I once read that depression can feel like a part of your soul taking a vacation, and it really resonated with me. First, because I do feel quite empty when I’m depressed, like part of my self is gone and I lack the ability to enjoy things and feel hopeful. But also because it’s a comforting story to tell myself. Where is that bit of my soul? Is she having fun by the beach? Going on some glorious hikes? I hope she’s happy, and well-rested when she returns. When I stop being depressed, I wouldn’t say I’m refreshed and ready to take over the world, but compared to being depressed, it’s a very clear shift in everything. Soul vacations work! I hope she comes back soon though, it may not be strictly debilitating, but every single day, every single hour, is hard right now.

Now that I’ve got done sharing that I am not being thoughtful and creative, I’m going to share that the boys and I did something thoughtful and creative for the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat. The holiday celebrates trees, and these days it’s an ecological holiday that’s typically observed by planting trees. We’ve tended to do little tree-related crafts on this holiday, but when Adam saw it on the calendar he became fixated on planting a tree. Unfortunately our small yard can’t really take any more trees and we weren’t able to find a local tree-planting activity that worked with our schedules, but I knew I had to do something. So, as soon as I was done with work for the day, I took the boys to the local hardware store to pick up a large bag of soil. Once we got home, we grabbed a giant pot that we’d originally gotten to grow a baby watermelon, filled it with soil, and then the boys planted several clippings from one of our jade plants (succulent trees! I can’t kill them!). It was a simple and cute activity, and seemed satisfactory to Adam’s desire to plant a tree.

Last week I had the nice surprise of my Aunt Mary being in San Francisco for a work conference. She was incredibly busy, but made time for us the final morning she was in town before her flight. I hadn’t seen her in years so even though only Aaron and I could make it up (MJ and Adam were busy with work and school) it was a real treat to get to see her, and for her to meet little Aaron! I also hope we can either make it to Florida in the coming year, or see her more if work brings here this way again soon, she hasn’t met Adam either, and he just turned five years old.

I’m glad Aaron got to meet more of my family, but I think mostly he enjoyed going on a trip with me to the city on the train. He was disappointed that we couldn’t go on a cable car and didn’t stay in the city for longer because we needed to get back for lunch and nap time, but it was nice to spend a little quality time just the two of us.

Over the weekend we took the boys over to the Oakland Zoo. We’re members and it’s just 15 minutes from home, so it isn’t something we spend a lot of time in planning for, but Adam shared that he wanted to go on some of the rides and the gondola, so we decided to make a day of it.

We started with a kids ride and the zoo train, but it was then getting to be lunch time.

For lunch, we took the gondola up to the California Trail and had lunch at the cafe up there. The zoo itself is located on a big hill, and the California Trail is on the top of that large hill, so you can see the bay, Oakland, San Francisco, multiple bridges. It’s a beautiful spot, and we even managed to snag one of the few tables outside to enjoy that view. It was also the first really beautiful day of the year, with sun and temperatures reaching the low 70s. It did mean that the zoo was rather busy and the lines were long, but it was all quite tolerable. After playing on the playground and enjoying the rest of the California Trail, we went down on the gondola and got to see an elephant and the giraffes before concluding our zoo day by letting the kids go on one final ride.

It’s now February. I spent January observing “dry January” to cut out alcohol for a few weeks. Just like in 2023, it wasn’t a difficult thing for me, but it was a change. I wouldn’t say it was interesting or helpful in any way, but it did reduce the calories I consumed! Speaking of which, back in July I reflected on my diet and weight, and how I had put on 25 pounds and wasn’t happy about it. I identified some changes I thought I should make, but at the end I made clear that I’d prioritize my mental health, and ultimately didn’t commit to making any of the changes I identified. I’d like to try to do that now. Let’s see how I do this time, I’m at 219 pounds now.

On Saturday we decorated and settled back into our usual routine, with an added bonus of a trip to Adam’s favorite restaurant to enjoy his favorite food and then some birthday ice cream.

On Sunday we held a little family party with our former au pairs. As requested by him, it was Paw Patrol themed. This was the first year he could clearly articulate what he wanted theme-wise, instead of me just following what I knew his interests was. I even made a Paw Patrol tower for his cake, even if he was disappointed that the cake itself wasn’t a tower – hah!

The following weekend we took the boys out to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Aaron had been asking to see more dinosaurs, and Adam kept asking to go to the jungle to try out his “jungle hat” which is actually and old hat from the Philadelphia Zoo, the provenance of which is unknown to me, but I’m pretty certain it is from when MJ was a kid and it happened to surface while we were going through some stuff in storage and now Adam has claimed it. Since the academy had a temporary dinosaur exhibit AND a rainforest, it was a perfect fit! Plus, the weekend of Adam’s birthday was pretty low-key due to everyone being tired from the trip, so I’m glad we got to go out on an adventure.

Our first stop was the The World’s Largest Dinosaurs temporary exhibit, there were a lot of sauropod fossils! And some partial re-creations of the Argentinosaurus and Mamenchisaurus. It wasn’t as exciting for them as the dinosaur hall we saw a few weeks ago in Philadelphia, but it’s as close as we were going to get to satisfying Aaron’s desire to see dinosaurs for now and he seemed happy with it.

From there we went to the rainforest exhibit, where Adam was very excited to wear his hat. The rainforest globe is filled with butterflies, which the boys have been talking about ever since, and we were all delighted when one of them landed on Adam’s hat!

