That week my Aunt Mary Ellen and Uncle Joe were drifting through town following a conference in Napa and we made plans to meet up. The boys were excited by the prospect of a ride up to San Francisco, but then some plans shifted and it was rainy. We made the best of it though, instead of meeting up early for dinner, the boys and I took BART, MUNI
Metro, and then hopped on a Caltrain for a few stops before taking BART back downtown to meet for dinner. It was a lot of trains for what amounted to a big loop, but the boys have been asking to go on Caltrain for quite some time, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity. It was also a nice opportunity for us to pause and have some snacks since Caltrain is the one local train that they can eat on!

After the trains, I took the boys up to the roof deck at the condo (between tenants right now) to take in the gorgeous sights of downtown San Francisco at night. Adam actually gasped at the sight when we got up there. It really is beautiful.

We met MJ in the city and met my aunt and uncle for dinner at Fogo de Chao for a lovely dinner. It was really nice to see them, it was our fourth attempt to see them in the span of 18 months, which every other plan being ruined by illness (COVID, flu). We had a nice time finally catching up, and it was the first time that Joe was able to meet the boys, and the first time Mary Ellen met Adam. They boys did great, actually engaging in conversation rather than instantly demanding their phones for TV, which was nice. We definitely kept them up too late though, Aaron fell asleep on his chair toward the end, and they both zonked out in the car on the drive home. Carrying Aaron out of the restaurant, I completely forgot to get a family photo! Whoops. Next time.

The first week of November concluded by celebrating Gaby’s last birthday with us. I finally succeeded in making brigadeiro! With her help. And we picked up a custom cake that I had ordered the week before. Adam decorated, which is how we ended up with jungle animals on the tablecloth, hah!

We then had a rather chill Saturday that concluded by attending the Castro Valley Light Parade. It’s funny, we’ve lived in Castro Valley since 2018, but this is the first time I actually managed to see the parade! I was either working or traveling, and one year life with little kids meant we simply made it out of the house too late to see the parade. But I finally saw it!

Aaron got a light-up balloon that he swiftly asked me to hold (I’m glad we only got one!) and after about 45 minutes of parade the boys had enough and we walked out to our favorite restaurant just down the Boulevard. It was enough to get a nice taste of the parade though, and we really love enjoying events in town with the rest of our neighbors.

MJ flew out for a work trip later that night, so the boys and I had Sunday to ourselves as we did swim class, haircuts, and a trip to one of their favorite playgrounds. That evening, Aaron and I made banana bread for his monthly school project where he also got to draw the ingredients and take pictures. For a quiet weekend, it was surprisingly tiring!

We spent the week with normal life stuff, lots of school and work and random things like appointments, including a follow-up to check on Aaron’s infection (getting better!). The next day, he fell off his bike and landed on his face, earning him another visit to the urgent care. Thankfully, he was OK, having narrowly escaped getting stitches on his lip. Yeesh. Kids.

The next morning we were up bright and early for a Saturday morning garage sale! The boys and I go to a lot of garage sales, and Adam has been talking about his desire to have one of our own for over a year, but we’d never done one ourselves. We didn’t take the request very seriously because sitting in our yard for hours for a few bucks doesn’t sound like fun, but with Gaby heading back to Brazil soon she was looking to sell a bunch of things so she could have a lighter collection of things to bring home. Well, if Gaby wanted to do a garage sale, we might as well toss some of our things in too!

I don’t think I thought it through completely. Garage sales are actually quite a bit of work, from developing the listing online and putting signs around the neighborhood, to figuring out what we’ll get rid of. Then actually setting up, and then cleaning up when we were done! It was nice to get rid of a bunch of stuff, and the $100 we got for it was nice, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make me want to do it again any time soon. Next time we’re going to just make some donations, maybe sell the higher value things on a local Marketplace board or something. Don’t tell Adam, he’s already making plans for our next one.

That evening, we picked up our new au pair from the airport! She had a week of overlap with Gaby so she could settle in and get shown the kiddo care routines. I was grateful for all of this, since both MJ and I have been slammed with work lately, and it would have been a real challenge for either of us take off time from work right now.

The weekend wound down with a visit to our local Lego reseller shop where we all had some fun digging through Lego bins for a couple projects we have in the works (including one related to work which led to: “We have to go to the Lego store.” “Have to?” “It’s for work!” “I doubt it.” hah!). We also started prepping for our Thanksgiving trip to Philly and generally trying to get things in order for the winter holidays.

