Amanda is still on call, and she had to go in early for another delivery. I drove her to the hospital (with the Kai), spent a bit of time back home entertaining the little one with “Busik!”, and then went off to the commercial mecca Southcenter area to try to get some errands done. As it turned out, nothing real got done. I did score a free lunch at Ivar’s for Lonan Kai. Sweet!
I tried to look for Peter McCarty books at Borders. We had acquired Hondo and Fabian yesterday at the Bookworm Exchange, and I found it awesome (Lonan Kai finds it kinda meh, though). I could not find it. And why is it so hard to find kids books in stores anyway? I have not been able to figure out how stuff is organized.
I managed to get the Kai home without him falling asleep, and he went down for his afternoon nap relatively easily. While he was asleep, I cleaned up, saw that our three new fish were still alive, unclogged the water barrel’s filter, surfed the net a bit, and played with the cats.
When the Kai awoke, I was going to take him to visit Amanda at work, drop off the car so she would not have to walk to the bus or light rail later in the evening, and then explore downtown with the Kai and take the train home. However, Amanda’s delivery went very very quick, and she just took the bus home and arrived a few minutes before the Kai woke up (screaming of course).
On her way out of the hospital, she ran into someone who lived in her freshman dorm at Cornell; he had just moved into the area in the past couple of months and his wife was possibly going into labor. Funny.
We then went to the Essential Baking Company in Madison Valley for a snack before trying to go to the Japanese Garden. Unfortunately, there was some type of children’s league game going on (soccer? softball?) so there was no parking to be had. We went up to the north end of the Arboretum to walk about and check out the duckies. We almost got run over by cars speeding through the parking lot; they must be Broadmoor residents as who else would drive through that fast?
We did see some duckies. Amanda contributed to duck diabetes by feeding them some of Lonan Kai’s cereal. Lonan Kai was full of energy as he must have run almost continuously for 30 or so minutes.
Back home, it was an improvised stir fry for dinner, more “Busik!” for Lonan Kai, and then bath and bed for the little one. Actually, before dinner we walked to the garden for grapes and some quick weeding. We now have a bee hive in the garden which is cool. We picked a big zucchini which Lonan Kai took many bites out of before we got back to the house.
This is the second substantial entry in a row. Maybe it is a sign of good things to come.

21 SEP 2009 : MONDAY

Amanda has Mondays off, but she usually works most of the day charting. This Monday was no exception, although I did take her to work so that Lonan Kai would not be distracted by her. My Mom spent the day hanging out with her grandson. As did I.
Amanda and I had our third date night of the year (shocking, I know). My Mom watched the Kai. We walked to Columbia City and went to Verve Wine Bar and Cellar.

I had been only once before a long time ago with Amanda (she had also been wine tasting there with Eve), but then they were just serving crepes. They had many more things on the menu now, and since we were there early we took advantage of their Happy Hour specials… a bunch of small plates for $3 and $3 off flights of wine. I noted that everything had some sort of wine or alcohol ingredient.

Our waitress was pretty funny. For some reason I thought she was Australian.

We got:

• cheese of the day (a cherve) with tasty crispy bread things
• grilled figs with honey and cheese (I forget what)
• grilled brussell spouts
• some sort of risotto for Amanda
• rare salmon with lobster mushrooms for me
• flight of Northwest wine for me
• flight of classic French wine for Amanda

Amanda wanted to get a chocolate torte for dessert, but they were out! The chef agreed to whip something up and made a chocolate covered cheesecake thing for her with a paired port. She liked it. I got a pistachio and something bread pudding with another sweet wine that I don’t recall.

My Mom apparently had litle trouble bathing Lk and putting him to bed. I think we tried to watch a streaming Netflix movie but failed.

22 SEP 2009 : TUESDAY

Amanda worked and was on call all night. I kept the Kai home again to spend more quality time with his Lola. We just stayed at home and let him burn off energy by running about outside.

Amanda had a delivery, but managed to get back home before I took my Mom to the airport for her redeye flight back to the East Coast.

She apparently had an interesting flight. Right as they were just about to take off from Seatac, there was a loud grinding noise and the airplane lost power and all hydraulics (according to the pilot). Oops. Good thing that whatever had happened did not happen right after take off. As it was, they had to get towed back to the gate. There was another plane available for a flight next morning, so they were able to leave albeit three hours late.

