Sunday BBQ

Today we hosted a bbq for our families, lots of fun. I am sure that Taki's parents wanted to come out mostly to see the grandkids but I think half of the reason for my family was to get away from the Antioch heat. Ha.

Maile occupies Olive. Or teaches her how to look like a scarecrow, I'm not really sure which.

Papouli more than earns his grandpa stripes by simultaneously playing football with Mason and baseball with Nikos.

Kira spots the pretzel dip (both cheese and honey mustard) and decides to try the cheese on her nacho doritos.

PS - the funyuns in the last picture are courtesy of Vernie, I do not want to claim those.

Do you still call it double-dipping when the chip has been dipped approximately 37 times?

Melanie has some kind of weird hidden talent for finding praying mantises (manti?) Anyway, she found this one somewhere in our yard.

Good times were had by all.

Wait For It...

Hall Pass

I sure am getting lucky with my Giants tickets this week - sadly, I appear to be sucking all the luck away from the Giants themselves. So selfish!

Tsan, a good friend from high school, invited me to the Giants game on Friday night. A good friend of his had four seats in the Field Club section of the park, hello, how could I say no? Luckily Taki took one for the team and stayed home with the kids.

Timmy!

Panda.

This one's for Nikos.

The Old...er Big Unit

Give it up for me and Carney Lansford. This is not exactly who I was waiting for, but you take what you can get at this point.

Whew, this girl has had some drinks.

Not quite sure what happened to the photo of Fiona and I at the same setting. Maybe it was on her camera?

Tsan and I at Acme after the game.

I did mention the drinks earlier, right?

Wahoo - sucks that the Giants lost but I had a fabulous time at the game. Thanks Tsan Fong!

Run Bases

Thursday night we had the privilege of going to the Giants game and sitting in my CEO's seats - great seats in the Club Level section. To top it off, the tickets came with a parking pass - wahoo! Since I received the tickets last minute (around noon on Thursday) it was a little too late to book a babysitter so we decided to do the responsible parent thing and drag our toddler and infant to a game that would most likely end about 2 hours or so after their bedtime.

Since Nikos' Giants hat is too big for him, and Olive's lender from the Eggerts is too small, I convinced Taki to let us buy them Giants beanies. (And by convinced Taki I mean I whipped out my debit card and handed it to the guy before Taki could protest.)

Here's Nikos, debuting his new beanie (and then his beanie-head hair) while chowing down on some pizza.

Olive shows off her new beanie.

We actually bought a black beanie for her at the Giants Dugout mobile store in the parking lot (awesome - no lines!) but when I was waiting in line for food a Giants employee came up and exclaimed how cute she was and asked why I didn't get the pink one. When I explained that they didn't have the pink one in the parking lot store she said "Hang on" and ran and get the pink one for me and just swapped it for the black one. Fun! Hopefully our third kid will be a girl so that I won't kick myself for this decision. (At mention of third child, insert me getting struck by lightning here - courtesy of Taki.)

Nikos made it into the 4th inning without too much squriming, at which point I decided to take him over to the slide and kids area to burn off some steam (keeping in mind that we were 45 minutes past his bedtime and I wanted to stave off any tantrums.)

Posing on the way to the fun stuff. Note he is wearing his skeleton pjs for an easy transition when we got home. Also got lots of compliments on them. Who knew?

Waiting patiently for his turn to bat in the little mini kids ballpark.

At bat!
Sorry for the EXTREMELY annoying screaming mom in the back ground! Oh right, that is me.

The (High)Chair is Mine...Mine, Mine

On Sunday night Olive made the big swoop into Niko's highchair for the first time. Luckily Nikos didn't seem too phased by it. For Olive's sake, she seemed to enjoy the new locale.

Bananas and Pears! (Bananas were introduced at photo #3 - as you can tell, she's not sure how she feels about them yet.)

It's My (Shared) Room and I'll Cry If I Want To

Cry It Out update - things are going well. (Sorry, had to pause to knock on wood.) Since we started last Friday I have not fed Olive in the middle of the night. She has gone down every night between 7:30-8:00pm and then I haven't had to feed her until the morning feeding. Twice we've given her a pacifier - once on Sunday night/Monday morning, after she had cried for an hour and fifteen minutes (and we were afraid she would wake up Nikos) and once in the wee hours of this morning when she started screaming and woke up Nikos - who then demanded MILK MILK and settled for water. The rest of the nights she only cried for a few minutes and then went back to sleep. Hopefully by the next week or so she won't be waking up at all at night!

