Mother's Day Recap

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to all of the amazing moms we know. It takes a village to raise a kid and we would be lost without all of you.

Secondly, I forgot my camera this weekend and so to compensate I took 8 kadrillion pictures with my phone. Be prepared.

BVZ and I aren't huge holiday people. We rarely exchange Christmas gifts (usually we will just agree on a trip to go on or night out or something big for the house... you get the idea). Birthdays are the same and I don't think we even acknowledge Valentine's Day. So, imagine my surprise when BVZ didn't make a fuss out of Mother's Day last year and I was pissed. I mean, this motherhood thing is HARD and I want a big deal made out of it (to my credit, I made a huge deal out of Father's Day when it came around a month later). Early last week I decided we needed to get away, if only for a night, so I booked us a room in Tiburon-for you Texas folk, that's about an hour and change north of here.

Saturday morning Norah and I delivered some lactation cookies to Aileen and when we got home I found a balloon tied to a Sacroease Back Support! (I forgot to take a picture of the Sacroease) It's awesome. BVZ got one after his back surgery and he said he'd never drive in the car without it again. My lower back has been killing me lately, so he went out and got something he thought would help me. I looooooove it.

We loaded up the car to head out. Doesn't Norah look thrilled?

We stayed at The Lodge at Tiburon, which was very nice. All I cared about was the fact that it had a pool and a king sized bed. I talked up the pool a little too much, I think, because all Norah could say was Nanor pool! Nanor pool! Nanor pool! Doesn't she look cute in her new suit?

She literally could not wait for us to get changed and managed to figure out how to open the door (this will become a problem later).



The pool was awesome and Norah was totally into splashing and getting dunked.


We got cleaned up and walked around Tiburon. Norah is mildly obsessed with pointing out when it is windy.



The views are pretty spectacular.





We had dinner at the grill at the hotel. Norah enjoyed coloring her skull and crossbones. We ordered her a grilled cheese, which she had no interest in.




However, as soon as she got a taste of BVZ's halibut it was game on.


After dinner we walked to gelato and stopped to check out the trains. The gelato was a bad idea. More on that later.

Part of my mother's day present from BVZ was that I would get to go to bed at 8:00 pm and take a Tylenol PM. I was thrilled. Look at this bed! It's huge!

This is the only part of the story that sucks. A combination of gelato and a new place basically guaranteed that Norah had no interest in going to bed. None. Nothing would convince her to lay down, including watching you tube videos of Elmo. She kept jumping off the bed and running to the hotel door, which remember, she could open. The only lock was a latch that she could also open. I had visions of her crawling out of bed in the middle of the night, opening the door, and walking to the pool. BVZ laughed at me while I moved furniture in front of the door. My 8:00 pm bedtime turned into an 11:00 pm bedtime, but we still enjoyed the wonder that is the king sized bed.

The next morning I got out of the shower to find a card on my pillow. It was one of those totally cheesy cards, but I thought it was sweet. But then I opened it and realized that it was a card on which you can record something. There was BVZ's voice saying, 'Norah do you have something to say to your mom' and my little pumpkin's voice saying, 'Mommy! Happy Day!' It was awesome. I promptly burst into tears.

We got dressed and Norah admired herself in the mirror. For like 20 minutes.

Then we went to see the redwoods at Muir Woods. See the snack in Norah's hand? A few minutes into the walk she put the rest of it in her pocket. It already had a lot of slobber on it. It's going to take a lot to get it out.

Our official Mother's Day 2010 picture.

Here's where the pictures get a little ridiculous. But it was beautiful and drizzling and Norah loved it. She was particularly into the puddles. And the random sticks she found laying around.






Humidity only does good things to her Richard Simmons hair.










She was 'reading' this sign, which amounted to her yelling out random letters. Some German tourists were very impressed.


There is a part of the walk called Cathedral Grove (I think) where you are supposed to be quiet and respect the sounds of nature. I told Norah she had to be quiet because the trees were sleeping. She walked up to a group of people who were talking loudly and said 'Shhhhh. Trees sleeping.' She is without a doubt my kid.




BVZ is telling her to look at the top of the tree here. They were very tall.


We headed home and stopped at Park Chow for lunch, one of my favorite casual places to eat in SF. I had a delicious wine mojito.

Norah had more fish. And broccoli.


She was a good sport on the drive home, only demanding to watch Curious George twice.

But, then the real Mother's Day miracle happened at bedtime. She was in her pj's, water and book in hand and headed into our room when she took a quick glance in the spare room and said 'Nanor sleep Bubby's bed.' Say what? Really? We took a chance and let her have her wish. After popping up once or twice she actually went to sleep! She's been in there over two hours now. I think this means the kid needs a real bed. Sigh.