Seeing Claude was definitely a highlight. We have Claude: The True Story of a White Alligator by Emma Bland Smith, a children’s book about him, but this was the first time the boys saw him in real life! Aaron told us he was scary but didn’t actually seem very afraid, Adam said he thought he’d be bigger.

We then went to get lunch, a little late, but we were right on track to finish making our way through the cafeteria line when the museum fire alarm sounded. It took a few minutes, but it was soon clear that the alarm was real and wasn’t going to stop, and we had to evacuate, without our food! What followed was about 30 minutes of standing outdoors waiting to hear if we’d be let back in. A single fire truck pulled up to the front of the museum which the boys enjoyed, what they did not enjoy was being hungry, so I had to pull out the snacks. Fortunately that didn’t seem to dampen their appetite for lunch, once we were able to return to the museum they both ate well.

Once we were happily fed, it was downstairs to the aquarium! Aaron loves aquariums, and I’ve been wanting to go to this one since I made this discovery about him. Unfortunately putting it at the end of the day meant that everyone was getting tired, and I suddenly wasn’t feeling well. Still, we got to enjoy the rays swimming beneath our feet, and the boys got to see a lot of fish, and the downstairs view of Claude.

Our last stop in the aquarium was to visit 93 year old Methuselah, an Australian lungfish that’s been with the aquarium for most of her very long life. They discovered for sure how old she was last year via some new DNA tests and shared it during their 100th anniversary celebrations. Cool.

It’s surprising to me how many new things we’ve been bringing the boys to. It is very unusual that we have a three year old and a five year old who haven’t seen so many traditional childhood things! And then I remember the pandemic. We would have been able to introduce them to all these places and things much earlier if we hadn’t been sequestered for two and a half years! So while it’s unusual, it is our reality. I’m very happy that we’re at least healthy and able to do it now.

That weekend we also went to a farmers’ market in Oakland after meeting with someone who had a non-functional Oliver 9 typewriter for sale. I’ve been on the lookout for an Oliver 9 since I got to use one at the type-in in Philadelphia in November, but I wasn’t going to move forward with this one since it wasn’t working. MJ encouraged me to check it out anyway to see if it could be repaired. I watched some YouTube videos before we left, and through a basic inspection in the lobby I discovered that it was in really solid shape with all the important parts intact. So MJ bought it for me! Along with some flowers at the market. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with things lately, and he knows that, so it was really thoughtful and sweet.

One of the things that has added to feeling overwhelmed is our four year old refrigerator. It stopped keeping things frozen in the freezer back in September and we’ve gone through a half dozen visits from repair and warranty folks over the intervening months. The timeline has definitely been lengthened by all our travel over the holidays, but it’s still a ridiculous situation. We’ve been effectively living out of my beer fridge, a large mini-fridge that we brought up from the garage, and only keeping a few semi-perishable things in the larger refrigerator, which was barely managing to keep a temperature below 50F. After our latest repair visit it didn’t even manage that, and the temperature rose to be in the high 50s, making it useless even for semi-perishable food. It’s now just a monolith that dispenses purified water. After discovering one evening that a bunch of recently purchased fruit had gotten moldy and feeling absolutely defeated as the kids clamored for fruit, MJ rushed to Lowe’s and picked up another large mini-fridge. Sigh. I really hope the compressor replacement solves the problem, living out of two mini-fridges isn’t very fun either.

The first full week we were in town was nice for settling in. Our little California boys were clamoring to go outside, and one morning it was barely warm enough for me to take them out to a nearby playground. While playing, I noticed that there was a library nearby, so after they got done playing outside we made our way over to the library. It just happened to be at the same time as an open play with a bunch of other little kids at the library, so while Adam helped me get a library card, Aaron went with our au pair over to play with the other kids. Then Adam and I explored the rest of the library. It was at that visit that we learned that they do regular events for kids and one of the upcoming ones was a magician, which we went to on a rainy day later in the trip and Aaron really seemed to enjoy.

That week we also had our friends Danita and David over to visit and then went out with them to dinner. They’re moving away soon, so it was one of our last opportunities to catch up before their departure, and I was keen on learning more about the progress of their move. Plus, Aaron wanted to see them because Danita brought along her little dog Blackie the last time we saw them, and this time she did again! He’s slowly warming up to dogs, and meeting a little friendly one helps a lot.

We have a tradition of celebrating winter birthdays when we’re in Philly over the winter holidays. It gives us the opportunity to celebrate Aaron’s birthday at home in California before the trip, Adam’s after, and celebrate with family in Philadelphia in between – plus a few birthdays for adults that occur then! Unfortunately, winter also means cold season, so this year it fizzled out a bit. We enjoyed the company of my father-in-law and his wife, which was nice, but others couldn’t make it for cake and presents, and we had to meet up with them later in the trip.

This trip was colder than the one in November, and it was a longer trip, so I think the boys felt a little cooped up. But we tried to do a lot of meals out, and we had little at-home highlights like fire trucks driving by on December 24th for Christmas Eve, and family members dropping by later in the trip once everyone was over their colds (as much as kids ever get over colds, hah!).

We also had some adventures on the long weekends. Little Aaron has been really fascinated with dinosaurs lately, so once I told him that he could see real dinosaur fossils in museums he’s been fixated on seeing “a dinosaur museum.” I was disappointed to learn that the options were slim in the bay area. Instead, we decided to visit The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philly! Our original plan had been to take the train down since the boys had also been clamoring for a train ride, but sparse weekend schedules and a cold, rainy forecast put a damper on those plans and we ended up driving down and were fortunate to find very close metered street parking.