Mix in with all this, I’ve also been doing a lot more cat care than I expected. I haven’t written about it much here, but it turns out our beloved Zara came to us with a paw and tail wound that have been taking forever to heal. Her paw seems better now, but the tail wound became infected with MRSA and is proving to be a lot more stubborn. We’ve tried a whole slew of treatments which I’ll write about at some point, but it’s been a lot.

Still, she’s an absolute sweetheart who continues to love her wild human brothers, so she is still the right cat for us. Thankfully, as Gaby enjoys some vacation time before returning home, she agreed to watch Zara and take care of her, even taking her to a specialist vet visit that was really tricky the schedule. I hope she starts to heal up soon, but at least she’s in good hands while we’re in Philly this week.

To celebrate, I wanted to bring our success story and opportunity for projects to GitHub Universe this year. I was lucky that it was taking place in San Francisco, so there were no travel costs for me, and doubly lucky that the IBM team sponsoring the booth was willing to have me join them. It was a great experience working with the organizers and my fellow booth staff, we had representation from various parts of IBM so it was easy to direct attendees to someone helpful based on what they were interested in. For my part, I wish I had brought along a bigger sign saying something like “I give free stuff to OSS projects!” so the hobbyist contributors weren’t scared off by the more enterprise nature of IBM. Maybe next time. I was able to have some great conversations though, and could show off the work we’re doing with a screencast of the on-boarding process that I prepared on my tablet.

And I wasn’t the only mainframer there! Folks from Broadcom had a booth where they were showing off their Code4Z products that integrate into a standard VS Code environment.

It was a great event for me to be at to show off mainframe goodies to a distributed tech world that’s less accustomed to them. I was even able to clue in a few IBMers to the business we’re doing over in IBM Z land.

Personally, it was a wonderful event to be at to catch up with folks I haven’t seen in a while from across my tenure in open source.

I think my two biggest takeaways from the conference were 1. Wow, AI. and 2. How different conferences are when the talks aren’t necessarily the centerpiece.

Most of us in tech have a very different immediate relationship with AI than people in the general public. For us it’s less about results from ChatGPT and AI-created images, and more about what AI that knows how can code will do to transform the tech industry and what’s possible. We all knew that basic Python coding tasks would start to be replaced by AI, but we’re actually seeing that in practice now. No longer just autocomplete, we can vibe code a whole application.

One of the keynotes showed the presenter finding an old Bluetooth-enabled Furby in a closet and using an AI coding assistant to update an old open source software library so he could use it in 2025. The story here was that as a silly fun thing, he probably wouldn’t have ever had time to tinker with it, but now it’s easy. I’m not saying anything new here, and I do understand the difference between vibe coding a Furby and writing a production application, but in the near term it clearly will make some of the more mundane tasks easier to pass off to AI. I really would like one to automatically keep up on Node.js dependencies for me, it’s the most dreadfully tedious task.

All of this is to say that at the conferences I attended this year, I saw a real maturity turning point in the AIs-that-can-code realm. And GitHub is a big player here because of how integrated their code tooling already is in so many organizations, and throughout open source software communities.

Phew.

As for my second point, the talks not being the centerpiece. I’d say there’s still the spine of what holds the conference together, but there were fascinating experiences scattered throughout the event, both from vendors and from GitHub. The vendor booths was woven throughout all the buildings, and there was often a seamless transition between GitHub activities and vendors. One moment you’re designing your own Octocat sticker, and the next you’re getting a coffee while chatting at the IBM booth.

I enjoyed the building activities, our options were a GitHub light or a GitHub Copilot Lego model, and I went for the Lego. It was a nice little relaxing break from conference chaos.

The venue of Fort Mason was also lovely, and they had regular shuttles from downtown San Francisco which made the hurdle of transportation a more surmountable one. Both mornings I had an easy journey on BART to a shuttle that left from Embarcadero station. Once there, the gorgeous San Francisco weather we enjoyed offered the perfect backdrop. If I needed some air, I could walk down a pier and get a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge. They also cleverly placed a giant GitHub sign so that you could see beautiful Alcatraz Island through it.

