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I keep forgetting all the things there are to do with young kids in my neighborhood, so I’m going to make a list here, to remind myself to stop just going to the same old places, and maybe to help some other parents looking for things to do with toddlers around Encinitas.
- Astroturf at Seaside Market (FREE, but you’ll probably get frozen yogurt or a slice of pizza while you’re there). Over to the side of the market, by the frozen yogurt place, there’s this surprisingly appealing area of astroturf that is a toddler’s paradise. Somehow the stairs, sculptures, shade, space size or something combine to create the perfect little triangle for two-year-olds.
- Beaches (FREE) especially the ones with playgrounds (Moonlight, Fletcher’s Cove).
- Birch Aquarium at Scripps. One of the most beautiful aquariums anywhere.
- Brunch at the french bakery-place at the Lumberyard Market. Sophie actually brings her rubber duckies here, to bob in the fountain (FREE) after she eats her chocolate croissant. It’s the best brunch spot for a kid who likes to run around. Not to slight Swami’s or Pipe’s or VG’s or Naked Cafe or E-Street Cafe or Pannikin or that place across the street from Swami’s that gives out the great plastic monkeys with every drink — they’re all good, and it really depends on my mood and my need for acai, Dana, donuts, baked goods, or monkeys — but the Lumberyard does have the best fountain.
- Baby Loves Disco is temporarily without a San Diego location, but I plan to attend as soon as they’re back.
- Carmel Valley Recreation Center. The rumor is that they have a kids’ pool / water park / wading area kind of place. Next hot day, we’re heading here.
- Family Swim at the Magdalene Ecke YMCA. Saturday and Sunday afternoons are the only times when the family-swim schedule matches Sophie’s nap-schedule, unfortunately, but that means it gets to be a Daddy-daughter trip.
- Fish tacos at Roberto’s or that place at the top of the beach stairway at the Cardiff Campground.
- Hullabaloo Kids’ Concerts at the Encinitas Community Center, on some Mondays at 10:30 — and at other local libraries and parks, so check their website for the schedule.
- Lagoon walks (FREE) at San Elijo Lagoon or Batiquitos Lagoon.
- Legoland. Amazingly, we haven’t yet visited. I heard a rumor that you get free admission if you show up an hour before closing.
- Library Story Times (FREE). Schedules are here or here. Since I work Tuesday through Thursday, I miss out on the Encinitas branch’s famous Thursday 10-am story-time, but that was getting crowded anyway. I get to choose from the Friday 10 am storytime at Cardiff, Saturday 10:30 am at Cardiff, Mondays 9:30 am at Solana Beach, or Mondays 11 am at Encinitas. Not a bad choice, especially on days when it’s too sunny to go outside all day. Somehow, our county has ended up with fabulous libraries.
- The New Children’s Museum in San Diego. We haven’t been yet, but we’ve heard rave reviews.
- Pizza at Best-a-wan or Pizza Port.
- Quail Botanical Gardens kids’ garden: musical instruments, stackable wood, alphabet-plants, and more. Summer evening concerts, Christmas lights display that is not-to-be-missed…
- San Diego Zoo, of course. It’s expensive, but if you can get a visiting relative to buy you a membership, you can go as often as you like after that.
- Self-Realization Fellowship Meditation Gardens (FREE) are gorgeous, calm, and surprisingly kid-friendly as long as you use a sling (strollers and stairs aren’t a good match) or have a kid who likes to climb stairs. Sophie loves the koi fish here.
- Tidepooling (FREE).
- Tiny Tumblers Open Gym at the Magdalene Ecke YMCA gymnastics location (6100 Avenida Encinas in Carlsbad). 11 am on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays & Saturdays (noon on Wednesdays and Thursdays, just in case you don’t share my work-schedule or Sophe’s nap-schedule).
- Train rides north to San Clemente, for lunch and the petting zoo (or maybe even the mission, if you’re feeling ambitious). South to Old Town San Diego. Either direction is good. Sunset train rides are especially good.
- Wild Animal Park as long as the day isn’t too hot, because this place is inland. My friend took her 5-year-old niece here for their sleep-with-the-lions safari. My friend is the coolest aunt ever.
I’ll probably think of more things as soon as I publish this. I may have left off your favorite thing, too. Add it in the comments. Collectively, we can create a pretty good guide to north county toddler times, I think.
