toby of the day: what else are you hiding in there?

When we were in Kyoto last year, toby was quite taken by a picture of a daruma on map of local sights in the lobby. So taken, in fact, that we attempted to visit the daruma shrine, only to discover that the map was apparently not created by people from earth, so not only was it considerably farther than anticipated, but even though the picture of the daruma had been one of the largest on the map, none of the people we stopped on the street had any idea that it existed. Eventually, we gave up and headed to the golden temple instead. In any case, because toby was so smitten by them, when I returned to Kyoto a month and a half later, I decided to forgo buying him his perennial favorite, a stuffed owl toy, and instead picked up a little plush daruma. I’m not sure if it’s the beady eyes or thick scowling eyebrows, but from the first moment he saw it, toby has hated that daruma. Recently, he started to play a game with it wherein he insists that it is his “friend” then proceeds to throw it down the stairs. My part in the game, from what I can tell anyway, is to insist that daruma is my friend and try to steal it back before toby hurls it over the banister. The other day, after rescuing the daruma from yet another flight down to our foyer, I hid him under my shirt. In retrospect, this was not my best idea, but at the time it was pretty amusing since Toby was completely flummoxed by this move. He searched and searched for the daruma, always returning to just stare up at me, his brow furrowed, his eyes blank and confused, while I pointed frantically at my suddenly larger belly. Eventually, I let the daruma peek out from beneath my shirt hem and something clicked in toby’s head. What I mean is that now, whenever toby comes into contact with one of my softer parts, and these days I have lots more softer parts than I used to, he will poke me in said softer part and ask “daruma’s in there?” then try to peek under my shirt. I have to say that some of these softer parts are parts that you don’t necessarily like to have a two-year old poking you in or digging through in search of his most hated stuffed toy, especially while you are, say, riding a crowded bus. But I guess so long as he doesn’t try it on anyone else (friends, strangers on the bus, first girlfriends) I can probably manage, and at least it means that the daruma, and my various softer parts, have gained a more favorable status. And perhaps best of all it has provided us with a new euphemism so that we can say things like “check out the darumas on her” and, really, who wouldn’t want to work that into their lexicon.

toby of the day: a somebody named toby

While jon and I were eating dinner the other night, toby wandered in holding what looked like chunks of colored cardboard. “Look, somebody broke this box.” Since it was a box that had been held together by duck tape, we were not particularly fazed by this news. “uh huh”. He struggled to try to fit the extra piece back onto the other two unbroken parts. “But look, this box is broken. Somebody broke it”. I replied, “Yes, I suppose so, but, you know, that’s okay”. We returned to our wine. “Mommy, look, somebody broke it. can you fix it?” I considered this for a second, whether it was even worth hunting down more duck tape to fix that old box. "You know toby, that box sure is broken, I don't think I can fix it. but, again, that's okay, it was an old box." he looked concerned. "somebody sure did break it." I waited for him to accuse someone, Jon or I or maybe the cats, when he chimed in “maybe somebody sat on it.” hmmm, maybe. “Um, Toby, did you sit on the box?” his head was down, he was still fiddling with the pieces, and his voice was distracted, innocent and perhaps even a wee bit patronizing. “yeah”. Well, I guess we solved that mystery. Up next, somebody got paint all over the floor, and it’s not who you think. Or is it?

toby of the day: I said good day!

The other night when I was putting him to sleep, toby had mostly dozed off when he suddenly bolted upright and asked “Mr. Wonka pee in the toilet?” then just as suddenly he laid back down and was snoring again. I imagine his dreaming little head to be like some crazy editing room where all sorts of gibberish gets spliced together in a manner a thousand times more nonsensical than what I wake up remembering these days. Which I have to say makes me a little jealous. For example, I recently dreamt that I was hanging out with Ewan McGregor talking about how my hand felt like it was asleep at which point I awoke to find that my hand was, in fact, asleep and then I lay awake for a while, feeling vaguely disappointed since dreaming about my hand being asleep because it was actually asleep was sort of a waste of a dream involving Ewan McGregor, you know what I mean? In any case, with regard to toby’s dreaming, the answer to your first question is that toby is obsessed with the classic willy wonka and the chocolate factory movie not the more recent, although also enjoyable, tim burton remake. It started with an interest in the oompa loompa songs, but has spiraled into an addiction to much of the film and often results in him singing various songs and reciting bits and pieces of it, especially this scene. I have to say it’s a bit unnerving when your two year old is constantly walking around shouting “good day, sir!” or “it’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal!” in his grumpiest, most Gene Wilderesque voice. The answer to your second question is that toby does sometimes pee in the toilet himself, although not frequently enough that we can imagine a diaper free lifestyle anytime in the near future. And as far as toby’s question, well, if you have any insight just let us know.