I’d only been to the museum once before, back in 2008, and I noted at the time that it was small, but also blessedly not crowded like a lot of the major dinosaur halls are. Unfortunately Aaron was immediately scared, and clung tightly to MJ through our whole dinosaur hall visit. I guess he didn’t manage to extrapolate from what he’d seen on TV just how big dinosaurs are, so you walk in to see a giant T-Rex with it’s 6 inch sharp teeth and I can see how that would be a little startling to a three year old. Adam had a delightful time in the dinosaur hall though, asking a lot of questions before making a bee line to the elevators, because he likes elevators.

The Big Dig exhibit was a hit with both of them though, kids are equipped with a large paintbrush and get to climb on and sweep their way through “fossils” covered in cork bits over a long span of play area. It was adorable and I’m grateful that they got some real playtime in. Upstairs, the Outside In exhibit also gave them an opportunity for some play, and crafting, which always keeps Adam quite enthralled, even if the activity seemed to be winding down when we arrived.

It wasn’t all family stuff though, one evening MJ and I managed to sneak out for a date night at The Continental Mid-town. It’s one of our favorite restaurants in the city, and it had been several months since MJ and I had gotten and evening out alone together. Given various factors, it’s difficult for us to do regularly, and instead we opt for opportunistic lunches together when we can carve out time. I discovered just how rare it was when I dressed up and came downstairs to an incredulous Adam asking, “Mom, WHY are you dressed like that?!”

It was a wonderful evening. I had the best company, our favorite foods were still on the menu, and we got to try several interesting cocktails. The rain picked up while we were eating, so we had a soggy walk/run back to the car, but I’d say that was the only thing putting a damper on the evening, and even that was a little fun.

During the four days I took off between Christmas and New Years, I spent one day catching up with my friend Stephen who also happened to be in town Pennsylvania visiting family. But before talking about that, I’ll pause to share that it’s unusual for me to take off this week. My family is Jewish and even prior to that my observance of Christmas was purely secular and rather solitary, so I’d often work this week, and even offer to be on-call on Christmas itself so my colleagues who celebrated the holiday could do so with family, in peace. Thanksgiving was always my family holiday! This has changed now that we’re bound to a school district calendar. Most people in the US celebrate Christmas, so the “winter” holiday naturally lands there, and it makes more sense for me to take off when everyone is at home, and in our case, cooped up at the townhouse in Philly in winter. Some of my week was spent catching up on chores, some was spent enjoying leisurely meals, a library visit, and playtime with the boys, and Thursday I spent the afternoon with a friend.

Our plan was to meet up and wander around the lovely town of New Hope, home to lots of delightful boutique shops and dining opportunities. But it rained. Thankfully there are a couple things that you can do when it’s raining, like enjoy a ride on New Hope Railroad! Purely a tourist and train enthusiast experience, the standard railway trip take you on a 45 minute ride through the woods of eastern Pennsylvania, so we were able to snag a couple first class tickets and enjoy some wine on our little journey while catching up, and listening to periodic tales about the historic railroad line and the area. We also enjoyed lunch (and beers!) right across the tracks at Triumph Brewing. It was fun to catch up, and I always enjoy a good train ride. Just don’t tell my kids I went on a train without them.

The next day was Friday and MJ had off from work, so we met up with our friends Mike and Jess and their two boys who are a little older than Adam and Aaron for a trip to Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ. I hadn’t seen them since before the pandemic! Like so many people, they’d never met Aaron! And their own boys have grown so much since I last saw them. So I wanted to make sure we finally made time to get together, and Aaron’s love for fish made an aquarium an obvious choice. Unfortunately I planned poorly, and upon arrival discovered that they only had tickets for 90 minutes in the future, oops! I snagged the tickets and we found a nearby sandwich shop to sit down together and have lunch before our aquarium visit. Even then, we had a little time to kill, so the boys got to enjoy the waterfront and nice views of the Philadelphia skyline.

Since there were timed tickets, it should have been obvious that they were at capacity and it would be crowded, but it didn’t quite prepare me for how crowded it would be – wow! It was PACKED! I’m sure it being a holiday week with kids off from school contributed to this too. Fortunately, things actually went really well. All four boys were generally in good moods and listened, and we had some really nice moments. Adam got to pet a ray and take a bunch of pictures, and Aaron got to enjoy seeing lots of swimming critters and I think he enjoyed having other kids to hang out with.

The final partial week we were in Philly was pretty chill. We didn’t have plans for New Years Eve, so as soon as the fireworks wound down we went to bed. We were then back to work Tuesday through Thursday, but made time to meet up with family a bunch more in the evenings and a enjoyed lovely child-free lunch with my sister in law. I finally had my beloved buffalo chicken cheesesteak (I can get decent chicken cheesesteaks in California, but not buffalo chicken). Our flight home was blessedly uneventful, and the boys are definitely getting better about traveling, and we’re getting more streamlined in our approach to traveling with kids. It was a good trip.

The last big thing to “fix” was taking down the play pen that MJ built all the way back in 2019. It took up nearly half the living room, but the pandemic rendered most of it’s useful life irrelevant. I’m not sure it was age-appropriate for even Aaron when we visited for the first time in 2022, but they had both definitely outgrown it now. It’s disappointing that we got so little use out of it, but we couldn’t have anticipated that a global pandemic would keep us away for over two and a half years.

