toby of the day 10.20.2008

Toby very much likes his new table. He sits there and ‘colors’ which is mostly a process of rubbing crayons against the table then gnawing on them, then rubbing them on the wall. Right now he really likes yellow, which we know only because that’s the color of wax that pours out of his mouth most often when he smiles. You’d never guess that from the picture of course. Here, he looks like an upstanding citizen, one who pushes his chair in and sits up straight, someone assiduously working on an important art project, someone whose cheeks are not brimming with tiny bits of crayon. I guess you’ll just have to take my word on it, or stop by some time and tickle him. Then you can learn all his secrets.

toby of the day, 10.19.2008

Today we went to ikea to buy toby a little table and chairs for his room. It was quite a long process. The store is set up so that you weave past section after section of goods that you didn’t come with the intention of buying, and after enough wandering you start to let your guard down and then you suddenly have difficulty convincing yourself that you do not need to leave the store with a sofa, not today anyway. After we finally made it down to the warehouse toby and I headed to look for his table and chairs. We were the only people in a huge aisle of children’s furniture, and as we searched for his table, ‘take on me’ by a-ha was playing. Maybe I was loopy from the fumes of the flame resistant furniture chemicals, or eager to add one more allen wrench to our collection or maybe I was just so excited to finally be so close to the exit, but somehow it seemed perfectly appropriate to just dance our way along, toby riding and dancing on the dolly, me dancing and pushing him, as we collected our bright orange table and two little chairs with squirrels on them. thank goodness wham! didn't come on next, or we could have become poster children for consumerism.

toby of the day, 10.18.2008

On Saturday, we stopped by the hall of taxidermy just to take a gander at the animals. Toby was busy looking at some sort of horned ungulate when an 19 month old boy spotted him and came running over. Toby noticed the charging boy and stood his ground, and so there in full view of the horned ungulate and two sets of parents they had a head on collision. But, instead of tipping over or crying, toby looked up and gave the boy a hug. Someday I’m sure he will face social castigation if he uses such a conflict resolution tactic, but until then it sure is adorable.

After the museum, we went outside where there was a large and awful music festival that would eventually feature mos def, but at the time there were just horns blaring out of the PA. We met up with Isaac and he and I went through the elaborate security procedures necessary to purchase a beer, which involved procuring beer tickets and hand stamps so that we could enter the official drinking area and acquire drinks. Toby and jon met us inside the drinking area. Apparently the elaborate security system mostly involved a piece of police tape around the edge of the drinking area indicating its boundaries. It reminded me of the very fancy cigarette machines in japan that would take your photo to determine if you were of age before selling you cigarettes. According to those machines, toby can pass for 18, as long as you hold him up high enough to look into the camera. Next thing you know he’ll be sneaking into bars, as long as he can find a friend tall enough to hoist him up onto the stool.

toby of the day: animal preservation

The California academy of science closed right after jon and I moved to San Francisco. Well, maybe not right after, but soon enough that we never made it in. Anyway, it has opened again. On the opening day, the traffic thwarted our ride home from the airport, and the part of the day that we didn’t spend in a bleary jetlagged nap, we watched the hundreds of cars lined up outside our apartment, trying to get to the park, trying to get away from the park, or just trapped in the unexpected traffic jam. We got a membership and even though we have been three times so far, and the museum is not very big, we have maybe seen half of it. The line for the rainforest remains far to long to even consider standing in unless toby is sleeping and the planetarium supposedly has the potential to freak out small children. Instead, we spend our time looking at the taxidermied animals. I had never really appreciated these, because as long as I can remember I have found live, moving animals much more exciting. But apparently, prior to the time in your life that you can remember things, stuffed animals are pretty cool. They’re big and look like animals, but they stay still and sit right next to the window so they’re easy to spot. Toby especially likes hartebeests and lemurs. On our third visit he became vaguely aware of the living, swimming penguins at the far end of the hall of taxidermy, but his interest was quickly taken over again by his new buddy lemur catta who sits in a glass box under a looping video of lemurs. Our friend shelly is in Madagascar, working on a conservation project for some group that didn’t have the foresight or inclination to give them proper maps so I spend my free time trying to hunt her down on google earth. Still, I'm quite jealous, as I’ve always wanted to go to Madagascar. I tell toby this whenever he points to the lemurs, but he seems uninterested. Perhaps he knows that in Madagascar, lemurs run free in the trees, so you can’t reliably find them sitting in their box every Monday morning like you can at the academy of sciences. Or maybe it’s because he’s already moved on and spotted his absolute favorite thing at the museum, the stone cat statues outside in the lawn area. Or it could be that since he’s 15 months old, my rambling is nothing more than blah blah blah blah lemur blah blah blah. that's fine. I feel the same way when I listen to his stories too, so I feel like we have a mutual understanding.