toby of the day: our summer vacation

Toby has not flown on an airplane since we came back from japan last October. That flight, described in detail here, was sufficiently awful to swear us off of flying with Toby forever. And by forever I of course mean 10 months. Historically, Jon and I have tended to take elaborate trips, and like a couple of heroin addicts we usually rationalize those trips by telling ourselves that this will be it, after this we’re staying home, only to get antsy after a month or two and suddenly we’re on the interweb buying tickets to Thailand. So for us, 10 months is kind of like forever. Sure, during those 10 months, Jon and I traveled a bit for work, I went back to Japan, and jon and I both went to bochum germany, which jon described as the scranton of germany, mostly because to call it the detroit of germany would make it seem too cosmopolitan. But those were definitely trips for work, and so by june, we were crawling out of our skin at having remained so sedentary. Because, really, while Germany in January might be many things, it is not Thailand. I realize of course that Seattle is also not Thailand, but I would point out that it is also not scranton. And it’s only 2 hours away. And has some really nice hotels. So recently, we braved the skies again with toby in tow, as well as our friends ed and michelle and their 5 month old son milo. Here’s a little summary of our trip.

Thursday: car to airplane to car to hotel. Toby liked the airplane, if only because we spent most of the 90 minutes stuffing him full of dried fruits to keep his ears clear. We ate lunch, and toasted the start of our vacation with some tasty beer. Then toby and I made some vague attempts at napping while jon slept like a hibernating bear. Then dinner at a brewpub down the street where our waitress managed to create toby a fruit bowl filled with fruits she snuck out of the bar and off the dessert plates. Those seattle folk sure are friendly.

Friday we spent the morning gawking at other gawkers at the fish market. Toby found the market to be somewhat uninteresting until we discovered the construction they were doing behind the fish market involving a number of digging trucks and a crane. I believe if we had offered to just leave him there with a sleeping bag and a handful of dried cherries, he would have been set for the rest of the trip. But we didn’t and instead we packed him up and headed to the space needle. At the bottom of the needle is a little amusement park, full of cleaner than average carnies and even what toby called a “big train” otherwise known as a roller coaster. In truth, it was one of the smaller roller coasters I’ve seen, but you wouldn’t have guessed that based on the squeals of the preteen boys riding in the front car. Toby was too short to ride, so we headed over to the carousel which toby called the “scary horse”. Given such a name, as you might imagine, we didn’t make it onto the carousel. But, we did which make it onto a flying elephant and dragon ride, called dumbo and puff, I guess to avoid copyright issues associated with rides that only include flying elephant. It was a successful ride in that I did not get dizzy, and toby thought it was the greatest thing since tiny rocks. Then we went up the space needle. Then we came down. Then lunch. Then toby surreptitiously vomited lunch all over his pants, so he and I caught a bus back to the hotel. The bus was full of physicists wearing fezzes. Toby was blissfully sleeping in my lap or I would have followed them. Then we did some other stuff which I can’t remember because it was not yesterday, but it can’t be as interesting as the physicists in fezzes, right, so really, what does it matter?

We started Saturday with a leisurely brunch. Afterwards, hopped up on pancakes, toby tried to break into the museum of mysterious things because he desperately wanted to hug the stuffed yeti sitting in the stairwell. Unfortunately, the
most mysterious part of the museum was the fact that it was not open even though according to the hours it should have been. After that we worked our way over to the sculpture garden. There, jon overheated and insisted that we find a cool spot with beer before he passed out because it was easily 85 degrees out. So we were working our way back toward our hotel, searching for beer on the way, when we ran across some very helpful people holding what might be described as an outdoor informational seminar. Their gathering might also be called an anti-gay protest held by religious wackos. but that difference is mostly semantic. in any case, one woman in particular wanted very much to let milo and toby know about appropriate versus inappropriate places to put an erection. While her list was a little sparse, she was surprisingly detailed about the few places that she did include, and quite loud. Whereas I, with my prudish nature and all, would be a little embarrassed to be standing on a street corner yelling at passing children and families waiting to cross the street about erections and rectums, she seemed to find it completely natural. Unfortunately, both milo and toby were asleep at the time, so they missed out on her wealth of information. And while someday I may remember to counsel toby on things I might avoid were I to have an erection (sharp objects, paris hilton), I worry that now he may never know this woman’s useful tips. At least I can only hope. After our run in with the zealots, we finally found some beer and toby and milo awoke and ate snacks. Then Jon and I went to dinner by ourselves where we tried to come up with something to talk about other than toby while toby hung out with ed, michelle and milo and introduced them to a range of youtube videos that I can only assume they never imagined existed. Like this one. And maybe this one. Then we came home, and we all went to sleep.