Sophie spent a good part of the weekend taking the things out of her room, one by one, and piling them up on the living-room rug. “I’m packing,” she said. “Go see airplane see Daddy.”
I tried to tell her that her Daddy will be getting on an airplane in just 5 weeks to come see her. We keep counting off 5 on our fingers. I’m not sure this reassures her, so then I just helped her “pack,” moving things into and out of bags.
She put her baby-doll in her old green carseat, carefully tucking it in with her favorite blanket. “Baby sleeping,” she told me. “Baby crying. Baby misses Daddy.”
I tried to tell her that Baby has a lot of friends around, and will see Daddy soon, but she insisted that the only thing that will make it better is if Daddy kisses it.
Eventually, I got her out of the house and down to the beach, so I could fill her day with thoughts other than Daddy.
Then on Sunday, when she fell down and scraped her hand and knee, she asked, “Daddy kiss it?” I told her that Ben would kiss it when we skype on Monday (he doesn’t have internet access on most weekends), and that he would say, “Scars are cool.” I tried to say it in his voice, for her.
On Monday, the skype wasn’t working well. But she found one of her plastic phones, and spent at least 30 minutes of the morning talking into the phone. “Daddy, I’m wearing my new flower shoes. Daddy, I’m in the car. Daddy I’m going to the park…” She has now taken that toy phone to bed with her.
I just built Sophie’s new big-girl bed all by myself, which is making me feel like a big girl myself. It’s an ikea bed that I found on craig’s-list, brought home, and constructed all on my own. I’m glad it turned out to not be too daunting a construction task, because I was dreading it. This is the week when I’m starting to remember how hard it is to be a single-parent.
Yesterday, after my 90-minute-each-way commute and my first-day-of-classes exhaustion, taking care of Sophie’s neediness started to seem more than I can handle. “Momma is tired, today,” I told her this morning, when she was whining that neither her cereal nor her homemade strawberry smoothie nor her buttered toast (carefully buttered while she watched, perched in my aching arms while I buttered one-handed, as she prefers) none of that was what she wanted for breakfast. She wanted a crumpet, she didn’t care that we’re out of crumpets, she thought I should go get groceries RIGHT NOW.
“Momma’s tired,” I told her, wiping up the spilled milk and trying to get the dishes clean and the laundry done and Sophie fed. I had been up since 5:30, jetlagged and taking that early-morning time to write lectures.
When Sophie woke up, she didn’t want to wear any clothes, didn’t want to have her hair brushed, didn’t understand that shouting “Daddy” at the top of her lungs won’t bring him back from England any sooner. I snapped at her, even though she can’t help it that she’s a two-year-old doing two-year-old-ish things. Then I apologized and explained, “Momma’s tired today.”
“Momma wake up,” she said. Sensible girl. If only it were that easy.
Maybe, shifting her from my bed into her new big-girl bed will help me wake up. We’ll see.
It is only 6 more weeks till Ben gets home.
Sophie asked if she could take her bicycle to bed with her. She gets that habit from her Dad.
Then Sophie balanced her purse on the handlebars and announced she was going grocery shopping.
She leaned her bike carefully against her bedroom wall, explaining, “I locking my bike. I taking Baby Doll to a zeem.”
Yes, folks, the summer in Europe has affected my two-year-old. She’s now actually fantasizing about taking her doll to a museum, via bicycle. I am so proud.
These photos are old, but they show her spirit. What other cat lets an infant play with her like this?
Rest in peace, Stripey.
Our younger cat, Stripey, had a hurt stomach when we came home Monday night. The awful housesitters said it must be something she’d eaten that afternoon — they’d seen her chasing something in the yard — and they said she’d be better as soon as she digested it. She hid in a closet Monday night. Disappeared on Tuesday. Didn’t seem to eat or even drink all week. By Thursday, she was back to being sociable, but she wasn’t herself, not even close. Friday, I finally got myself a phone and on Saturday I finally called the vet.
The vet told me to bring her in right away so they could check her vitals, and then I’d have to wait. Those two hours in the waiting-room made me flash back to all our airport-waiting time earlier this week. Sophie colored in the cat-themed coloring books. Sophie played with the water-cooler. Sophie decided that the waiting room was a race-track, and the other people waiting agreeably cheered her on as she ran back and forth, cheering for herself, “Go Sophie go.”
Then the vet showed me the x-ray and explained that Stripey’s stomach was torn. Apparently Stripey had been in an awful fight with some creature that ripped her stomach open. She had a hernia on one side, escaped stomach gas on the other, and probable damage to her internal organs. I had a choice: opt for expensive exploratory stomach surgery or opt for euthanasia.
