no matter that Eli followed quickly with, “What’s a sleepover?”) We stuffed their pillow cases with bed guys, pjs, clean play clothes and the travel kit with their toothbrushes and flossers and headed across the bridge to their house.

We played all afternoon, ate dinner, got the kids all into pjs and set up Ben and Eli’s cozy nests on the floor next to their friends’ beds. There was no longer space to walk in the room, but no matter. Eli alternated between “I’m so excited!” and a puzzled “Why not Mama gonna stay?” But we encouraged the excitement, pointed out all the unfamiliar train books, and kissed them both goodbye. When we left, the dad was sitting on the floor with all four kids, the mom snapping pictures from the doorway, all of us excited at the possibilities in this new chapter in their friendships (remember the hotels, the sumptuous dinners?)

We didn’t want to head back across the bay until we knew our guys were sleeping, and we’d missed all the 7 pm movie starts, but downtown Berkeley is not a bad place to spend a warm Saturday evening, especially when a new branch of a favorite bookstore has just opened. We browsed and read and then checked in after about an hour: the kids had been excited and pretty raucous, and they weren’t yet sleeping, but everyone was quiet. We headed home.

The first best part of the sleep over was waking up this morning at 6 AM and rolling back over to sleep. The second best part was waking again at 7 and reading in bed for two hours.

And the last best part was when we collected the kids, after we got our big reunion hugs, after Eli asked me again (not upset, still just a little unclear on the concept) “Why Mama not stay?” watching Eli hold up his arms to give our friend–his friends’ mom– a great, big, arms-tight-around-her-neck hug.

So now I’m checking the calendar to see how soon we can reciprocate, and how soon we can get our boys to their house again!