On Sunday I picked everyone up in our zipcar minivan and we headed onto a ferry over to Bainbridge island. Toby enjoyed the ferry and jon and I only briefly discussed a rescue plan for what we would do if he jumped from my arms and fell in. We spent a few minutes trying to reach the front of the boat where the wind was very strong. At this particular moment, I have difficulty envisioning a time when we will ever encounter wind again and toby will not say ‘remember the boat? Windy!’ but I’m sure if you ask me in 6 months, he won’t be saying that and I’ll just stare at you blankly having forgotten about this episode entirely. In any case, the ferry docked and we drove for a couple hours to port townsend where we ate at a brewpub then wandered around the tacky shops. Ed and michelle did not buy a hand carved wooden moose, but clearly wanted to, so if you’re looking for what to buy them for the holidays, now you know. Then we piled back in the car and returned to the ferry. We played a delightful game of “where’s Edward?” which involves asking “where’s Edward?” while lifting your hands, palms up, next to your slightly shrugged shoulders and then looking around. A similar game called “where’s Michelle” was also played. Toby is quite the expert at both games, as well as a third game called “where’s Milo?” In contrast, he is not a big fan of “where’s mama?” or “where’s daddy?”, at least not when he can play the highly superior “where’s Edward?”. We returned, rested and headed out for hip, upscale Vietnamese food suggested by our concierge. Perhaps because it was the first non-brewpub food that he had encountered for a few days, toby seemed particularly enthusiastic about dinner, and even voluntarily ate some carrots. Our waitstaff was not as enthusiastic, and appeared rather perplexed by the presence of two patrons under 2 (and 4 patrons over 30). I think we were not really their demographic. But the food was delicious.

Toby and I spent our last morning touring the library across the street from our hotel. It’s awesome. We spent much of our time at the children’s section, which was bustling with playgroups. While most of them seemed entirely reasonable and cohesive, there was one special one. It was kind of like when you assemble a Swedish desk and are left with a perfectly functional piece of furniture and a whole bunch of screws and strange plastic bits that just don’t fit together at all. These women were those screws. Their leader was patronizing and bossy and did a surprising amount of yelling for someone in a library. Below her was a moneyed grand dame, mostly interested in where they were going to go for tea. and at the bottom was a flustered woman who seemed unable to stand up to her 3 year old, let alone the playgroup leader. I would describe their children, but I can only assume they had snuck out of the library to find themselves good therapist because I never saw them. Toby didn’t either because he was busy reading about dinosaurs. After the library, we took a little stroll, had our last lunch of bar food and beer and headed back to the protective san francisco fog. The flight home was a breeze. Next stop: indonesia.

toby of the day: an excuse to use the word dapper

Remember the scene in Cinderella, where the forest animals have spent the day collecting junk around the house to put together a dress. And so Cinderella gets gussied up and wanders downstairs and her ugly stepsisters proceed to tear the dress apart. well, the other day I was trying on my favorite dress in preparation for a wedding we were attending. It’s a royal blue, silk Chinese dress that jon bought for me when we were first dating. I’ve worn it once, to a dinner in boston where I managed to cover the front with wine and duck. Since then jon has refused to let me wear it. Apparently, even though I cannot see the stains (the dress has little tolerance for such grandiose movements as, say, looking at your chest so when I try to look down at them a bunch of snaps bust open on the shoulder) he can see nothing but the stains. But I figured this could be my chance to wear it again, because no one would bat an eyelash at the fact that a woman holding a two year old had stains on her dress. So I was trying on the dress, mostly to see if I would be able to chase that two year old around when I was unable to breathe, bend over, or separate my feet more than 8 inches. But it turned out that the chasing part wasn't much of an issue, because toby immediately turned into one of those wicked stepsisters, screaming “noooooooo! take it off! take it ooooooffffffff” while clutching at the fabric and yanking with all his might. Fortunately, his might is not as strong as Chinese silk, so the dress remained intact. But it did mean that I had to hunt down something else to wear at the last minute, or find myself some forest animals willing to make me one, since having your clothes torn off by a small screaming child is often frowned upon at weddings, even weddings held in Berkeley. And while that would have made for some exciting photos, you’ll have to settle for these of toby looking quite dapper in a sweater vest.