They served good food and we had lots of places to sit and enjoy it. And after one tour through the main keynote building where I played a game to get a juice, I had no problem finding a shady spot to sit down and do a half hour of urgent work that I had to knock out.

The electronic badges were also a lot of fun. You had the option of getting one during registration, and they were little devices powered by an ARM SBC. As “hackable” badges you could play with them as-is, but also make some changes to the code included on them to do things like show your GitHub stats and they had a whole area with laptops that would allow you to do this (good thing, I can’t plug anything USB into my work laptop!). Once mounted on your device, they have a whole website of activities and other tools you can add to them. Cool. The scavenger hunt was also fun. I found they held a charge for about 10 hours, depending on use, so while I charged my overnight and took it off the charger at 7AM to head to the city, it barely made it to 5PM. I brought my digital badge home and it’s sitting here by my desk, maybe I’ll vibe code some new stuff for it, haha!

I’m certain that having such a fun and engaging space is all designed for encouraging brand loyalty. People have a great experience at these events in addition to learning things. I have always had mixed feelings about GitHub, and I still do, but some of the high points are definitely around usability, in spite of being built around Git, a tool that’s notoriously difficult to use! And usability includes feeling comfortable, which GitHub Universe did beautifully this year.

It was the first time I’d been to see a movie with just Adam, and all decked out in our matching Wallace and Gromit accessories we had a lot of fun together.

The next day Aaron was like a new person (one day cold?) and we were able to keep our whole family plans to head up to San Francisco for MUNI Heritage Weekend! This is one of our favorite events of the year, and we try to go every year. The booths are always a delight, and we picked up some MUNI merch (puzzle! socks!).

This year we didn’t get to ride the boat tram (lines were excessively long) but we did get to ride on the Melbourne car up to Pier 39 where we requested to get off so we could do some pier adventures and have lunch.

There we also got to see car 578, “America’s oldest passenger streetcar still on the active roster of an urban transit agency, and one of the oldest operating electric streetcars in the world,” as it was turning around at the Pier. And then the boat tram while we were waiting for a regular street car to take us back to the plaza.

Unfortunately we didn’t go on any bus rides this year, but we did get to see the vintage buses!

The following weekend we managed to get to our local Legoland! We were told about this place by our first au pair, Claudia, who invited us to come down with her husband. We’ve been meaning to go with them for ages, so it was great to finally go. It’s located in a mall in Millbrae, and it’s not huge but we had no problem spending over three hours there. Lots of little building stations, they were doing Halloween-themed activities throughout, and the boys enjoyed everything.

They also had a Creative Workshop where we got to build witches!

We did the little “train” ride 3 or 4 times, and enjoyed the 4D theater for a fun little movie.

I was particularly enamored with the center feature of the place where they built a bunch of local landmarks from all around the bay area, the central part being San Francisco, including a BART train.

It was a fun day, and now the boys keep asking to go back. It’s definitely on our list!

I also took the opportunity of being up in the city to go over to the San Francisco Modern Art Museum (SFMOMA). I hadn’t been in years, and I was looking for something nearby to where I was to spend a peaceful afternoon. I’m not a fan of abstract art, so modern art museums are sometimes a bit tricky for me, but if I stick to the more real stuff, I tend to enjoy it. One of the things I quite enjoyed was seeing the Daisy with Rider collotype by Eadweard Muybridge, but not because he was a good person, quite the opposite. I had recently started listening to the History on Trial podcast, and back in 2024 she did an episode called The Motion Picture Murder that I had listened to just a few days before, and it was about Muybridge. What timing!

I spent the night in a hotel in the city, which was a bit of a last minute decision because we happened to have a free night to use and I was attending the RSA Conference expo hall the next day. It worked out nicely, I got up early and went to the pool, which was a glorious way to relax before a busy day. I popped over to Moscone Center just after opening time for the expo hall. There, I met up with some open source folks I had planned to see, incidentally saw a few others, dropped by the IBM booth to get a lead on some AI stuff I’d been looking into, and had a lovely lunch with a friend who was in town.

