Beaches clams and hikes

Since last weekend we've been to Bolinas Beach for the first time. It's part of a "locals only" type of community but it is a public beach. It definitely has a more hippie feel to it, complete with dogs running loose everywhere and the apparently parentless boy about four years old who was running around in the surf with no clothes on. The beach was nice and the water was surprisingly warm. There is a fairly protected bay that is great for first-time surfers and some people were taking lessons when we were there.


Anja loves running around on the beach and she no longer eats sand!


She liked her clam.


Then we went to Duxbury Reef where some of the most impressive tidepooling around can be found. We were there at medium tide so we didn't see the really awesome stuff like sea slugs or sea cucumbers, but we did find a lot of small fish and hermit crabs, as well as a few bigger crabs.


Anja thought some of it was pretty cool, until she became squirmy.


Look, a rare photo of me with Anja! Check out this amazing tide pool. I love it.


We also went on a guided nature hike through Marin County Open Spaces. They are free and there are several a week. Here is Anja looking at an insect in a bottle that was caught on the hike.


And we stopped with the group for lunch here.


Also Anja and her dad on Father's Day weekend. She liked putting the picks into the hole in the guitar.

Sign Language and more videos

Here are a couple of videos of Anja saying bird in sign language. She also says "bird" verbally, but it mostly sounds like "baby."





Also this video is cute for multiple reasons. First, this is the first time we've given Anja these finger puppets from her grandparents and she really likes them. Second, this is her typical morning outfit. She loves to put on clothes, especially dresses. So here she had me put on a dress over her pajamas, and then wanted a sweater put on over everything.


And here's a funny one showing how quickly her tastes change. A few weeks ago she LOVED this whole milk yogurt and now she doesn't eat it at all:

Teeth, more words and new job

I keep forgetting to mention that a few weeks ago Anja got all 4 of her first molars in the same week! We didn't even notice she was getting them until the first 3 were through. Then the 4th came through a few days later. Lots of kids have a lot of trouble ( ie pain and crying for weeks) with the molars because they're so big, but she didn't seem to mind. She is pretty unphased by most things. In fact, our daycare provider was very impressed when Anja apparently did a "face plant" in the yard, got up and kept going. She said the boys were impressed. It's pretty routine around here :-)

More words each day now. In the last few days Anja has added the following: Keys, kitty, cow, car, clock, chair, bag. Today she looked at a clock on the wall and declared "Kwock!" Yesterday she saw someone stamping their feet and said, "Dancing!" (pronounced Dandee) and then she did it back. Oh, and today she pointed to my and her pajamas and said, "Babamas!"


Yesterday I took Anja on a guided nature hike for 4 hours, then we went to Berkeley for a work gathering at my new lab. About 6 miles total in the carrier and she met a bunch of new people. She did great. She slept for the last mile of the hike and was awake for the entire work party. She loved all the birds on the hike and when we stopped for lunch she loved the ladybugs and the cucumber beetles we found.

Here we are on a balcony on campus with the view of the Golden Gate Bridge (not pictured). This is my new lab, Anja is the one with the sippy cup. Really looking forward to starting Monday.


Today I felt very cosmopolitan as Anja and I walked downtown and toured the galleries and boutiques. It's a great pedestrian town. I'm not really much into shopping (not having any money you get out the habit of spending it pretty quickly). But it's great for Anja to see new things and meet new people. They do have a great bookstore here with a big kids' section and a basement for used books. There are also a few plaza-type areas downtown with fountains. Hopefully next year when our lease runs out we can move to a little house that is walking distance from downtown. Prices are pretty high here (for renting, there is NO way we could buy) so if we want to rent a house we would either have to go down in size or up in price.

We are still deciding what to do this weekend. There are three nearby towns (within a half hour of Petaluma) that have festivals with live outdoor music all weekend. Plus there is a another good guided nature hike on a nearby mountain we haven't been to yet. I also recently discovered a great coffee shop that has live music Saturday mornings at 10:30, plus the Saturday farmer's market is finally going here and I still haven't been to it. Stay tuned!

Sand

A fun dilemma to have when living here is where to go when you have a few hours free? There are so many great, free options that it is hard to decide. The easiest place to go is Point Reyes National Seashore, since there are so many great places within the park to go and there is no charge. It's a really big place, it would take about 1.5 hours to drive from one end to the other, and that wouldn't include driving down the other offshoots of the main roads. You can visit waterfalls, mountains, sandy beaches, rocky shores, open meadows, wetlands, conifer forests, and more. It takes about 45 minutes to get there from here. Anja and I went there for the afternoon yesterday.


Jay is gone for the weekend playing in a hockey tournament with some folks from work (in Tahoe!), so we're on our own. Anja is pretty easy these days, but it is still amazing how exhausting taking care of a baby/toddler by yourself can be. The best plan is usually to take her somewhere so she gets the daily stimulation she needs. That way she has a great day and eats and sleeps well later. The beach is great for that. Anja loves the birds, the dogs and the sand.


On this trip she played such fun games as:
-wearing sand for a hat
-sitting in holes that I dug in the sand
-laughing hysterically when her feet were buried in sand
-taking off and putting on sandy shoes (a fun game anywhere)
-picking up sand and putting it in my hand
-very slowly pretending to put sand in her mouth while smiling (waiting for me to stop her so she could laugh and do it again)

Talking and signing

Anja has been talking like crazy this past week. Her vocabulary is pretty limited, but she finally understands that words are connected to objects. For example, if you open the refrigerator and she sees the cheese on the door she yells, "Chee!" and reaches for it. She also says "Wahahah" (water). And she just started making the sign for bird! We started teaching her some sign language a few months ago, but we aren't really consistent about it. I'm surprised that she picked it up at all. If she sees a bird in a book she makes the sign for bird, and on a walk today she looked into a tree with some singing birds and held her hand up and made the sign. I have a video of it that I'll upload as soon as I find my card reader.


Her current vocabulary that mostly only we can understand: Cheese, bread, water, baby, bubbles, banana, dog, flower, daddy, no. Just the basics you need to get through the day. It's amazing that she can talk all day long with only those words.

We took a trip to the top of Mt Tamalpais recently, a mountain about 30 min from here. There would have been a great view of San Francisco, but for the fog, which is the norm this time of year.


Here's a cool view from the side of the mountain just at the level of the fog. San Francisco is under that blanket of fog.


As usual, she had a great time. This backpack may very well have the highest cost:value ratio of any baby item we've bought. Well, except for maybe the crib that we got used for $25. We picked up the backpack for $60 on craigslist and it was worth every penny.


Recently we brought out some finger puppets that Anja got as a gift from Grandma and Grandpa S. a while back. She was a little young for them then, but she really loves them now! We only gave her a few, we're saving the rest to bring out on her first plane ride in July as a special surprise.


My field work has been fun. I only have two more days next week and then I start my new permanent job. Here are a couple of pictures from my current gig. This is a cow that was eyeing us suspiciously when we walked through her pasture to our site. It looks like she's alone but there are actually about 50 other cows just below that hill who were all watching us too.


And here's one of the super cool thistles we were surveying. It's called cobwebby thistle and is completely covered by these white hairs. Luckily it's native.