toby of the day, great day for seals

Toby likes the beach. I like the beach. Jon, well, Jon does not like the beach. I think it’s the sand, and how it’s all sandy, and as I’ve written previously, the beaches here are a little chilly, so while at other beaches you can rinse the sand off in the ocean, that’s not really an option that we have. In any case, because toby and I are beach supporters, we continually try to win Jon to our side. So recently we drove to one a little south of pacifica. It was a warm and sunny day. From the parking area, we walked past a field of wildflowers, and jon and I remarked how we should really get ourselves a car so we can do this whole nature thing more often. The sand was warm, the ocean waves big and sonorous. And as we searched for a place to settle down we discovered that the beach was, well, it was full of dead animals. The first spot where we almost tossed our blanket was apparently devoid of people because of a dead seal decaying a few feet away. And the second spot was available because of a dead seagull. But, third time is the charm, and we found ourselves a reasonably safe spot, though we suggested to toby that he might not want to dig too deep. Which turned out not to be a problem as he was far more excited about a little pool of runoff from the nearby hills, so we took turns standing in the frigid water while he splashed around. And for a brief moment, we were a happy beach-going family. But then it came time to head home. The last time toby went in the ocean was the day I forgot to pack him a change of clothes so we ended up dressing him in a sweatshirt and a nursing cover. This time, I packed him a week’s wardrobe, but forgot an extra diaper. So we dried him off, and crossed our fingers. As we quickly made our way back to the car, we peeked back over our shoulders to see the sun glistening off the ocean, a few small children splashing in the stream where toby had been playing, and, just a little ways upstream, prostrate against the bank and dangling it’s foot in the water, a dead bird. A cormorant I think. Regardless, Jon frowned. A lot. While we whisked toby home and into a diaper without incident, I think the entire day was a bit of a setback to our pro-beach propaganda. If only jon was a taxidermist or pinnipedieologist, then he might have thought it was the best day at the beach ever. although, on the other hand, I must say I feel very fortunate that I am not married to someone who gets excited about dead, decaying seals. Sigh. I guess at least he enjoyed the wildflowers.

toby of the day, his tombstone will say 'also ran'

The other day toby came home saying what sounded like “payback nick” over and over again. I can only assume that he must have made some bad bets at the track and is now in over his head. Of course, I warned him about this sort of thing, but he said he had it under control, so what can you do. I guess when they break his kneecaps that’ll teach him a lesson. Sometimes kids just have to learn the hard way.

Update: turns out he was just learning to sing 'nick nack paddywack'. it's amazing really, I had no idea that song was about bookies.

toby of the day, what's so wrong with a little green space?

In the outer sunset, it seems that the most popular landscaping style, aside from painting the concrete in front of the house green, is to surround indigenous shrubs and small plants with rocks. While I applaud this approach for its simplicity and water saving potential, it means that the 2 block walk from the train to the new daycare is like a trek through a minefield, except that instead of trying to avoid the mines, toby is collecting as many of them as he can press against his little chest and still walk. My newest strategy is to throw a rock ahead of us and convince him to race me to it. This usually works for at least a block or so to keep him on the sidewalk, and holding only a minimal quantity of rocks that he will add to our own growing rock garden at the entrance to our apartment. Then I can just carry him, albeit kicking and screaming, that last block. I guess this is why people use strollers, if nothing else it means you can transport larger rocks.