23 SEP 2009 : WEDNESDAY – 25 SEP 2009 : FRIDAY

Life as usual. Amanda is all call all weekend. Friday was American Indian Day, and Amanda had the day off, but she had to go in to handle a delivery all day. But she should get the day off another time.

26 SEP 2009 : SATURDAY

I took the Kai to South 47 Farm for the annual Harvest Celebration and Farm Tour. Amanda wanted to go as well, but since she was on call she had to go into the hospital and round on patients. We have been to a lot of the farms on the tour before, but South 47 is probably the closest and is good for little progenies. We had gone last year with him as well.

This year we met up with Ann, Mike, Connor, Jackie, Jeff, and Calvin. Lonan Kai was very interested in the farm animals. He kept calling the alpacas “llamas”, but afterwards throughout the day he chanted “a-paca” at random intervals. We took a hayride around the farm. Afterwards the ride the imperious Kai started screaming about something and I had no idea what because we were surrounded by possibly interesting things. I just dropped him and he ran directly to the fresh cider donuts. How about that.

I briefly stayed for the beginning of a cooking demonstration, but then decided to get the Kai home before he passed out. As it was, me fell asleep in the car, and once home I could not get him to sleep despite trying for almost two hours. So he basically slept for perhaps 15 minutes whereas he normally sleeps for a couple of hours.
Amanda came home around 2 pm bearing gifts of banh mi. I love banh mi… who can argue with what is basically a foot long sub for under $2. Of course, I probably could’ve eaten three of them.

We went out on a adventure to Oasis Water Gardens to get a few fish for our new water feature. It was a little cold, so it was hard to tell how vigorous the fish were, but I did try to choose lively ones with all their fins intact.

I dropped LK and Amanda off at the community center at Genesse Park while I returned home to drop off our newly acquired three fishes. Piglet was outside and immediately investigated the bag that I dropped into the water barrel. I hope that does not bode ill for them.

I returned to pick up Amanda and LK and we went to El Sombrero for dinner. We had been eating out a lot, but I had some money from my Mom that she gave me for the express purpose of eating out. Thanks Mom! I think we have eaten Mexican food for the fourth time in the last seven days, but Amanda loves it. This time, they make Lonan Kai up a little plate of fish and rice and beans just for himself; usually he just scarfed up the fish from my tacos.

Afterwards, Amanda had tried to buy me a gift sneakily at the gallery next door, but I walked in on her purchase. It was a magnet that looks like Armando!

Armando has more white on his belly and a little white on his nose, but it does look like him.

We also stopped in the bookstore and got Mr. Kai a couple of used children’s books.

Now, the formerly rampaging Kai is asleep, and he did so quite easily. Through the afternoon and evening he had been saying “what? what?” and “I’m not tired!” (well, in toddlerspeak), just like the Pigeon in Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. Funny.

My mom is visiting, but she will leave on the redeye Tuesday. She is mainly spending quality time with Lonan Kai, and he has been very agreeable.
I picked her up on Friday and we had lunch at Southcenter and spent a while talking before picking up Lonan Kai from school. I later picked up Amanda from work and there were fajitas for dinner. She had a rough time recently and had basically worked 36 hours.
Saturday it rained. A lot. We did our traditional rainy day activity: going to the aquarium. After lunch at home, we did… something. I think Amanda rested while my Mom and I walked about with Lonan Kai.
We had dinner at Blue C SushI because my mom wanted to go out to eat and Amanda said it was my choice since we had Mexican food three times in a row. Blue C is not great sushi, but it is acceptable and it is a great place to take young progenies. I think Amanda almost regretted her decision as there had been a football game and traffic was horrendous (UW had defeated #3 USC), but we made it unscathed to dinner. We walked about University Village afterwards and looked for children’s books. I decided there was no way we were buying kids books at full price.
We watched a documentary after Lonan Kai went to sleep — Encounters at the End of the World.
Sunday we had bfast at Geraldine’s Counter at my mother’s request as she really likes the place. We got there when it opened so there was no waiting. And kids eat free in September! Amanda let me get an order of fries which we had delivered after the rest of the food so LK would eat something other than fry. They serve them in little fry baskets now instead of on a plate.
I have been spending a lot of time treating our fences, but am getting close to being done. We did a lot of work in the front yard… me treating the fence, and Amanda moving plants around. We ripped out the old water feature and installed the wine barrel that I acquired a week or so ago. I finally fixed the pump again. Amanda also spent a lot of time organizing the plants in preparation for fall planting. We are going to wait to consult the woman who did our patio before putting anything in, though.
My mom, LK, and I went to the Japanese Garden in the afternoon. My mom got a senior discount which surprised me, but I guess it shouldn’t have. LK enjoyed feeding the koi; I had to ration the koi food as otherwise he would have dumped everything out at once.
I heard another young girl say after seeing a female mallard run roughshod over koi to get to some food: “Did you see what that mother duck did? I thought mother ducks were supposed to be polite!”
Amanda made a dinner of mustard and potato soup and salad and bread. It was delicious.
Monday morning my mom and I spent time with Mr. Kai while Amanda went to work to catch up on charting. Normally she would have done so at home, but her presense would have been distracting to Mr. Kai. She also had a dentist appointment.
Mr. Kai is about to wake up from his nap. Amanda just walked through the front door after taking the Light Rail home. It is a nice day outside. Who knows what adventures await the Kai when he wakes up?

