January January 6 - 30, 2008 About our too behaved Lisa, kissing Tommy, illnesses and hibernation

	Winter had hit us, and we tend to stay indoors with the kids. Seymour Center often is our favorite destination, for one can so beautifully splash in a tank with sea critters.

	Our Czech friends with their families at the ZOO.

My January journal has been delayed on account of inactivity. An unusually hard winter had hit us, and it's generally been creepy and ugly, with occasional crazy heavy rains. Our surrounding hills hold snow, which in other winters used to be admired; now it became a daily humdrum. We attempt to take the kids out, but the weather does really not favor any big tripping. Hence only a few stories:

Tom started crying one day that he's missing his daddy at home, and said that he must call his daddy on the phone. I dialed the number and awaited all tense what would happen. Putting aside Tom's stuttering and repeating, his whole communication consisted of about this: "Daddy... when you'll be driving down the freeway you must turn off onto a ramp then left onto Camden. Then when you get to Blossom Hill, you'll keep going and then you turn left and there is our house, is it clear?" After Sid had answered that it was clear, Tom handed me the set and ran off to play. Apparently he had had the need to navigate his father home.

Obeying children are the dream of every mother. I was dressing the juniors up in their room; Lisa had snot all the way to her chin, my hands were full of clothing, and I wanted to send her for a Kleenex. Then I realized that I had put the box up on a shelf where she cannot reach, for I feel like having a stroke whenever she pulls the napkins out of that box and very carefully tears them into tiny pieces that she spreads around the house. So I changed my plan and said, "bring me some toilet paper, I'll wipe off that snot of yours." (the bathroom is right next to the kids' room). She ran off, was back in a moment all unhappy and said, "but it's all wet" ... well in Czech language I DID literally asked for the "paper from the toilet". So... can I complain? No -- only perhaps about Tom, who never flushes, as a matter of principle.

	The green anaconda was rather boring ... at least when compared to our exhibits...

	A moment of sibling play at the ZOO

Little Lukas's birthday falls on mid-January. Kubackis had organized a celebration in the San Francisco ZOO. Eventually about twenty people showed up, which made us a sizable expedition. Most participants had seriously underestimated their preparations, and so we found ourselves on this cold morning (over noon, temperatures would climb to mid-forties), rummaging through our stash of clothing in our bus, handing out pearls from our treasures to interested parties, such as my dirty climbing sweatshirt, old Tom's hat, my headband or Lizzy's windbreaker. We did not manage to employ only our tent piece and my sarong. Even so we looked like a volunteers group from a poorly managed charity.

Perhaps due to our winter clothing, it took Tom about half hour before he noticed that we were joined by his beloved Margo. So not only he had his "brother" and several other kids to play with, he now found his partner in mischief. At least some consolation for his great disappointment -- a storm at the beginning of the month had damaged the kids' railroad, and so Tom was deprived of the promised ride. As refreshment, the ZOO offers hamburger with fries. We got quite cold, sitting on outdoor stools, and so we rather looked forward to visiting the heated tropical pavilion. Kids sprang up with new life, gradually shed layers of clothing, admiring tortoises and crocodiles. Tom and Margo had climbed on a tiled bench near a green anaconda and started "playing cats". They would crawl on all four facing each other and meow. In this context they would also occasionally kiss. Eventually other ZOO visitors, who did not belong to our expedition, began to gather and take pictures, yet not of the sleeping serpent, but of our brats instead. I had attempted to record a video of the scene, but I was laughing so hard that the picture is all shakey.

	Lisa is brushing a goat

	The celebrant in the kids' ZOO

Our expedition then chaotically proceeded towards the children's ZOO. In one moment we even lost my Hippo with Tom -- Hippo would not pick up his phone, and eventually Radim had to save us, who as the only one could confirm visual contact with Sid and Tom (my nightmare -- I shall be thinking that Tom is with Sid and he, alternatively, would think our son being with me). In the end we got together somehow. The kids brushed the apathetic goats and since it was about forty-five in full sunshine, soon we almost believed it was a spring day. By two thirty still some offspring kept resisting our attempts to leave the garden, but they, too, were eventually overcome. Our steadily diminishing expedition finally voted for lunchdinner at Chef Chu's, where we arrived by about three-thirty. We got home tired, but even our indestructible kids fell in their beds soon and without further complications. It rained cats and dogs on the following Monday, but Tom and Lizzy played nicely and quietly in their playroom and did not give any indication they'd want to go out. Apparently our full-day ZOO visit had cured them from running urges.

We had spent the similarly unfriendly Wednesday visiting Czech-Dutch family in San Ramon. Tommy had apparently been a landlord in his previous life -- he likes to enter other people's places and I had to hold him quite back from crawling their house from attic to basement. Jana has a boy a bit older than our Lisa, and a table with toy trains, hence the kids had great fun even without inspecting all the rooms. I enjoyed chatting with my girl friends and realized again how excellent it was that the kids had grown up independent and can be released into a room.

It was pouring again on Friday and I got the idea to take the kids to Palo Alto Junior Museum, where I intended to meet Bara, who had moved in recently, her little Andrea being a few months older than our Tom, while her little Martin is one year younger than our Lisa. Alas, several other hundreds of people had the same idea on this rainy day. Given the fact that there was no place to park and under the permanent natural shower one could not count on the crowds of offspring dispersing into the attached micro-ZOO, I signaled for a retreat. I'd rather not imagine what meat grinder it must have been inside the single hall this museum consists of. I loaded Bara and her kids in our bus, and we spent more or less rest of the day at our home (briefly interrupted by shopping at Costco).

	Tom at a climbing gym.

	Why is Tom mistaking Martin for his grandfather?

On Saturday we went together with Kubackis to the climbing gym. Radim completed his belaying test, and we can proceed now without needless delays. We finished it off with a traditional joint lunch. Our family then continued to Palo Alto, where we picked up our former Neighbors, Martin and Barbara. They had not seen our children for a long time, and their own two boys had grown out of family walks, so we loaned them our offspring to play with, so to speak. What really surprised me was Lisa who rushed to walk with Martin hand in hand. She's usually very careful about strangers -- and now she would prefer an hitherto unknown chap over her own mother? The mystery got explained quite soon -- Tom called Martin "grandpa". Gray beard and glasses, baseball cap, a wiry frame, really strongly remind of our grandfather. Well, I hope that Martin had not taken offense at this label and will stay friends with us...

The outline of our Sunday program would become clearer in the evening though. One of Lisa's eyes began clog with pus. In the morning we did not wait and made an appointment at our urgent care clinic. The doctor agreed with my home-brew diagnosis, i.e. bacterial version of pink eye, and the need to check ears and throat. Since Lizzy was relatively merry and did not have a fever, I had expected no complications -- however, my daughter again misled us -- she had inner ear infection on both sides. On we went, then, to the pharmacy for antibiotics. In the upcoming week, Tom would contract the pink eye from Lisa, and go down with a fever. I began to feel as if somebody had beaten me up while I slept. Simply put, all possible illnesses caught up with us. The only positive part on all this was the fact that neither of us would get sick with the same thing at the same time. The two days when I felt the worst, I somehow managed to survive by semi-trance slumber on the couch, which I interrupted only to switch discs in the DVD player. Our juniors would crawl all over me, came to hug and ran off to play, but overall were nice and did not bother me with a need to get outside. They had apparently not felt well either -- and what more -- how often would we permit them to spend the whole day by watching movies?

Well that would be all ... we had more or less hibernated throughout this year's January -- either due to the miserable winter weather, or illnesses. Now we were only waiting for the spring.

Copyright © 2008 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.