I picked them up Wednesday night from the airport and Valerie got to stay up a little later than usual to open her presents and show Nana and Papa her twirling before bed. She loves her new ballerina outfit - leotard, tights and skirt - which is perfect since she demands to wear a pink tutu 90% of the time. It's very similar to an outfit I had as a child and becoming more apparent every day that she is my mini me. I loved twirly dresses, ballerinas and all things pink and sparkly much the same, although she also loves trains and construction equipment, which I did not. She got a hefty dose of her dad's personality too, but the similarities to 3-year-old me are uncanny.
Thursday morning I woke up to Valerie crying in my room, despondent that she couldn't find Nana and Papa anywhere - in other words, they weren't in their bed. "Where's Nana and Papa?!?!"
"They're here! Don't worry! Let's go find them!"
We found them sitting outside on the deck having tea and coffee, and Nana was able to console Valerie.
We made chocolate chip pumpkin pancakes for breakfast with Valerie's "help," and then we all walked her to school for a couple hours so she could take her nap while we went out for lunch and were surprised when she had a raving meltdown at dropoff. She did NOT want to say goodbye to Nana and Papa. I did not really see that coming since she never has a problem getting dropped off at school and was in good spirits the whole way there. But, we made our escape and enjoyed a fantastic lunch at Oren's Hummus Shop to kick off the weekend. We had the sampler platter with 3 kinds of eggplant, carrots, beets, yogurt cheese, and hummus and pita, and were all flailing with rapture of the taste-buds. We got the large hummus and pita to-go and wondered if they ship their hummus across the country.
After lunch we picked up Valerie (who had recovered from her abandonment) and drove up to San Francisco to have dinner on the pier overlooking the bay and Alcatraz. It happened to be Blue Angels practice downtown for Fleet Week, so we watched (and had our ears blown out by) jets swooping over and around us on our drive through the city. Valerie was not a fan of the blasting jet noises. Once we secured parking, for a mere thousand dollars per minute (slight exaggeration), we walked around the Maritime National Historical Park watching the fighter jets and the people. I hadn't ever been up to this northernmost point of San Francisco; it is such a cool area! I wish we had had more time to walk around and explore, but we had to make our dinner reservation at Fog Harbor Fish House, which was about a 15-minute walk from the park.
It was lovely! We got a table next to the huge windows overlooking the bay and enjoyed delicious seafood and a delectable hibiscus martini for me. Mom and I ordered shrimp and crab Louie salads, and wished we had split one; they were absolutely gigantic. I somehow still managed to finish mine, unnecessarily. One pound of lettuce and one pound of bay shrimp heavier, I had to be rolled back to the car. I forgot about my full belly, though, when I saw the sky. It was an incredible, epic sunset over the bay as we walked through the pier back toward the car, all bright red and orange and pink.
Rich was flying back from Houston and arriving to the airport around 8, just as we were driving back home, so we stopped at the airport on our way to pick him up. It was a clown car situation fitting the 5 of us with Valerie in her carseat in the Mustang, but Mom and I squeezed into the back on either side of the carseat and white knuckled through the 30 minute ride home. My hips were compressed so hard my foot was asleep when we got home but we survived.
Friday we had planned to keep Valerie for the day, and were very glad of our decision after the dropoff debacle of Thursday, although some of us regretted it by the end of a day full of whining and crappy behavior.
We went to Tootsie's at the Stanford Barn for lunch so Rich could meet us and enjoyed the lovely outdoor seating there in spite of the hospital construction across the street. They didn't have a lot of kid options, so Valerie got to have chocolate pot de creme and french fries for lunch (and I helped her finish the pot de creme. Sometimes moms have to make sacrifices). We ate our lunch, were graced with a brief 20-minute appearance by Rich, and then headed out for a quick driving tour of the Stanford campus - which was a fail, because I drove us to Menlo Park trying to find campus, and then we had to get a melting Valerie home for her nap.
She was too excited to nap, so after waiting a while in vain for her to fall asleep, we finally got back in the car for an outing to the Stanford Shopping Center to get new shoes for Valerie, who was still squeezing her now - size 8 feet into size 7 shoes. It's become something of a beloved tradition for Nana and Papa to take her shopping for shoes so this was a highly anticipated shopping trip.
We hit several roadblocks trying to find girls' shoes. First we tried Macy's. We went to the top floor to the kids section to be told that all shoes were on the bottom floor with ladies' shoes. We found ladies' shoes, where there were no kids' shoes to be found. Next we tried Neiman Marcus, but quickly ascertained a similar lack of kids' shoes (and I discovered that place is a little too fancy for my blood! Shew!). Our last hope was Nordstrom, so we made our way there, and were relieved to find... drumroll please..... girls' shoes. They had a pretty good selection of some promising sparkly and pink kicks but Valerie was in a mood by this time. We had a very patient salesgirl help us try on several sizes of several styles and finally found a pair of bright-pink-and-orange sneakers that we all agreed were cute and fit right. Valerie kept trying to run off by the end so we wrapped up in a hurry. The salesgirl let her choose a balloon (pink, of course) and we left to find Papa.
On our way back through the mall we saw the American Girl store and thought it would be fun to look around in there. Valerie LOVED it and I love how sweet and innocent she still is in stores. She doesn't seem to quite fully grasp yet the concept of buying things. She was happy as a clam playing with the dolls and accessories in the store. She pushed them around in the doll stroller, stacked them in the doll wagon and fed the baby doll. Then we told her it was time to put the dolls back and get going. She was so good! She didn't ask to buy anything; I think she just thought the store was a place to play with dolls. So sweet.
We made one last stop then, at Sprinkles Cupcakes. A sprinkle cupcake for Valerie and a red velvet for the adults to share! Yum. She devoured all the icing off the top (definitely my child). And then the combination of sugar and no nap produced her whiniest behavior yet for a most pleasant rest of the evening.
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| here you can see the new shoes |
We headed from there to Local Union 271 for happy hour, where Rich would meet us when he finished working. Right away, I placed Valerie in a chair while we waited for a server to bring over a booster seat, and she somehow pushed it over backwards and fell splat on the ground. I think it scared her more than anything; she cried hard but pretty quickly calmed down, her booster came and we ordered much needed sangrias and cocktails. I was busting out lollipops, youtube on my phone, and every weapon in my arsenal trying to keep her pacified for our short meal.
We headed home for an early bedtime for The Tired One and got to relax for a while before Rich and I went out for our first real "date" since we moved here. Mom and Paul were kind enough to stay home while Valerie slept and we went out for a late dinner just the two of us.
We went to Evvia, a highly rated Greek restaurant in downtown Palo Alto with lots of expensive wines. We had a delicious mushroom appetizer special and crispy zucchini cakes, and I especially savored the really good olive oil that came with the bread. Rich got the lamb that all the reviewers rave about, and I had more appetizers for my meal; the roasted cauliflower and grilled artichoke and eggplant skewer. I loved all of it, but Rich was less than impressed, and we were definitely feeling a bit gouged by the wine prices. I would love to eat there again when someone else is paying. Ha!
We had a big day at the beach planned on Saturday for our last day with Nana and Papa, who left that night on the redeye. We drove down to the boardwalk at Santa Cruz and had a perfect lunch at Ideal Bar & Grill right on the beach and then we hung out on the beach for a couple hours. Valerie was in heaven, chasing the surf, playing in the sand, twirling around and generally being adorable. It flew by all too fast and we walked down toward the boardwalk and then back to the car to head home.
Whew! We squeezed in as much fun as we could in three short days and started our countdown til we see them again at Thanksgiving. What a great visit we had! We miss them already!
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