Goodbye, Barking Frog; Hello, Dr. Maze And Red Robin

We drove to Redmond today and stopped at the intersection of Willows and 124th, right where the big fields open up. I could have turned left there and we would have been heading toward the wineries of Woodinville, which are just a couple of miles up from there. After hitting two or three of our favorites, we could have lunched at the Barking Frog before a leisurely drive back across Lake Washington to the city.

Instead, though, we drove straight through that intersection and pulled over to Dr. Maze's Farm for Pumpkin Patch Day! Because, you see, unlike those halcyon winery-going days of yore, now we've got the kid. I think photographs of adorable kids sitting amongst pumpkins are fine and dandy, but not nearly to the extent that, apparently, everyone else in the world does. I'm incredibly easy-going, as everyone knows, so when The Wife brought up earlier in the week, I got on board.

You know who didn't get on board? NJ. She didn't get on board. She just got "on bored." (Zing!) The first thing she did was get behind a wooden cut-out of Dr. Maze's truck and try to make her escape (which actually elicited the best smiles of the patch outing):

See ya, Daddy, wouldn't wanna be ya! Mommy and I are OUTTA HERE!

She showed a little interest in the goats and alpacas, but she'd seen farm animals just a couple weeks earlier and it was a bit old hat.

Yeah, yeah, I'm close to an exotic animal and he's cute. Whatevs. Anything more interesting over there?

Then, the pumpkin patch. A few days ago The Wife bought a couple of pumpkins to autumn-ize and Halloween-ready our front porch, so we were just about the only folks there not wheeling pumpkins around in wheelbarrows. I broke out the camcorder, but NJ was still pretty bored (also, she's been a little bundle of cranky joy lately, what with three teeth coming in at the same time). I must have hit wrong buttons or something, because when we got home this was all I had:


Nice job, Dad! You're a regular Francis Ford Scorsese.

Aaaaaaannnnddd ... that was pretty much it. We took some shots, but NJ didn't look at the camera much; her heart just wasn't in it. Here's just about the best of the lot:

That's your father, NJ. Act as if you like him, please.

Then, lunchtime. We drove around Redmond a bit until it struck us that we'd be eating at Red Robin; it's made for parents and kids. The last time I ate (I just typed "hate" by mistake; paging Dr. Freud!) at a Red Robin was in July 2009, when The Wife and I were on our way to the Oregon coast for our last pre-NJ trip. We were starving for lunch, and Red Robin was the only thing we could find at the next exit. We were seated at a table next to a family with a couple of kids who were having some loud fun, and The Wife -- who looked like this then, great with child -- said "Get used to it, we'll be going to these places a lot pretty soon." Fifteen months later, there we were. NJ was immediately interested when she saw kids leaving Red Robin with balloons, which she's already on record as being partial to. As soon as we got in, she was given a red balloon and her attitude noticeably spiked to "fun."

You can stuff your pumpkins in a sack, Mister, because THIS is a party!

NJ feasted on chicken, steak fries and a little broccoli. She also learned that she likes ketchup, thanks to me dabbing it on my finger and sticking said finger in her mouth. There were tons of other kids there, including a five-month-old boy sitting at the next table who cried until his mother pulled him in underneath the public-breastfeeding blanket, a sight that brought back fond memories of The Wife putting that cape-like thing on and hustling NJ underneath for a quick, inconspicuous meal. Now, we're thrusting mashed-up steak fries at her and swabbing the inside of her mouth with ketchup. Once we got home, NJ and Dad Solo both hit their respective beds for nice, long naps.

So thanks, Red Robin, for turning our afternoon around. Even though the burger I ate five hours ago is sitting in my gutty-works like an unmovable stone right now, and it actually feels like it's getting bigger and bigger.

It's their signature blend, so you KNOW it's gonna be good!

You're A Pal And A Confidant

NJ had a play date late last week with the lovely Olivia, who's one month older than NJ and apparently grew about six inches longer since I saw her last, just a couple of weeks before. Once Olivia stopped crying at the sight of the big, bearded doofus -- I think NJ put in a good word for me -- they had a grand time. Here they are smiling big for Olivia's mother, who has a knack for getting babies to really ramp up the cute.

International news reports indicated that yes, indeed, the whole world was smiling with them at the exact moment this photograph was taken.

Olivia's mom is a 5-foot-2 spitfire who was cool enough to bring scones and cookies from Seattle's best bakery, and she knows lots of things about many subjects (sadly, music is not one of them). She recently plugged Mrs. Mustard's Baby Faces, and The Wife immediately bought it. (I make a suggestion and The Wife might -- might -- get around to considering it several weeks later. This, she did right away: "Whatever you say, Olivia's mom!") I'm sure it's a delightful little tool for honing kids' emotional intelligence, but truth be told I find it to be a little creepy. What with the disembodied baby heads and all. If you ate a giant plate of dodgy Chinese food and then read several issues of some sort of Spy magazine for infants, your dreams that night would look something like this:

Yes, we're happy. Happy because we're plotting to kill you in your sleep.

This Place Is A Zoo!

That's what I said after weaving my way through the crowds after getting our lunch at a stand at the Woodland Park Zoo. The Wife didn't appreciate the humor as much as she should have. Because that is very, very funny, and my timing was impeccable.

We walked the twenty or so blocks south to the zoo today, after seeing how surprisingly nice the weather was going to be. NJ enjoyed the stroller ride over, but really got excited when we stopped at the park before going in and put in some swing time:




Note the leaned-back posture NJ assumes in the swing. The boy next to her, who was the same age, used the opposite strategy, leaning all the way forward. Hard to tell which is more effective. Not that it matters, really, because after all we're only talking about toddlers in swings.

At the zoo, which we joined last week, we saw a couple penguins, a couple of species of bears, tigers and meerkats. I say "we" saw them because The Wife and I did; we're not sure NJ caught any of it. She was enjoying being out in the sunshine with lots to see, though, even if she couldn't pick out the sloth bear* in the tree. After lunch, where NJ ate a significant portion of The Wife's salmon fillet, we hit the carousel before leaving. This NJ LOVED. She loved sitting on the wooden horse and holding the pole, and once we started she spent most of the first round waving. One section of the go-round went by mirrors that were placed in angles that made it look like you had already passed yourself up -- this tripped her out the first time she saw it, but after that it was old hat. As the final trip around started, NJ leaned her head back and looked up at me with a nice little smile that probably meant "Thanks!" or something like that. Then we tucked her newest stuffed animal (Meerkat Mike) into the stroller with her and left. By the time we got home she was asleep in her stroller. Once inside, though, she was all smiles again. We'll definitely be going back. (We have to, because we bought a membership and it takes three trips to make it worth the money. But still.)

*UPDATE: I am reliably informed that it was a sun bear, not a sloth bear, that was up a tree.

A Day In The Life

A typical day at Casa de Dad Solo, compressed to its 3-second essence.