toby of the day, boys: don't cry, like trucks

The next day we continued to avoid contaminating people we know with hoof and horn disease and instead went to the beach. Ahh, what a lovely way to spend a spring afternoon you might say, probably as you imagine people in swimming trunks, warming themselves under the sun and romping in the surf. But that is not our beach. I would like to suggest that our beach is more like how you might imagine a beach in, say, Denmark. Except that I have been to a beach in Denmark, and it was hot and full of very athletic and scantily clad beach volleyball players. And again, that is not our beach. Our beach is one where I didn’t want to take off my shoes because my feet were already cold. Our beach is one where I was pretty sure the wind was going to blow off my wool hat. Sure sometimes it can be warm enough for the wearing of, say, a light sweater, when you make it there in the few hours after the sun has heated up the sand but before the fog arrives. But this was most certainly not one of those days. Consequently, Toby seemed somewhat nonplussed by our beachcombing, and was even becoming a little irritable about the wind burn on his face. That is, until we rounded a bend and snuck up on a digging truck. It turns out that Toby is boy and therefore in love with a wide range of construction vehicles, most of which he refers to as digging trucks. In this case it was a bulldozer and it was parked on one of the paths through the dunes leading off the beach. Toby tried to convince us to drive away in it, but we thought better of that suggestion, mostly because we figured it would not maneuver well in a high-speed chase. That, and we needed to get to the park chalet for a beer, and there isn’t much parking over there, especially not for a stolen bulldozer.

toby of the day, a cow says

A couple months ago we transitioned toby into his new daycare. As a special welcome, one of the children contracted hand, foot, and mouth disease which the interweb was quick to point out is in no way related to hoof and mouth disease, although we’ve had a difficult time not referring to it as that. In any case, hand foot and mouth is a pretty contagious virus similar to the chicken pox that results in small blisters on, yes you guessed it, the hands and feet, and inside the mouth of the kids that get it. The first case at the daycare was discovered on a Saturday and by midweek the following week kids were dropping like flies. Little blistered, feverish flies. Toby lasted most of the week, but by Friday, he too had a couple of blisters. Fortunately, his version never really amounted to much. Still, we tried to least avoid contaminating people that we know, so we spent Saturday morning busily infecting strangers at the farmers market. We had a close call when we ran into toby’s friend jonah and his family and I imagined having to explain myself as I slapped away jonah’s hand as he went to give toby a high five or something. But luckily toby decided to act shy, preferring to nuzzle his face into my chest, rather than run over and hug, drool on, or otherwise shower jonah with infection. Which meant we managed to escape after some brief chit-chat and quickly wandered away to wipe our hands on some heirloom lettuce.

toby of the day, that's not a lion

toby likes fruits. sure, he likes other foods too, he eats a reasonably balanced diet, full of meat, starch, tofu and the occasional vegetable. but he really likes fruits. really likes them. here we tried to capture what we mean by that. of course, as demonstration of the heisenberg uncertainty principle*, as soon as we pull out the camera, we destroy his momentum, turning him into a tame and principled fruit eater. However, by the second video, he's back on track, managing to stuff almost and entire mango into his little mouth. and just so we're clear, the place mat that he's naming animals on has been washed so many times it resembles the walls of a romanesque church in some unheard of spanish town, the kind where the murals on the wall could be paintings of saint christopher, or they could be paintings of a kangaroo wearing a tutu and a man about town hat, which admittedly has always been my preferred interpretation of those murals. in any case, it makes it all the more fun to watch toby try to decipher what's in the picture. Enjoy!

*I will point out that wikipedia tells me I should really call it the "observer effect", but that sounds lame and lacks the ironic grandiosity which I'm trying to convey, so I'm sticking with heisenberg, wikipedia be damned.

toby of the day, let's pretz!

Apparently it is traditional in japan to celebrate hanami or the arrival of spring, and the associated blooming of cherry trees, by drinking sake under those flowering trees until your necktie ends up around your head. This year we had our own hanami celebration, replete with blooming trees, sake, revelers, and even a necktie. The tie belonged to Jon and while it did not end up around his head, I believe that is only because at the end of the day he wasn’t really in any shape to figure out how to tie a tie around his head. So basically our hanami was a success. And as you can see by the video, toby also enjoyed the welcoming of spring, in particular the part where you can just stand around dancing while eating japanese snacks.