Work-wise, it’s the time of year where we’re all putting a lot of work into finishing major milestones in our projects and looking forward to the next year, but I was able to squeeze in some time to present at a Philadelphia area Linux Users Group (PLUG) meeting. I hadn’t been to an in-person meeting since before the pandemic, indeed, they’ve only started resuming them a few months ago. It felt like a wonderful opportunity to see some old friends and meet some of the new folks that have since joined the group, or would come out of the woodwork for a talk about open source on the mainframe. Nearly 20 people attended, and I was able to put together some fun, historical Renaissance-themed slides with my topic, “The Open Source Renaissance in Mainframe Technology” (slides here). Since I had some familiarity with the group, I was able to shift into a very casual mode for the presentation, which lasted longer than the hour I had allotted. Following the meeting, several of us went to a nearby restaurant to continue discussions, including my close friends Danita and David who I was delighted to see had come to the meeting.

I took off from work on the first Friday we were in town since we had shuffled up our au pair’s schedule a bit for travel and she was entitled to a three-day weekend. It worked out well, since the day was unseasonably warm and gave me to opportunity to take the boys out to the Philadelphia Zoo! I drove them down in the morning so we’d have a chance at making it back for lunch and Aaron’s nap – which we did! We only shift the schedule by one hour while we’re in Philly, so that helps with a lot of things that open later and we usually can’t squeeze in before nap time. Aaron got out of the stroller as soon as we entered the zoo and got to exploring. For half the visit, Adam was in the stroller, glued to the map and hoping for a zoo train that I was 90% sure wasn’t running. Once he accepted that it wasn’t running, I was able to coax him out by suggesting that he could take pictures of animals with his phone. It worked like a charm! He delightfully spent the rest of the visit taking pictures, while Aaron and I enjoyed the animals and found things to climb on.

That night, Danita and David came by to visit and have dinner. Danita brought her tiny dog Blackie, to give the boys an opportunity to visit with a dog in a safe, controlled environment. They haven’t really been exposed much to dogs and tend to be a little fearful of them, so it was a nice experiment. By the end of the evening Aaron was giving him treats without hesitation, and after they left he told us, “I want a dog, that dog.” Later in the trip when we drove past the steakhouse we had dinner at, he mentioned the dog again. He left quite the impression! Before dinner, we also got to use MJ’s old telescope a little. I had brought it out for the boys a few nights before, but my own inexperience shone through and I couldn’t get it adjusted right to see anything. David had a go at it and got us pointed at the moon, unfortunately it’s missing some pieces and won’t stay in place, so every time the boys barreled toward it, it got knocked away from the moon again. I’ll have to see about getting more familiar with it myself and see what I need to do to fix it up.

I already wrote about the type-in we went to on Saturday. On Sunday we drove out to New Jersey to meet up with MJ’s cousins Phyllis and Jack. It was their first time getting to meet littler Aaron! We met them at their apartment and visited for a while, while Aaron got to feed his second dog of the trip. We had dinner at a nearby diner that we quite like and has some pretty delicious desserts. A dinner social visit was also made to a couple of MJ’s friends from back in his school days who I hadn’t seen in over a year.

For this trip we decided that we should host Thanksgiving for the extended family at our place for the first time. This made us finally buy a proper dining room table, since we’d long since outgrown the 4-person Ikea folding table that I bought for my apartment in Pottstown years ago. I knew I wanted to get one and we’d discussed furniture shopping, but it wasn’t until I had a few minutes before an appointment to get the car serviced and a popped into a furniture shop that we made a decision. The table was delivered on the Monday before Thanksgiving.

On Tuesday evening my mother, sister Annette, and nephew Xavier drove down from Maine to visit. Annette and Xavier came down for the winter holidays last year, but my mother had never met Aaron before, and the last time she saw Adam he was only a baby! Unfortunately, it was raining and they had to contend with holiday traffic, so the drive down the east coast ended up being longer than it should have been, but they made it and we had a pizza delivery timed for their arrival so they quickly got nourishment as well.

On Wednesday I took the day off from work to spend the time with my family. We enjoyed lunch at a Jewish deli where we were picking up some brisket and gravy, stuffing, green beans, pumpkin pie, and a loaf of challah. It was a pretty chill day though, I went to the mall with my sister and Adam, and then we all went out to dinner at Toscana 52, our favorite local Italian place.

On Thanksgiving we picked up the rest of our catered Thanksgiving meal from a nearby diner, so we could complete our meal with turkey, mashed potatoes, macaroni & cheese, corn, and dinner rolls. We also totally rearranged the living room to make room for a couple 6′ tables we rented. We pondered buying a couple folding tables, but chairs were the real problem, so MJ looked into rental options and came upon Karley’s Rentals which worked out beautifully. Their prices were quite reasonable, their facility was clean, and their staff was incredibly friendly, helpful, and efficient. MJ and I drove down to the northeast to pick them up, and then drop them off again on Friday morning, which ended up being better than waiting for uncertain delivery/pick-up times. Bonus, everything fit in our SUV with a single trip!

Around 4PM folks started to arrive and I began heating up all the food. In addition to my family, MJ’s father and his partner, and her adult children with their own children who we’ve grown close to. It was a loud, chaotic Thanksgiving with all the kids, but isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? I also discovered that I love hosting. It should come as no surprise, it’s the kind of defined role with tasks to keep me busy and kept me away from awkward social interactions that arise when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing (yes, even with family!). I didn’t even mind all the setup and cleanup, I like staying busy.