I thought about waiting till Ben got back from his weekend trip mountain-biking in Wales. It is his cat, whom he’s had since Texas. But I knew, of course, which option he would choose. So I signed the forms for euthanasia.
When Sophie asked me why I was crying, I didn’t have a good answer ready. Sophie understood that we’d come to the cat-doctor for cat-medicine. She wanted to know why we didn’t just get the medicine and leave. I told her that Stripey was going to have a special kind of long sleep. I told her that it was time to say bye-bye Stripey. I told her that I’d love a hug.
Sophie brought me all the pamphlets in the waiting room, avdertorials for flea-medicine and pet-dentistry, announcing, “It’s your birthday.” Sophie passed me her coloring book and advised me to color in the picture of a girl cradling a cat. Sophie is one astounding two-year-old. It was impossible not to be cheered by her. Still, I was quietly weeping, while reassuring Sophie, “Momma is sad, but Momma will be okay soon.” Sophie pre-crumpled the kleenex for me in her effort to be helpful.
Stripey snuggled on my lap and when they injected the anaesthesia, I could feel her whole body relaxing, finally released from the pain she’s been in all week. When she got the lethal barbiturates, it was actually peaceful. Then they took her off my lap, wrapping her in a blanket, and that’s when Sophie asked, wailingly, why were we leaving Stripey behind in a blanket.
I felt nauseous for the rest of the Saturday. Now, Sunday, it seems unreal, just one more crazy event in my turbulent week. I dragged Sophie to the beach this morning, even though Soph wanted to go to a closer park, because, I told her, “Momma needs some ocean in her head.”
Stripey was the sweetest of cats. Friendly to the point of being sluttish. One giant hairball of love. It’s impossible to grieve for a pet without seeming twee, but it’s also impossible not to grieve. Our one remaining cat keeps periodically mewing, wondering, I think, where Stripey has gone.
When Sophie asks where Stripey has gone, I’m going to tell her, “Stripey is in our hearts.” My friend J gave me that line. But I don’t have many more lines, or many more strategies except to fill my head with ocean and hope that next week will be easier than this one was.
My California hippy housesitters emailed me, the morning of my flight home, to say, “Hey, wow, August 17th is today. We have no place to go. Can we stay a little longer?” August’s housesitters were a family: Granma & Granpa, Mom, Toddler Son, and 4-month-old baby. I didn’t want to kick them out on the street. I told them they could stay till the end of the week; Sophie could sleep in my bedroom, if they could squeeze themselves into the other 2 bedrooms.
I forgot to mention that, in addition to my bedroom, I’d also like to be able to walk across my own living-room floor. Their clutter filled it up. I’d also like at least one shelf in my own refrigerator. Also, one shelf of kitchen cabinet space. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. The problem was that I had to ask. They did not spontaneously volunteer any of those things. I had to ask for each, slowly, over the next few days, after waiting in vain for them to simply see that I needed a patch of kitchen and some living-room calmness too. All my natural and recently-enhanced British reserves had to be thrown out in favor of California directness.
“Can I please have the key to my own house, please?” I asked, on my second or third day back.
Their immediate response to most questions was to blame July’s housesitter. “We never got a key to your house. July’s housesitter must have lost it.” July’s housesitter, they said, lost the plug to the bath-drain: a tiny item, but one that is crucial to Sophie’s daily bath-before-bedtime routine. July’s housesitter must have hidden the web-cam that Sophie and I rely on to skype Ben every morning, in another routine that we treasure and don’t like to have interrupted. July’s housesitter must have been the one to break the shelf in the fridge. July’s housesitter must have also been the one to destroy my cell-phone, which I’d left inside a bowl on the top shelf of a tall bookcase. My phone is now so broken, most likely by a child playing with it, that I had no telephone access for my first 4 days back, and I have no record of most of my friend’s phone numbers.
After I emailed July’s housesitter, explaining my frustration, it tended to turn out that August’s housesitter would find the key to the front-door or the web-cam. The bathtub drain and cell-phone are still a mystery, but at least now I have replaced both those items. As if dealing with jetlag, single-parenthood, the busy week before the semester starts, and the natural disorientation of returning home after a long absense weren’t enough.