toby of the day, teacher, mother, secret lover

Toby has discovered television. ok, I guess technically that’s not entirely true because we don’t actually have a TV. and some would even argue that the TV we used to have, the one Jon brought from Japan, circa 1981 that finally emitted the last electrons from its cathode ray tube in January, didn't really count as a TV. In any case, we do watch things on our laptop, and now toby likes to do the same. He started with an online cartoon called making fiends, or “MEANDS!” as he calls it. And then we introduced him to the movie Totoro, in particular a few 5 minutes chunks introducing the totoros and the nekobus. For a while he would ask me to sing him to sleep with strange songs about concrete shoes or by mumbling through Japanese Totoro lyrics. All was good. But, while I am weirdly capable of watching the same 2 minute video clip over and over and over (and over and over and over) again, Jon is not, and in some respects, neither is Toby. So after going to youtube one day to show toby the totoro movie trailer, there was no turning back for either of them. Toby soon moved on to demanding to see a video of a girl singing the song from the new Miyazaki movie “Ponyo”. He could watch her do her little choreographed arm movements for hours. Then came the discovery that a search merging his love of robots and his love of balls results in a number of videos of knee high Japanese robots competing in some sort of robot world cup and for a couple of weeks, robot soccer was all he could talk about. Until the past few days, when the main topic of conversation became bouncy balls after jon stumbled on a sony bravia commercial from a couple years ago. As a consequence of all this, he has almost no interest in television. I'm not even sure he knows what a television is, since when he sees pictures of cassette players in his books he points to them and says “TV?” And even if we come across an enormous television, while it is playing the sony bravia commercial, he will turn to Jon, point to the laptop, and say "bouncy balls?" then wait patiently until Jon can pull it up on the screen. I’m not really sure what any of this means, except that I must admit I'm kind of happy about it, at least until he learns to type “elmo”.

toby of the day, how do you even spell borscht?

We recently had to find a new daycare. Mostly because our current daycaretaker is weak and hateful and seems to think it’s acceptable behavior not only to have a second child, but to use that procreation as an excuse to stop being our daycaretaker. Of course, she’s really not weak and hateful, because if she were it would be incredibly easy to find a new daycare. No, instead it is the fact that she is so very very awesome that makes the task of searching for a replacement, well, terrifying. So we started looking at daycares and preschools only to discover they were all either full or frightening. Panicked that one or both of us would have to stay home until a preschool spot opened up in September, we briefly considered finding a nanny to share with another family. This plan was very short lived. I cannot convey to you how entirely out of our league we were in this enterprise. It was as though after managing to make 3 of 5 shots into the toy box from the other side of our living room, I joined an NBA basketball team. And just so you know, I almost never make 3 of 5 shots into the toy basket. We quickly realized that finding our own nanny and a family to share her with would take the better part of 2009, and then after a couple of meetings with existing nanny share families, we even more quickly we discovered that we are not, and may never be, the kind of people that have a nanny. For example, the first mother we met works at home, and yet not only was she not dressed in pajamas when we stopped by to meet her, she was wearing make-up and had her hair styled. On the other hand, during our ride over on the bus, I had remarked to jon about how pleased I was that my pants had only a small quantity of food on them, and that the color of his t-shirt made the thumb sized hole in his sweater almost unnoticeable. I most certainly was not wearing makeup. This same woman explained to Jon that she stored all her daughters toys in a leather ottoman in the living room so as not to disrupt the rooms decor. That living room was also outfitted with a cream colored sofa and two glass lamps that I was pretty sure toby could shatter just by looking at them too long. Jon smiled and looked understanding, even though in our living room we keep toys in a bookcase (laid on it’s side for safety reasons of course) that we found on the street. At the second home, the family seemed a little more down to earth. But the nanny, well, let’s just say that given the look in her eyes when she snatched a telephone from Toby’s chubby little fingers, I was pretty sure he would end up in some gulag labor camp before the end of his second week with her.
But through a combination of luck and, well, luck, a spot opened up at the one daycare that we actually liked. It’s no denise, but at the same time there are a lot of equally important things that it is not. For example, it does not smell like a dreadful mix of borscht and poop, it is not the sort of place where infants get pushed around in strollers all day while inside the house, the owner did not spend much of her time staring wistfully and tearfully at a wall of photos of former attendees trying to convey to us how much she loves her kids, and I’m pretty sure that it is not the sort of place that will look down on me when I show up with food in my hair. In all, the owner, kids, and teachers all seem nice. And it was recommended to us by a woman I work with, a woman who is perhaps the most cautious and, dare I say, overprotective mother I’ve ever met, a woman whose standards could not be higher. She sent her daughter there, and still raves about it. I think it will be good. We’ll keep you posted.

toby of the day, shaken, stirred, and very dirty

At the gym where I swim, there are two showering options. There is a large, kind of open area with showerheads lining 3 of the walls, and then along the fourth wall there are a handful of shower stalls. On the door of each of the stalls is a sign that reads “stalls are for adults only, thank you for your cooperation”. Ever since they put up the signs, I have been surveying the stalls during my shower to try to determine what adult only activities I can and should be participating in but have somehow been missing out on, like a small martini bar, stash of porn, or even an accountant eager to chide me for not having done my taxes yet. But so far, I’ve come up empty handed. Then this morning it occurred to me that maybe there are no special adult activities available within the stall, but instead that it’s a metaphor, that adulthood is a cold, gray stall where you stand alone waiting for the water to warm up. I think I much preferred the hope of encountering a nice martini, with extra olives, you know, as a reward for having gone swimming. It would certainly convince me to swim more often. Perhaps I’ll write up a little comment card for the suggestion box.