We had so much food. It’s what you want from Thanksgiving, but we were flying home just a day after Thanksgiving, so it wasn’t optimal to be left with a ton of leftovers. We ate some of it, and made sandwiches for the plane, but barely put a dent in what was left. Thankfully our family has keys and promised to clear out the refrigerator after we left to make sure as little as possible went to waste.

Friday was our last full day in town, and with my family, so we decided to spend the afternoon down at The Franklin Institute. After returning aforementioned tables and chairs, we loaded the boys in the car and my mother, sister, and nephew followed us in their car and made our way to the parking garage. We skipped the stroller, which was quite the gamble! But I had a feeling the boys could handle it. Still, the whole outing was kind of a gamble. We hadn’t really taken the boys to a place like that before, and with crowds and noise and unfamiliar settings, I’m never quite sure how things will go. Thankfully, it was great. Our first stop was the giant heart.

We were there for HOURS. They happily ate at the museum cafe, engaged with loads of exhibits, and didn’t show any signs of tiring until they both fell asleep in the car on the drive home. It was the first time I’d ever gone with kids, so I saw the whole place through a totally new lens. It’s also different than how MJ experienced it, because he grew up with this museum, he WAS a kid there at one point! I only ever saw it as an adult, with other adults. It was absolutely delightful to explain so much science stuff to the boys, even if they can’t quite appreciate it yet. And I loved seeing them have so much fun with their cousin, who was happily helping Adam through the neuro network “Neuro climb” and so much more. They’d enjoyed playing with Xavier the whole visit, but my hope is that this science museum trip is one that he could honestly enjoy too.

Saturday was spent packing and closing up the house, and it was a stressful one for me. I don’t know how it takes us so many hours to do this, but there always seems to be a huge list of things to do on our last day, even when we’ll be back in a few weeks. But we were ready when our ride for the airport arrived at 3:30PM. We didn’t get back home in California until 1AM Pacific, which we may have to re-think in future visits. The boys suffered from quite the sleep disruption that lasted several days due to that late flight. At the very least, we’ll have to see about making sure they eat enough in-transit so we’re also not trying to feed them dinner before we tuck them in to bed at 2AM.

We weren’t sure we’d do this trip at all due to how much it takes out of us to make the trip, and knowing we’d be back again for three weeks at the end of the year, but I’m so glad we did. Timing worked out for so many visits with friends and family that would have been impossible over the winter holidays, and it decreases the stress we’ll have on that second visit about getting all our social visits squeezed in. It was a wonderful trip.

Sadly, the rides on the outside of the zoo are not included in the membership, but with free parking it’s still an inexpensive activity that makes them very happy. Plus, we can pop into the zoo too! On one small day trip on a very hot day, the boys enjoyed a couple of the little kids rides, and then we took the gondola inside the zoo up to the top and right back down again before heading home.

In other animal news, we also spent one Saturday morning visiting the Sulphur Creek Nature Center. The only one of us who had been there before was Adam, who went with his first au pair back before the pandemic! They have a lot of birds that are being rehabilitated, as well as some rabbits and at least one coyote, and an indoor discovery center where Aaron really enjoyed visiting the snakes. Definitely a place to go back to.

I’ve recently taken some modified advice from my therapist and started taking the boys out on separate adventures that cater to their specific interests. It can be stressful to take them out together, since they have very different ways of experiencing outings. At the zoo Aaron loves to stare at the animals, where Adam would rather run through fields and quickly inspect each unfamiliar symbol on the zoo map. When they’re out with one parent, it can be tricky to cater to both, and even when we go out as a whole family, we find ourselves dragged from one thing to the next rather quickly to keep them both happy. I’m sure it’ll get easier as they mature and can each better cope with doing what their brother wants to do, but for now it’s sometimes just easier to take them out separately.

In the spirit of this, I took one weekend this month and did an Adam day and then an Aaron day.

Adam likes typewriters, and I wanted to get my IBM Selectric II cleaned up and repaired. So I decided to take Adam for a drive up to Berkeley Typewriter. It’s a 25 minute drive each way, so there was a bit of a risk, but I didn’t have to be worried. I got my estimate and turned over my typewriter, and then we spent a half hour exploring typewriters in the store portion of the repair shop. Adam delightfully went around to various typewriters writing his name.

And I got to see the typewriter that Tom Hanks donated to the shop! Tom Hanks rather famously collects and uses vintage typewriters, and I first learned about his shop donations after he donated a typewriter to Philadelphia Typewriter. It was a delight to learn that he had gifted one to my local shop as well. And it’s a beautiful red IBM Selectric at that!

As a bonus, we brought home a professionally gutted typewriter that the boys could use as a toy. Adam now regularly plays typewriter repair shop, where he tries to “fix” it with a variety of tools. It’s adorable.

On Sunday it was Aaron’s day! He’s been asking for MONTHS to ride a cable car. He knows about them because I like cable cars and some of his books about San Francisco feature them. In general, my little two and a half year old likes public transit anyway, so my goal with him on this beautiful August morning was to take BART (train #1!) up to San Francisco and take him on some public transit downtown. First stop, a cable car!