On the weekend of May the 4th we had a somewhat Star Wars and Lego themed weekend. On that Saturday we went to Brick by Brick, our local used Lego store to pick up some Star Wars mini-figs that were on sale. While we were there we discovered a new used video game shop in the same small shopping plaza, genius location! We got a couple Nintendo DS games for Adam, along with another Lego game for the PlayStation. They buy old consoles as well, and seemed very interested in my R2-D2 Xbox 360. I’ll have to think about it, but it’s doing no good sitting in a box in the closet. On our way home, MJ dropped Aaron and I off at our local comic book store for Free Comic Book Day and we had a lovely walk home together from there. On Sunday we went over to the mall to the Lego store for their Star Wars releases, since Adam was quite eager to pick up Lego Chopper since I showed it to him a few weeks ago. I think that might be our next build once we finish my big R2-D2.

Mother’s Day began with swim class! I had thought about an adventure out to a museum or something, but work has been incredibly intense lately and I was honestly just feeling tired and wanted to have a chill day. We had lunch at our usual cafe and then dinner out at a local brewery, which is a great Mother’s Day spot since they don’t tend to be very busy that day, and I love beer!

With spring here, the boys are spending a lot of time outside (and so am I!). Aaron recently went from riding his bike like a balance bike to getting the pedals on. He’s really excited to be riding on two wheels like his brother, and we’re really proud of him for catching on and doing it all without training wheels. With how well both the boys did, I’m now a firm believer in balance first bicycle training.

Our town has an annual rodeo parade, which was cancelled last year due to some organizational restructuring and returned this year with a small festival attached. The festival was a great addition, there were tents out with various local businesses, along with food vendors and music. The parade itself was cute, though I wish it wasn’t so spaced out and that the horses were scattered throughout instead of being mostly at the end, since that’s what everyone seemed to enjoy the most. Still, it was a lovely way for us to spend the afternoon.

The end of the school year is creeping up, and with that the elementary school had an open house. So the evening before I flew out for a work trip to Boston, the boys and I went over to the school to visit Adam’s current classroom and say hello to the teacher he’ll have when August rolls around and the new school year begins.

Then I was off to Boston!

The day began with checking out a couple buses, and then getting in line for the Blackpool “boat” tram. The boys and I went on this one ourselves as MJ had to run off for an errand nearby. Aaron also had his Studio Ghibli Catbus with us all day, while I had my MUNI Catbus t-shirt, so we made quite the pair throughout the day.

It’s number 233, and painted with green livery (as opposed to the red) and came to San Francisco in 2013. I’m glad we managed to get on this one, as it’s the one that the boys have a poster of hanging in their room and have never been on before. In preparation for the day, I listened to the Ahoy! episode of MUNI’s “Taken with Transportation” podcast to get a refresher on these trams, and it made the adventure that much more fun as we sailed past Ferry Building on our journey down the Embarcadero.

At Fisherman’s Wharf we got off and got some great pictures while the operators took a break. To get back to Ferry Building we took one of the regular service F-Line vintage streetcars to mix things up a bit. Plus, it got us back faster, which was important because the boys were hungry. We met back up with MJ and had lunch at a nearby hamburger joint.

From there it was time to visit some vintage buses! I think the boys like buses more than trains, so this was probably their favorite part. We started off with a ride on the MUNI AM General 4154 from 1975. It took a loop through SOMA, making its only stop at the Caltrain Depot, which was a very specific stop for the day because Caltrain was also having a celebration: for full electrification of their San Francisco to San Jose route. As you’d expect, there was overlap in folks enjoying festivities for both transit agencies. Once that loop was done, we visited the booths in the plaza for a little bit to geek out with fellow transit fans.

Our final ride of the day was upon Adam’s request, the 2230 Mack Diesel Coach from 1956, with the very distinctive Pepsi bottle cap decoration on front. All the buses take the same loop, so the scenery was the same, but we all enjoyed it just the same.

Our final stop was the museum and gift shop, where Adam bought a boat tram post card with some coins from his wallet (and a little help from my Member discount). In all, a very satisfying day! And I was so happy to share it with the whole family.

We went on a lot of adventures. Possibly too many. The first day they were here we spent a lot of time on public transit making our way around San Francisco. We took BART up in the late morning and then immediately took a historic street car over to Fisherman’s Wharf where we finally got to ride the SkyStar Wheel (Ferris wheel). From there they did a little tourist shopping before we headed up to Ghirardelli Square.