toby of the day, it was the blurst of times

Toby is talking a lot these days. Often, it’s fairly easy to piece together what he’s trying to tell us. Mostly because every other word is phone, ball, robot or truck. But sometimes, it’s a little harder. Today, he was rambling on about ‘juice owls’ and ‘walrus hats’. At least I think he was anyway. It’s kind of like our own version of the infinite monkey theorem, I just need to go back and read some Shakespeare so I know when we’ve hit on something big. For example, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a mention of walrus hats in either Hamlet or King Lear, but it’s been a while since I’ve read Henry IV part 2, so maybe I’ll start there.

toby of the day, sayonara bacon

So after months of negotiating, stalling, and waffling, and a couple of late night calls to our house, we decided to decline the job offer from Kyoto. Yes, essentially I brought home the bacon, and we never ate it. We just left it in the refrigerator until it had grown moldy and, to drop the metaphor for just a moment, rather irritable, and then we threw it into the compost. There are lots of reasons why it wasn’t for us, though top among them was that the only job offer for jon was for him to be my one and only postdoc, which isn't really an offer at all. Of course, in my mind, the entire enterprise would be nothing but rainbows. It would be like petting a family of puppies, for four glorious years. Jon and I would be a crackpot team of scientists, spending our days collecting data, publishing one Nature paper after another. We would become the favorite customers at the oyakodonburi place and discover all their secrets. Toby would learn Japanese. I would learn Japanese. We would travel around the country every weekend, and visit kiyomizudera each time the seasons changed. But of course the reality would be that Jon would be my only employee, overqualified, underpaid, and very grumpy. We would work together all day in a tiny tiny room. Then we would go pick up toby at the crazy Japanese daycare where they would change his diaper every hour, on the hour, whether he needed it or not. And we would have to bow our heads with shame as they berated us because he had only napped for 40 minutes. Then we would all head home to our miniscule apartment with mites living in the tatami floor and no furniture because our furniture would still be in transit on a very slow boat, the kind of slow boat that would most likely be taken over by pirates well before it reached us. And since pirates love beaten up wood furniture and framed indie rock posters, they would certainly keep all of our belongings, perhaps leaving us with some plastic blocks and maybe some mismatched dishes. Then we would try to sleep, but Jon would lie awake, stressed and bitter at his pain in the ass boss, aka me. and I would know he was lying awake because I too would be lying awake, panicked about how I would get tenure, or better yet, a job back in the states, when my Kyoto gig was up in exactly 34,112 hours and I hadn’t published enough. and toby would know that both Jon and I were awake because we would all be sleeping together on futons in our one room apato. Only the cats would be oblivious to our collective middle of the night insomnia, but only because they would still be trapped in quarantine in Osaka. Anyway, so we declined. Which means that we have at least another year here in our favorite city, which we’re pretty pleased about. And I only have to watch toby chase the cats around the room, or see jon sleeping soundly, or sit in the park with our friends, playing boggle in english and having a beer, to know that we made the right choice.

toby of the day, you clearly have no idea

8pm, Tuesday, our downstairs neighbor has a friendly chat with Jon:

“I understand he’s an active kid and all, but it’s just that it’s kind of loud.”

“uh-huh.

“I mean, I totally understand but if there’s anything you can do. . .”

“right”

“It’s just that, well, it almost sounds like he’s jumping”

“yeah, well, I guess that’s because he is”

“he is?”

“jumping”

“oh”

toby of the day, red shoe diaries

We keep our shoes lined up at the top of our stairs. While I have tried to winnow down the number of pairs of shoes that I keep there, inevitably my shoes somehow sneak out of the closet and back into the nice little row by the banister. This is always surprising since while I was pregnant I became addicted to a bland and boring but so very practical and comfortable pair of leather clogs and am pretty much currently unable to wear any other shoes. Toby has two pairs of shoes in the line. However, when asked to get a pair of shoes to put on, he usually stomps back into the living room wearing some of mine. He’s currently partial a pair of red mary jane’s, though he too is often seduced by the bland but functional black clogs. He’s amazingly deft at walking in them, even shoes with heels. Which is more than I can say for myself. I can only hope that I don’t have to interview for too many jobs, since my chances of teetering over on those heels are dangerously high. I guess I could always have toby give me some lessons. Or better yet, I’ll just borrow some of his shoes. Maybe the ones shaped like alligators.