I made the mistake of going to Powell, somehow forgetting that at the height of summer there’d be a huge line for the cable car on a Sunday morning. Instead of waiting in that line, we hopped on a vintage street car to the less popular California Street cable car line. I was quickly reminded how tricky it was bringing a lively two year old, a folded stroller, and a diaper bag onto crowded public transit by myself. People are incredibly kind, and someone even gave up their seat for Aaron on the street car, but it was an ordeal. Once settled in, we did have a nice time on the street car though!

As expected, when we arrived at the California Street cable car stop we were able to hop right on board. Due to having a stroller, we had to sit inside, but it worked out well for his first cable car ride. He could walk around a little inside, and we did the full length of the line, and then took it back to where we began.

From there we walked past Ferry Building to where the MUNI Metro line surfaces and took that down to the Giants baseball stadium, which he enjoyed seeing. We then ended up with brunch at one of our old favorites, the Delancey Street Restaurant.

It was a long morning for Aaron, but ultimately a very successful one. We took the MUNI Metro back to BART and made our way home after brunch, wrapping up our weekend adventures!

The first adventure was a long day with both a trip to the zoo, and a visit to the beach. It had been over a year since we’d been to the San Francisco Zoo, so Aaron was only a year old when we were last there. Adam seemed to remember it somewhat, but he definitely seemed more interested in the gardens and running around than the actual animals. That’s OK though, there was plenty of both for everyone to have a good time!

We got there in the morning and stayed for lunch, and then made our way across the street to our second destination of the day, the beach!

The last time Adam was at a beach was when we were in Florida all the way back in 2019. Aaron had never been to a beach! But they’d both seen them on TV plenty of times. They knew about the sand and water, building sand castles, and were pretty excited about the prospect of going. I wasn’t sure it would live up to their expectations, especially with how cold the ocean water is in northern California. I had nothing to worry about, my little California boys basically want to live at the beach now.

Little Aaron was definitely feeling the chill of the ocean water, but even through shivering, it was hard to get him out. Logistically, I think I was the only one who struggled a bit with it all. Sand gets everywhere, and there was so much stuff to clean. Plus, beaches are 45-60 minutes from home, depending upon traffic, and that’s a lot of time on the road for a beach visit. I think our next step is to find some non-ocean beaches closer to home. And as a bonus, non-ocean beaches will have warmer water!

The following weekend was spent with another trip up to San Francisco, this time to attend a birthday party for one of my friends in Golden Gate Park. It was great to see him and I’m glad we went, but MJ and I were the only parents there wrangling kids among a crowd child-free San Franciscans, so that was a little awkward for me.

When we wrapped up at the party, we took the kids over to see the bison paddock, and then what turned out to be the big event of the day for the kids, paddle boats! I had never done paddle boats as an adult, and I always kinda wrote it off as an expensive, silly thing, but it was actually a lot of fun, and now Aaron asks to go on boats all the time. Maybe next we’ll do a ferry in the bay.

At this point we were getting into “long day” territory and we had to decide whether to drive home, or visit the San Francisco sushi place we frequented when we lived in the city. We went back and forth a little, but decided to push on forward and get dinner in the city. It was a delight to see the owners and sushi chef who we used to see on a weekly basis, and this was their introduction to our kids! But just like the party in the park, it was a jarring experience to be socializing with people who had known us before kids, and suddenly our conversations and situation were so different.

Still, we go to enjoy a bunch of our old favorites, and even managed to find food on the menu that the boys would eat so they had a healthy dinner.

It was fun driving into the city, but I think our next visit will be via BART for a visit downtown. The Adam hasn’t been to Pier 39 since he was very little, and Aaron has never been, I think a stroll along the Embarcadero will be a lot of fun for all of us, and maybe a visit to the aquarium, given how much Aaron likes to watch fish.

So, what did we do while MJ was away?

The first thing to know is that Adam is a runner. He gets distracted or just goes off in his own little world and suddenly he’s gone. This is annoying at home, since the entire house is not, in fact, child proof. During outings it’s more of a problem, for obvious reasons. It’s something we’ve been working on with him, but it’s not a solved problem and ultimately we have to be very careful about what activities we agree to, knowing his proclivities.

Still, I decided that on Sunday I’d take the boys to the Oakland Zoo, by myself. I can’t begin to stress what a Big Deal this is. No one has ever taken our running four year old and a our two year old to the zoo solo.

Thankfully, it went really well.

The boys had some freedom outside of the stroller. They were convinced with promises of lunch at the zoo to not completely abandon me, and even on the playground I was able to attend to little Aaron’s interest in climbing every bronze animal while Adam stayed withing visible distance running around. We had so much fun! And yes, we did ultimately get lunch, which we got to enjoy up at The Landing Cafe, which is part of the upper part of the zoo at the end of the California Trail.

We have a membership now, so I didn’t stress about cramming in activities. We saw some key animals, went on the gondola, played on the playground, had some lunch, and happily went home around noon so the boys could get naps. It didn’t work perfectly (Aaron, why won’t you nap?) but with some refinement I could see this being a regular thing. Particularly if I wasn’t doing in solo.

That Sunday late afternoon we stayed close to home and I got a whole pile of chores done while the kids watched some TV. The most notable thing about the TV afternoon was that Adam asked to put on Blue’s Clues for the first time in a while, and he didn’t ask me for help writing the clues in his Handy Dandy Notebook! It’s an activity we always did together, so it was a rather engaging TV time, as TV time goes. It was a little sad for me, admittedly, but I am so proud of him for navigating pages in the notebook and copying the drawings down.

