April 28th

For the first time in months, we made it to the Farmer's Market. Today's produce picks were strawberries (the kind that make you remember why you like strawberries so much), salad greens, spinach, and beets. I wanted broccoli but there wasn't any. We also tried to buy some "Hood Honey", honey made in Oakland from Oakland bees. They are out of it right now, though, so we didn't get any honey at all. Oh, and as we were walking out, we walked on the food side of the market, and I noticed that one place selling bread advertised a gluten-free sourdough loaf! We bought it, and though it's nothing like full-of-gluten sourdough bread, it was still good--and so fun for the boys and I to eat a piece of bread that I didn't make. OK, maybe it was more fun for me, since I don't think they care who makes it.

And the highlight for the boys--the bouncy house. Here's a picture of Erik going down the slide


I also went to a baby shower, and Carl took the boys to a birthday party. It was a good thing that Carl was the designated parent for the birthday party. It was a 5th birthday party for one of Erik's preschool classmates. He has been excited about the party for weeks, and in fact we changed weekend plans so that he could go. However, Carl reports that as they walked up to the house, Erik did not want to go in. They had a bounce house set up, but Erik thought it was too loud, too busy, too crazy.

Carl, being the kind, loving dad that he is, let Erik sit on the sidewalk and eat/play/amuse himself for the majority of the party. Erik did finally decide that the pinata would be fun, at the very end. I know I would have had "you must do what I think is appropriate and I don't want to be embarrassed" syndrome, and I would have pushed him to go in until he realized it was fun, or the more likely he melted down and lost it crying and we had to leave immediately.

Without any of this knowledge, I asked him about the party when I got home from the baby shower. He said he had fun and he liked the pinata. So he wasn't disappointed. There's a chance the birthday boy was disappointed... but it probably didn't affect him much. There were other kids there, and Anders did participate in party things. And you know that no one wants a screaming, sad child at a birthday party.