toby of the day, something about a sunday

Sometimes on Sundays we look at houses. We find them accidentally as we wander around the neighborhood, or in once in a while we even search them out on craig’s list. Mind you, we are nowhere near solvent enough to ever buy property here in the city that is not part of a superfund site. We just like looking. Anyway, the other day, on our way to go swimming, we stopped into one. We used to be somewhat self-conscious about doing this and would comb our hair or at least wear deodorant but mostly we don’t bother anymore. On this particular day, jon and toby were both wearing their swimsuits. I was wearing my “weekend” pants. I should point out that my job, which mostly involves me sitting in a room by myself all day, has absolutely no dress code. Consequently, for me to have decided that a particular pair of pants is somehow inappropriate for wearing during the week says a lot about that pair of pants. This pair of pants I had designated as “weekend pants” more than a year ago. They are not pants worn to impress people. And most certainly, they are not the pants of someone looking to spend 1.5 million on a house. Or so we thought. Whether it was a sign of the friendliness and tendency to avoid stereotyping here in San Francisco, or the utter desperation created by an abysmal housing market, I can’t say, but the realtor would not let us leave. Of course, it never helps that when people ask what we do, and we say we are neuroscientists, you can almost see the dollar signs fall over their eyes like some cartoon as they immediately imagine that we are neurosurgeons. we are not neurosurgeons. Anyway, she just kept handing us stacks of business cards and leaflets and telling us about the school system, suggesting that maybe we should consider a condo if this wasn’t quite what we were looking for and giving us contact information for her finance guy (who I imagine would be unable to control his laughter when we told him our income). Finally some more gawkers arrived and we were able to slip out the back. It did give us plenty to chuckle about during our walk up the hill to the pool, who knew a housing crisis could be so much fun. Maybe next time, I won’t wear any pants at all.

toby of the day, why we no longer answer your calls

Recently we got a new telephone. In addition to providing us with a phone that will actually charge, it has lead to a new game where toby points at the phone while yelling “hide it!” at which point I hide the receiver while he pushes the page button. Sometimes the game continues as toby searches the apartment following the sound of the phone, although just as often he is immediately distracted by books, balls, or pieces of lint that he encounters between the page button and the phone receiver and the phone just beeps for a few minutes before finally giving out. Regardless, it has made the entire phone answering process more challenging since now after ensuring that the person calling is someone we might wish to speak to, we have to scurry about and find the receiver before the person talking to the answering machine just gives up. I feel that these types of daily adventures are what are going to keep the Alzheimer’s at bay, at least until we become crazed hermits because we’ve lost the phone entirely. In any case you should always leave us a long message to give us time to dig through the closet or crawl out from under the bed.

toby of the day, extremely belated holiday edition

In addition to the towels and singing card, toby also got some puzzles from my father. Having watched the video of toby hurling balls around the living room, my dad decided to play it safe and buy him puzzles rather than potential projectiles. However, little does he know that most anything reasonably round can constitute a ball, for example the small radish from the vegetable puzzle is almost a circle and therefore spends it’s time flying through the air to screams of “a ball!”

Jon and I used to wonder what sort of holiday traditions we would follow because while we don’t believe in either of the magical men associated with Christmas, we do have fond memories of the holidays from when we were kids. Fortunately, it turns out that toby has decided on our holiday tradition for us: we will spend our time off huddled inside and full of phlegm. Last year, we canceled our trip to Portland because toby had come down with his first cold. This year, toby’s temperature shot up on the Tuesday before christmas while we were out and about downtown. It was high enough that even after some giving him some Tylenol on the muni, it had only gone down to 102 by the time we arrived at home. After about 30 hours though, he was mostly recovered, and decidedly chipper. This was perhaps because he had managed to hand that cold off to jon and I. Unlike toby, we held on tight to that cold so that even a week later, Jon still had a hacking cough, and I had an upper respiratory and ear infection. Yes, an EAR infection. what kind of adult woman gets an ear infection, you ask. apparently this kind. anyway, maybe next year we can teach him some Christmas carols or actually buy him some gifts ourselves or something and head this whole holiday cold thing off at the pass. I don’t know though, it’s hard to fight tradition.