The work week was a little trickier than Sunday. Our au pair had the kids while I worked, but I’m still quite present since she’s still learning about the kids and their routines. At the end of my day I decided it would be fun to leave the house, so on Monday we all went out for pizza, and on Tuesday we did a BART ride to Target before returning to our home station for dinner at our favorite local restaurant.

I’d say Wednesday is when all hell broke loose. The boys tore down the built-in shelving in their bedroom during the hour they spent playing in their room in the morning. I actually intervened much earlier than usual (before their green light wake-up at 7AM) due to the shelf-collapsing noise. The boys preceded to get into trouble out front, which our au pair handled, but ended up being a pretty stressful situation afterwards. By the time my end of day rolled around, I was feeling the impact of less sleep and I decided to take the boys out on a walk. We went to the comic book store, grabbed our latest mail at the post office, and then swung around to the grocery store to pick up some necessities and some supplements to dinner. At this point some of the chores slipping was starting to catch up with me, but I was so tired it was hard to fix.

It was a fun week with them, but I’m glad that MJ is home now. In spite of flexibility, I’ve simply built a career that’s too demanding to have the capacity to spend vast amounts of time on childcare too. I’m definitely grateful I’m not doing this on my own all the time.

We’re now eagerly barreling into the Father’s Day weekend with plans to attend the Castro Valley Car Show downtown and perhaps take in a baseball game on Sunday!

As an aside, since I was working through all of this, if you hear any recordings of me made in late March, I sound like a bit like a frog!

Eventually we started trending upwards and were able to meet up with MJ’s father, at a park and masked up when we were close to each other talking.

By the end of the second week we were doing well enough to rejoin society, and by then the antibiotics that half the family were on would have done their job and we were pretty confident we were no longer contagious.

Adventures began with Aaron and I visiting a new toy shop that had opened up nearby. I picked up some loose and inexpensive Star Wars toys for him, as he’s really enamored with droids. I also got a few collectible toys for me, and an epic new pint glass.

We didn’t see nearly as many people as we had planned, but we met up with my friend Crissi and her new husband for dinner one night. Then on the final weekend we were able to welcome MJ’s best friend and her husband for a visit to get some quality time with us and the boys. We spent the final Sunday we were in town with them, and took the boys to a little local hobby farm where the boys could see and pet some animals, and Aaron even got a pony ride! It was a great find, we’ll have to go back with some of their cousins, but we got lucky that day since it was by appointment only and they happened to have a cancellation that freed up a spot for us.

I did also get some time away by myself. On the Friday before we left I met up with a couple friends at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia to see SIX. It was clever and funny, and a refreshing change of pace, since I haven’t seen a musical since before the boys were born, due to both a mix of new parenthood time constraints and the pandemic.

From there, I ended up getting a hotel room downtown for the night so I could hop on a 7:20AM train the next morning to head out to the Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference, which I’ll write about later. It’s only my second conference since everything shut down in 2020, and my first time back at a generalist open source conference. It felt so good.

A soggy morning at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia

Our trip wound down over the next couple of days with lunch with a friend on Monday and then our trip home on Tuesday. We took a later flight than we usually do just because of flight costs and availability, which unfortunately led to Aaron being a bit more grumpy than I would have liked due to a missed nap, but we all made it through. As a bonus, we missed all the terribly rainy weather in northern California while we were gone, so we’ve come back to beautiful, sunny days.

Life with an infant continues to be tiring, so we don’t have a lot of spare time for things, but I have been carving out some time in the evenings to wind down and read for a bit. I also decided hobby-wise I need something. So one thing I decided to resurrect is my news blog/fan site over on WallaceAndGromit.net. I started working on it in 2002, but until this week my last entry was five years ago. Things dropped off when I was working on my OpenStack book, and then I got very busy with my new developer advocacy career, so a lot of energy was put into building my expertise on that path, and then kids really made my life busy. But I love Wallace and Gromit, and keeping up with their news is great when you have kids! Shaun the Sheep is a lot of fun for kids, and I can’t wait to introduce The Wrong Trousers to Adam and Aaron. It’s also a less computer-y hobby, and one that’s social, so I think it’s a good one to get back on top of right now. We’ll see how it goes when I return to work in a few weeks.

In family bonding news, we’ve been taking advantage of the nice weather and going out for walks every day, and sometimes even going on adventures further afar now that some outdoor spaces are opening. Last Thursday our au pair and I took Adam and Aaron out to Lake Chabot Park where we played on a field and then went on a short walk by the lake.

Friday was our big zoo day! The zoos have been opened and closed a couple times during the pandemic, but since most of the exhibits are outdoors, it feels like a safe, and much-needed escape for families looking for something to do — including ours. We first thought we’d go to the Oakland Zoo, but with limited occupancy numbers and what seems like every family in the east bay wanting to go, it was actually quite tricky to get tickets. Instead we made our way over to my beloved San Francisco Zoo. It’s much further away, and a smaller zoo, but it was my “home” zoo for nearly a decade, and I’ve been there many times. They also require timed ticket entry to manage capacity, but they were easy to get. It was the first big family outing with our au pair and the kids since the pandemic began, so it was notable. We had a really good time, and I’m pretty sure Adam wants to go every day now (me too!).