I am currently cleaning/staining/waterproofing our fences. Here is a quick update of last week before the weekend arrives:

• Amanda’s mom came for a visit for a week.
• Our aerobed seems to have sprung a slow leak.
• It rained a lot.
• We went to the aquarium last Saturday.
• Amanda had our second night out together (sans Progeny) this year. We went to Lampreia in Belltown and went up the Space Needle afterwards. Bumbershoot was going on, so the Seattle Center was crawling with people, but we did not stay for any music.
• We went to the aquarium again on Sunday. We met up with Ann and Mike and Connor. We also hung out Adina and Moneta and Ethan who we met unexpectedly there.
• Amanda’s mom took us out to dinner to El Sombrero. The Kai ate a lot of my fish for my tacos.
• We went to the farmer’s market.
• I spent a lot of time cleaning the fences. Now I am staining waterproofing.
• Amanda had jury duty today, but she wasn’t choosen, so she went back to work in the afternoon. Good thing, because the specific trial may have gone on for months.

I have been slacking in my weblog efforts again. Even my twittering has gone downhill.
Anyways, last weekend we had bfast with Karl and Eve. It was good to see them as always. I did not get to see Mr. Paige, as he was probably hiding under the bed or somesuch. We finally got to see their new shelves in their living room and their new bathroom/bedroom.
We stopped by the West Seattle Farmer’s Market before going back home for Mr. Kai’s nap.
Upon his awakening, we went to the Japanese Garden. Our membership will run out at the end of the month, so the visit was still “free”, although I am sure we will get another membership the next time we go.
As almost always, we got a little baggie of koi food to feed the fishies. Mr. Kai can now easily feed them himself, although I stlil have to hold onto him to keep him from plunging into the water. Disaster struck as the wind abruptly picked up and blew the food baggie into the water whereupon it was gobbled up by one of the huge ancient koi.
It was not very happy about it, and floated aimlessly about just below the waterline. Amanda left to tell the gate person about it, but she said that there isn’t anything we could do for the fish. Fortunately, the koi later barfed it up and seemed none the worse for wear. That would have been a real downer to kill at 20+ year old koi.
We celebrated the fish’s recovery by going to Blue C Sushi to eat some of his distant relatives. It was one of our rare dining out moments. Blue C is a good place for little progenies, though.
After dinner we stopped by City People’s to look for onions starts, but we did not find any.
Otherwise this week we went to the Farmer’s Market as usual and got more blueberries, basil, and nectarines. Mr. Kai really stuffs himself on berries on Market day.
I have been cleaning off the fences in preparation for treating them again. Basically, I use this bleach stuff, and it works very well. I have not finished the front yet because I am being very careful and trying not to kill all the plants (and thus far have succeeded in keeping everything alive). Since the cleaning is not done, it is very obvious how dirty and discolored the fence had been.
Hopefully, I will finish cleaning soon so that I can actually apply the real wood treatment.
We have been watching a lot of nature documentaries, but I think I will have to give them a rest because they are too sad and violent for me (and a little too voyeuristic animal erotica-like). I need to get back to escapist fantasy/sci-fi/random violence that does not have any bearing on the real world.
[ redacted a section. if you read this entry before this edit, well, good for you! ]
Time to finish cleaning up the dinner detritus.