Someone remind me never to go to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream on a summer weekend again. It was never a calm experience, but now it’s pure chaos. It’s loud, you hover over a table to find seating, and it’s quite the opposite of relaxing. We did eventually find a table to enjoy our ice cream, but I think Aaron was a little tired at this point so I had to sit with him for a while to calm down after he had a huge tantrum over not getting to finish the brownie on the sundae (it was offered to him multiple times!). Honestly, next time I might just take visiting friends and family to the Factory Store in San Leandro, it has a lovely little ice cream cafe that is enjoyable to eat in.

Once Aaron had calmed down and everyone used the restrooms the next thing on our agenda was riding on a cable car. We hopped on a bus and made our way down Van Ness to pick up the California Street cable car at the end. Unfortunately that’s when we learned that the cable cars had shut down for the day due to the Vice President visiting for a campaign fundraiser that happened to be taking place at a hotel located on the cable car lines. Thanks, Secret Service. Taking a peek at the time, we made a diversion to a nearby Grubstake Diner that MJ had heard good things about. It didn’t disappoint! The bus ride to Civic Center there did disappoint though. It’s not the best part of town, the bus was late, and I think that particular adventure was a lot for my sheltered Maine relatives, hah! Still, it got us safely to BART and all three of the kids fell asleep on the train ride home.

Sunday I wanted to be a bit more chill since everyone was tired, so we had a quiet morning at home together, and then decided to head up to Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland to finally visit the Chabot Space & Science Center. It was amazing!

The gems of the center are definitely the telescopes, and we’ll be back for some of their telescope events in the near future. It was fun checking out the exhibits, and there was a lot of interactive and play stuff there too, which will be nice to take more time with when we go there with just the boys.

They also have a planetarium that does shows all day, and I love planetariums. It’s also a gentle introduction to a theater environment for our rambunctious kiddos, and just like our planetarium experiment in Philadelphia back in July, this one went pretty well.

On Monday I worked from the San Francisco office and then Gaby was kind enough to shepherd everyone from Castro Valley into San Francisco on BART before concluding her day with the boys and heading home. This was when we fixed our missed cable car opportunity! We waited at the Powell Street turnaround for a while, and then caught a cable car back down to Fisherman’s Wharf. We had a nice walk and discovered the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park Visitor Center that has a surprisingly extensive exhibit about the history of the area, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. From there my sister picked up some more tourist goodies and then we got on a street car to head home. Mission accomplished!

On Tuesday afternoon once Adam finished school I packed up my work laptop and we made our way over to the Oakland Zoo. I settled in near the bison paddock for a couple hours to finish work while Gaby and Annette took the boys around the zoo. I met up with them around closing to go on some rides in the area just outside the zoo.

We let everyone have a chill, local Wednesday and Thursday while I worked from my home office, and then took Friday off for some final adventures! In the course of the week, I discovered that going swimming was on their California list, but the beaches are far and not really swim-friendly, so I asked a local friend what she recommended and that’s how we ended up spending the afternoon at the Don Castro Swim Lagoon. It was perfect! I can’t believe we hadn’t been before! Admission for the six of us was a total of $15 and they have life guards and a very clean facility. It’s still beach-like, but it’s all man-made and effectively a big pool, which you notice when you swim out to the deeper parts since you can touch the concrete bottom of the “pool” out there. We had snacks at the beach and wrapped up around 4PM to clean up and eventually meet MJ for dinner. MJ was picking up the family car in Dublin, so we all hopped on BART and then caught a bus to meet him at Lazy Dog right on time to eat.

Our final adventure was on Saturday, to a railway museum that I’ll write about soon. They headed out on an overnight flight back to Maine on Saturday night. It was nice having them visit and seeing the boys bond over adventures, video games, and even chill TV time. I also enjoyed having some quiet time with my sister to catch up on family stuff and how she’s doing in general. We live such different lives so far apart, it can be tricky to stay connected, but these visits every year or so certainly help.

The reason this is notable, aside from a very sweet gesture from my husband, is that while we were browsing, Adam showed an interest in build a Lego set with me for the first time. I have at least half dozen Lego sets in my closet that haven’t gotten to assemble because I don’t have a lot of time to myself for hobbies now, and I’ve basically been waiting patiently for our kids to be old enough to do them with me. The time has come! But I didn’t want to get too excited, he’s only 5 and his attention span is all over the map. We started with a tiny R2-D2 that I had in my closet, and then worked on the little freebie Lego they were giving away for May the 4th. Hooray!