Valentine’s Day this year was pretty low-key. We had a nice take-out brunch, including some great Lobster Eggs Benedict for me. MJ splurged on a couple dozen roses and chocolates for me, but our dinner of Thai take-out was interrupted by Aaron deciding to continue a multi-day sleep regression that had him waking up every 45 minutes around the clock. With restaurants closed anyway, it was never going to be a big, fancy dinner of years past, but I do look forward to getting back to those date nights when the pandemic is over and the kids are a bit older.

This week our au pair is on vacation, which means for the first time we have both kids non-stop for over a week. My hats off to stay at home moms who are caring for small children, this is tough! Especially with a sleep regression thrown in! Showers are now an every-other-day thing, and I’m barely keeping up with chores because I’m so tired from the overnight shift. MJ and I have been mixing up the overnight schedule a little, I’ve found that 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep seems to serve me better than getting the same amount (or even a little more) in 2-3 chunks, so we’re trying that now. Still, it’s hard to operate on so little sleep day after day. I’m continuing to try to enjoy the tiny, snuggly baby time as much as I can, but I’m also looking forward to him being a little older and sleeping better.

I arrived later than anticipated on Friday due to a cancelled flight. In retrospect, I was grateful that I was able to at least arrive on the right day, another colleague of mine wasn’t so lucky and found himself put on a flight that wouldn’t get him in until Saturday. I thought I’d be tired upon my arrival, but the jet lag was doing its work and I managed to have enough time to drop my bags off at my hotel and make my way over to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary to catch the tail end of their opening hours and pet some critters!

I kind of joke that I want to pet a new animal each time I visit Australia. It was easy at first, finding a place where you can pet kangaroos and koalas is pretty straight-forward. Then it starts getting harder. You can’t pet Tasmanian devils, so on my trip to Tasmania I managed to pet a baby wombat instead. I didn’t get to pet any new critters while I was in Sydney a couple years ago, but this time I really wanted to pet something new. The dingo petting tours were sold out for the day, but while walking around the free-range feeding area I spotted a couple emus, with children petting them! The emu was not on my list of things I wanted to pet, they’re huge and I’m generally afraid of birds. Still, I had a goal, and bravely walked up to the critter and quickly petted it before making a hasty retreat!

More photos from my adventure here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157712791286013

On Saturday I met up with my friend Steve from Sydney, who was also staying in Brisbane over the weekend prior to the conference. We didn’t have super solid plans for the day, but there are a couple sights to see in the city, so we just started walking. We passed by City Hall and learned about the historic clock tour and picked up tickets for later in the day and did a quick loop around the small museum they have there at City Hall. We walked past the hilariously poetic casino housed in the historic treasury building. Then it was over a bridge to have lunch at a Saccharomyces Beer Cafe before making our way to the Queensland Museum where we got to see some dinosaurs, and a stuffed cassowary that was kept far from the other animals (even dangerous when they’re dead? hah!).

I think the highlight of my day was the clock tour tour. It wasn’t long or extensive in any way, but it was a fun surprise. The whole thing takes about 12 minutes, during which they take you up in a beautiful, historic elevator (lift) up to the 12th floor to walk around and see the sights from what was once the highest point in the city. From there they stop for a minute on the 11th floor where the clocks actually live, but you aren’t permitted to get out due to fears of damaging the clock equipment. Still, it was interesting to see, and learn about.

Sunday was travel to Gold Coast day! I say “travel” but it was an easy train ride down there, plus a cab for the final few miles to my hotel. There I went to visit the beach (it is Gold Coast, after all!) and met up with people for food. I didn’t end up swimming at the beach at all, which I’m a little disappointed about, but with this being my first big trip away from my new family, I put a high value on sleep, and a sandy beach visit just didn’t make the cut.

Some more photos from my walks around Brisbane and Gold Coast here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157712789955952

The conference itself was as spectacular as ever, and I’ll write about that later. But I wasn’t done with touristing. Steve and I met up at 3:30AM one morning for a group shuttle that would take a whole basket-full of tourists up in a hot air balloon! It was an experience that had been on my list for some time, but it’s common for them to want to lift off at extremely early times, so I could never make it happen. This was the perfect opportunity. By 5:30AM we were up in a balloon for a beautiful ride over the hills and farms inland from Gold Coast.

The timing of the tour meant that the only bit of the conference we missed were the keynotes, which was a trade-off I was willing to make. Five-day conferences are pretty intense, especially when I’m on the hook for giving two talks.

Hot air balloons are interesting things. The only real control the pilot has is to go up and down, aside from that the whole adventure is dependent on the wind. As a result, every ride is different and you never really know where you’ll end up. The company who runs the tours has agreements with many of the local farmers to land in their fields, under certain conditions, and the farmers are compensated for this. It’s a nice system. We landed on the far end of a field full of cows! When the ride concluded, we had the option of helping them pack away the hot air balloon, which was actually a lot of fun.

We were then shuttled off to a local winery for a champagne breakfast, in keeping with an international tradition of having champagne at the conclusion of a hot air balloon ride. I also took the opportunity while there to do an 8AM wine tasting, and for some reason they had alpacas! So I got to visit those too, and walked along a stream where they have wild platypuses, but I didn’t see any. There were some ducks though.

Check out more photos from the day (including the alpacas!) here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/albums/72157712789962642

Australia is one of my favorite places in the world, so I’m glad I was able to do a bit of tourist stuff the weekend before the conference. Bonus that it helped me adjust to jet lag quickly, so I was at the top of my game for my first talk on Monday.