NOT a Happy Baby

Olive had her 6 month appointment on Monday and let's just say she was less than thrilled for the weigh-in.

I'd also like to take this time to point out that Taki took her to the appointment, therefore the bedhead, with no barrette in sight.

And drumroll...Olive weighed in at 14lbs 7oz and (16th percentile), 26.25 inches (62nd percentile) and a head size in the 15th percentile. As a comparison, Nikos at the same age was 13lbs 12oz and 25.25 inches.

I'm going to need an L screen.

Here are some videos of Nikos getting in some work off of the Tee.

Park(ing) Stars

Here's a video Tyke found from Park(ing) Day. It's a long video, but Olive appears at :32, again at 3:11 (where the method spot is featured) and Nikos (and Taki) are at 3:38. Fun!

Breakfast for Dinner

Sunday night Taki indulged my cravings and we walked up to Crepevine fine dinner. I have to admit, at first I was bitter towards the place since it is housed in the location of my (now-defunct) Starbucks, but I am now over it. Love that place!

Nikos was very excited when we let him order the Mickey Mouse pancakes.



Olive was sporting some love for the Eagles. Which does NOT include love for Michael Vick. She was also sporting some Giants love (courtesy of a lender hat from the Eggerts.)

Happy Birthday Melanie!

Here are two futile attempts at Happy Birthday Aunt Melanie videos. I thought they still turned out pretty cute, even if they didn't achieve the desired result.

Three Little Monkeys

We met Katie and Brooke at the zoo this Sunday (wahoo season pass - boo grad school that Jack had to stay home and study for.)

I thought I would get it out there right away that we went to the zoo, since there are no animals in these pictures. Not sure how I missed them...guess our kids were just cuter.

Nikos by the giraffes (his favorite.)

Olive practicing the thumbs up that Nikos taught her how to do the other day in the car.

Brooke and Nikos on the snake in the Children's Zoo.

Crazy hair!

Cute face.

Posting on the frog.

Nikos on the tree slide.

On another slide.

Great pictures of Brooke jumping. She is such a great jumper!

Berkeley Marina

Yesterday started out being a bit of a disaster but shaped up nicely.

We decided to walk the kids (and Bosco) down to Aquatic Park in the morning to get some exercise and let Nikos enjoy the playground. It was a beautiful day and was pretty busy down by the waterfront since it was the annual Berkeley Shoreline Cleanup Day. (I think we will try to participate next year since Nikos will be at a better age - also, we completely forgot this year.) As we arrive at the park and are getting ready to let Nikos loose we see a few of the kids that go to Nikos' daycare. "Wow, what a coincidence!" was my first thought. Followed quickly by "Oh no you dumba**, this is not a coincidence, this is a birthday party that WE were invited too." Yes, in our box this past Monday was a little flyer about a 4th birthday for Kloe, to be held at Aquatic Park on Saturday. It asked that you bring some of your favorite foods to enjoy to help celebrate. Yes, here we are with NO food to share and NO gift for the birthday girl. Uh huh. Can you say feel like a jacka**? Just as Nikos starts running around and getting all excited for the playground I tell him to go give Kloe a birthday hug since we have to go...explaining to another parent that we had another commitment and just stopped by to say hello and happy birthday. Nice, huh.

After we drag Nikos away from his friends and the park we decide to walk over to Adventure Playground in the Berkeley Marina, since Taki has never been. On our way over we see a bunch of people cleaning up the shoreline, including a troupe of unicyclers, which was pretty exciting, at least for Nikos. Okay, I thought it was cool too. I'm assuming they hopped off the unis to do the actual cleaning? We arrive at our destination to conveniently find a sign announcing "We're Closed Today. Join us at Shoreline Cleanup!" Great. Parents of the Year, dragging our toddler to
to multiple parks and then telling him, "You can play at the next one!"

We finally ended up at a little park at the marina, down the street from the playground. While there were no real amenities, Nikos enjoyed throwing rocks into the water and watching the windsurfers.

On the way back we were walking on the bridge (next to and above the Aquatic Park Lake) and we saw a STINGRAY in the water. What?? I know. Totally bizarre.

Park(ing) Day Pics

One of Taki's coworkers caught some cute pictures of the kids at Park(ing) Day. Enjoy!