It took us almost 3 weeks over evenings and weekends when Adam and I were in the mood, and Aaron was satisfied free-forming it with Duplo next to us, but we set up a big table downstairs with some little plastic bins for sorting tiny Lego bricks. It was a lot of fun. There’s a lot more Lego building in our future!

Unfortunately this was a little too exciting for me. I should be satisfied making my way through the backlog in my closet, but two new Lego kits have entered my collection since early May because I’m so excited that we can build them together now.

Speaking of hobbies that we can do together now, the boys have been fascinated with typewriters since I began bringing them home. Several weekends ago, we stumbled upon a local 1963 Montgomery Ward Signature 500 and we decided to come home with it for $30. It’s an incredibly basic typewriter, and it’s missing the cover for the ribbon, but it had the case and was otherwise in usable condition and we wouldn’t be heartbroken if it didn’t survive abuse from kids. We ordered a new ribbon and Adam has been having fun with “his” typewriter. I even added it to the typewriter database, though I did pause before adding it to my profile (maybe Adam wants his own? Maybe some day). Upon adding it, I was amused to discover that the only other one of this model in the database also has the latch broken on the case just like mine (it’s functional, just ugly).

For the weekend that included Mother’s Day we had a couple whole family adventures. First, we decided to make the drive up to Brentwood, California where there are a bunch of cherry tree orchards. We did it last year too and it was a lot of fun, but this time we agreed not to come home with over 4 pounds of cherries. Going early was key, since it ended up being a hot day, and so we had a delightful morning in the orchards. Then settled in for lunch at a place we discovered downtown last year.

Adam insisted we all wear red, because cherries are red

On Mother’s Day itself we did something I’ve been wanting to do for years: Taking Amtrak up to Sacramento to visit the California State Railroad Museum. Plus, in spite of being something I’ve wanted to do long before having kids, it’s something that the kids would enjoy too! We caught a train up around 9AM and enjoyed 3.5 hours there in Old Sacramento, enjoying a quick lunch before exploring the train museum and stopping for some doughnuts. I would have liked a longer trip, but honestly the train schedules and kid schedules simply didn’t align. Plus, it was hot. It was absolutely worth doing, but given the cost and timing, I think the next time we make the trek to Old Sacramento we’ll just plan on picking a low traffic weekend and driving.

Compared to all this excitement, the following weekend was a bit chill. On Saturday we took two cars over to Ikea for a very exciting milestone: Aaron’s first big kid bed!

Our plan had always been for the boys to share a room once Aaron turned one, but a variety of factors made that impossible. Back on May 21st of 2023 when Aaron was almost two and a half, we made a solid attempt at the boys sharing a room, but it went dreadfully, I posted the following to Facebook on June 21st:

“After almost a month of hell, we gave up kiddo room-sharing for now.

Little Aaron wouldn’t stop ruining Adam’s sleep life; they go to bed too late (and required an hour+ of supervision from us), would wake up in the middle of the night, and get up too early. No one was getting enough sleep. I think Adam is just too sensitive right now and Aaron is still too immature to understand the impact he’s having by pushing boundaries all night. We’ll try again in a few months when Aaron is a little older.

Keeping Aaron in my home office was out of the question now that he is able to leave his crib, so instead he’s taken over MJ’s home office downstairs. It’s not optimal, nothing is, but since MJ’s office was never fully set up the change wasn’t a huge deal logistically, and he’s a lot safer there.

I’d celebrate having my office fully back, but I’m too tired. Here’s hoping at least few days of restful sleep are in my near future, I desperately need it.”

It took a more than a few months to try again, but in case you can’t tell from that post, I was not in great shape after that first attempt. It was necessary though, Aaron was old enough to leave his crib phase and we didn’t have a solution for Aaron in a bed except for in Adam’s room. So at the end of April we began attempt number two. It succeeded! As well as it could succeed anyway, no one likes sharing a room, and every time Aaron is extra noisy at bedtime Adam likes to remind us that he doesn’t want to share a room. Sorry kiddo.

Aaron started out in a converted crib but at three and a half now, he was getting to big for it. Instead, we used “we’ll get you a big boy bed!” as a reward for good behavior in Adam’s room. We also picked up new sheets for both boys, since we figured a reward was also in order for Adam.

Having them share a room has been quite a relief. With Aaron downstairs our ability to use the living room after 8PM was incredibly limited, and I’m glad MJ will finally be able to settle into his home office. Plus, at the townhouse in Philadelphia Aaron had been sleeping downstairs in a rough-in bathroom, not great for him but also putting a damper on how we could use the house after bedtime. This is the best solution.

The next two weeks were spent squeezing as much California fun out of weekends as possible. We made the decision to spend eight weeks, nearly the whole summer break from school, at the townhouse in Philadelphia. The pandemic put a huge dent in our ability to enjoy it for nearly three years, and we have catching up with so many loved ones to do. Not being stuck on a tight schedule over holidays will be nice. But first, I wanted to enjoy California a bit more!

The first adventure was a Lake Chabot boat tour. I bought tickets online ahead of time and took the boys out one Saturday morning for a far-too-chilly tour around the lake in a peaceful little boat. Aside from the cold, the boys and I had a lot of fun.

On Sunday we had a couple errands to do in San Francisco and treated the boys to a visit to the Children’s Creativity Museum. It was a cute museum, and I was always curious about it because we lived nearby when we lived in the city, but we probably won’t go again. It quickly became apparent that it’s a very city-kid focused place, with a bunch of toys and activities that a small home in the city won’t be able to have, but many of which we have in our huge playroom and yard in the suburbs that we put together during a pandemic when we couldn’t leave the house. Still, Aaron was delighted to play with blocks and BRIO trains for an hour, and Adam had fun with various other things, like a topography-enabled sand table. We concluded our visit to the city by going on the carousel, and then over to Fogo de Chao for lunch (kids eat free!).

We concluded our day by stopping by Panorama Park on Yerba Buena island on our drive home. It’s a tiny and rather industrial feeling park (a lot of concrete!) but the views are spectacular, which is the point.

MJ and I were able to go back to the city at the end of the month to do a rare date night and see a show!

On Friday, May 31st Adam completed TK! With the school year wrapped up, we turned out attention to our trip to Philadelphia and flew out on Sunday, June 2nd, after spending Friday evening at a local “summer nights” event within walking distance of home, and then spending Saturday visiting a very crowded Cherry Festival in nearby San Leandro.

Looking forward to the summer. I’m taking a little vacation time while we’re there, but will be working for most of it. I’m still a little apprehensive about how we’ll keep the boys entertained without school or a walkable downtown, so I’m already working on my queue of activities and what we should buy for our visit.

The first was to a baseball game! The A’s are moving away from Oakland next year, which is heartbreaking. I wanted to get a few final games in before they move, but it was logistically difficult. So one day I took the afternoon off from work and hopped on BART to see a game. It was great!

I ate chicken nachos out of a helmet.

And had a delicious churro sundae.

And watched the A’s lose, but that’s OK. It was a delightful afternoon away.

As a solo activity it was OK, I think I prefer going with someone because there’s so much down time in sports and it’s really a more social activity. I think going to movies, museums, or other active exhibits or parks may be more my speed moving forward.

And I know I said solo time should be time that’s not work, but on a whim I went up to RSA 2024 recently with an Expo hall pass. I met with some folks and got some great work done, I’m glad that I went.

Then I got to the solo not work part! I took a lovely walk down Market street to check out the new fancy food hall attached to the new Ikea. It was really nice. I decided to check out Curry Up Now, an Indian street food spot that served up a delicious Saag Paneer And Chicken Tikka Masala burrito, along with a mango lassi. I really miss living in San Francisco, so even if it was a work visit, just getting back in my favorite place was refreshing. On my way back to BART I was also happy to discover that the entrance from BART to the mall has re-opened!

We’ll see where my solo plans take me moving forward. I really can’t let this time get de-prioritized again, my family deserves a happy and energetic mom, and I deserve a happy and energetic me.

“What do you want to do in San Francisco?”
“Just ride around in buses and trains and cable cars.”

That’s my boy. He also wanted to go back to the Cable Car Museum and to the new Transbay Terminal park where they have a fountain that activates along a path whenever a bus passes beneath it. With all these things in mind we mapped out a plan.

First up, we decided not to take the stroller. It was the first time taking both boys into San Francisco without it, so we were a little nervous, but we managed to keep walking to a minimum and relied on public transit. We took BART into the city and got off at Embarcadero Station where we picked up the California Street cable car. Aaron and I rode on the outside of the car while MJ and Adam rode inside for the first half of our ride. Once some people got off, MJ and Adam joined us on the outside and then we hopped off at the stop just down the street from the Cable Car Museum.

From there, we walked over to the new Rose Pak MUNI Metro station in Chinatown, during which we got to wave to several cable cars coming by!

We took the Metro from Chinatown back downtown where we then walked over to Jeffery’s Toys, which was sadly going out of business. We picked up a couple trinkets and then got lunch at a nearby California Pizza Kitchen that we sometimes went to when MJ and I lived nearby.

Right after lunch we stopped at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop at the corner of Market and New Montgomery for a couple sundaes.

After lunch we hopped on a PCC street car for a couple stops down Market and then made our way to the Transbay Terminal where we spent some time playing and watching the bus fountain until it was time to take our last exciting type of transit: a bus! It would take longer, but the boys really wanted to take a bus, and MJ found an AC Transit Transbay bus that we could take across the bay, through Alameda, and concluding at an Oakland BART station, which we’d then take back home. The plan was a hit for all of us. It was a nice and comfortable bus which was enjoyable to take, and Aaron fell asleep on me during the journey, so clearly he was comfortable!

That Sunday was quite rainy, and our only journey was to a thrift store to pick up a small filing cabinet to try and contain some of Adam’s school papers which had been increasingly taking over our house. During Aaron’s nap, Adam and I made a trio of custom shirts for Valentine’s Day!

Later in the afternoon, we made some banana bread and then some popcorn to enjoy with our stuck-indoors, movie-driven afternoon.

Speaking of movie-driven, I went to see a movie! I realized recently that something that would help a lot with life balance and mental health would be taking some time for myself. It may seem obvious, but our life is just so busy and we’ve been very reserved about hiring babysitters, only really doing it when absolutely necessary. Part of this is just a holdover from the pandemic, we haven’t adjusted our habits or repopulated our babysitter pool. But taking some time for me to go out, meet with friends, or just go to the record store on my own is so important. So last week I walked over to The Chabot theater, our local, historical, single screen theater and saw Argylle. It was so much fun! I also made some time to stop by my local record shop, and then over to the library where I picked up a couple books.

Last weekend celebrations began for the Lunar New Year. Adam had some celebrations at school to observe it and he was pretty excited, so I searched for some local events and found a lion dance event and crafts right nearby at our local library! So the boys and I first made our regular stop at the local farmers market, and then continued on our journey to the library where we met up with our au pair and her friend, and made it just in time for the dance to begin.

When that concluded, we made our way over to the children’s section of the library where they had celebratory crafts. Predictably, Aaron loved the crafts and Adam wanted to explore the rest of the library and check out a couple books. Around 11:30 MJ picked us up so we could go to lunch.

Before the sun rose on Sunday MJ was off to the airport for a business trip. That morning the boys and I went to the local Japanese Gardens. The boys love the gardens, they’re beautiful, have rocks to climb, and they can see fish and turtles in the water features. From there, we were off to lunch at our favorite local restaurant. Unfortunately, Aaron turned out to be terribly annoyed that we did the gardens instead of a playground, so we rectified that later in the afternoon by going to another park, this time with a playground.

Once all park needs were satisfied for the day, it was time to go home for the Super Bowl! We don’t really watch football and I can barely follow along, but Super Bowl Sunday is basically a holiday in the United States, and it turns out I really enjoy celebrating things with the boys. So we turned on the game, had snacks, chicken tenders, and little bagel bites. And we made and decorated sugar cookies. I guess making cookies isn’t a traditional Super Bowl thing, but the boys weren’t really going to watch the game and we needed something fun and different that we could do with the TV on aside from the regular playroom activities.

Then the game went into overtime right when I was supposed to start getting the boys ready for bed – oops! As a result, I was actively putting Aaron to bed as 5 minutes were left on the clock, and returned just in time to see Kansas City triumph over San Francisco. Adam was adorably disappointed because he knew San Francisco is “his” team, but he got over it within about 30 seconds and the subsequent bedtime routine went smoothly.

The week ahead promised to be very sugar-filled with a little birthday celebration for a friend and Valentine’s Day! We also have a week off from school coming up.

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.