I had to ask the August housesitters to please move their cardboard boxes and piles of stuff from my front yard. We just don’t live in the kind of neighborhood where people leave piles of junk in their front yards. We have a back yard for that. We have a garage for that. Apparently, they thought we lived in backwoods Appalachia. Or, I think, they believe that they themselves are too enlightened to care about offending the aesthetic feelings of others.
The final straw came when, on Wednesday morning at 6:30 am, the Granma asked me to watch the toddler boy for her. The Granma had a 7 am meeting she had to go to. The Mom was still asleep after a rough night with Infant. The Granpa was still asleep. I was up, playing with Sophie, fighting through jetlag. I think it was that jetlag, or maybe it’s just my damned over-generous foolishness, that made me say, “Yes.”
It tuned out to be two and a half hours of babysitting that little boy. For most of those two and a half hours, Soph wanted to ride her pink bike that she’s been talking about almost every day of the last two months in Britain. But the little boy wanted to ride it, too, so I had to police the turn-taking. Little boy wanted help with the play-dough. Little boy desperately needed attention. I needed to take a shower, which I did while periodically shouting, “Play nice, you two!” I needed to get to work in time to get a full day’s work done before Soph’s daycare closes at 5.
When the others finally got up, they innocently asked, “Why didn’t you wake us?” Because Granma told me not to. Because I’ve been through infant-caused sleep-deprivation and I know how bad it is. Because I’m just too damn polite for my own good. I went off to work, late and fuming. Soph sobbed when I dropped her off at daycare — after the crowded house, she just wanted time alone. I almost sobbed myself. In my involuntary babysitting, I hadn’t even had breakfast for myself, since taking care of the toddlers seemed more important. I figured I’d just eat at work. But every food shop at work was closed. Classes don’t start till next week. So, on top of everything else that day, I also got an involuntary fast.
I kicked them out that evening.
I still feel guilty. They moved into a hotel, not on to the streets, but still: you should have seen how stressed the two-and-a-half-year-old was when he realized he was going to be moved yet again.
Everyone tells me that it’s not my fault, that I was more than generous, that they need to be kicked into finding themselves some permanent housing. They have jobs. There are apartments available. They have known for more than three momths that I would be returning on August 17th. I still feel bad.
And I’m still finding things that are broken. I’m still moving my stuff back into its rightful place, from where they had shifted it. It feels like I’m moving into my own house. Yesterday I finished moving Sophie’s toys and clothes back in to her own room. Today I almost finished moving things in the kitchen back to where they belong. Tomorrow I’m going to take the cat to the vet to try to find out if we can do anything about her apparent poisoning.
Today, when Sophie and I went out to greet the garbage-man, happy to resume this California routine, he leaned out of his truck and said, “I can’t pick up your garbage today. You haven’t been paying your bill.” That’s another thing that August housesitters broke, apparently. They were supposed to pay utilities. They apparently didn’t even notice the warning notices that garbage collection would be cut off. They certainly didn’t pass any of those notices on to me.
The early-morning lawn-waste guy wouldn’t pick up our lawn-waste garbage. But the afternoon recycling-and-real-garbage guy is a flirt who knows Sophie and me. “She’s so beautiful. She looks just like you. I’m not supposed to pick up your garbage, but I know you, so I will. What happened? Are you losing the house too? Foreclosure?”
Yup, that’s what I came home to. That, and the need to apologize to all my neighbors for the mess that this house has been. Apparently, the housesitters had actually cleaned up most of the boxes and piles of stuff from my front yard before I came home. Apparently, it was worse last week.
Ahh, homecoming.
Our trip from Cambridge to California was 20 hours, start to finish. Still, it wasn’t bad. Felt boards are my newest best friend. British felt boards are the best airplane toy ever, really. Felt boards, stickers, books, snacks, sparkly markers, more felt board, more stickers, toy cars, and a lot of walks up & down the airplane aisle actually made the time pass okay. For 5 of the 20 hours, Sophie even slept. I was shivering, because although I had remembered to pack multiple toys, snacks, diapers, and many changes of clothes for Sophie I — predictably — forgot to pack a simple cardigan for myself in my carry-on bag.
On the first flight of our journey, there were four children Sophie’s age, and all their parents shared my belief that other kid’s toys — and especially other kids themselves — are the most interesting thing for our own kids. We kept circling around to each other. Ashley’s mom sang songs, Evan’s dad lent books, Anya’s mom chatted.
At one point, when I produced yet another sparkly set of stickers from my magic carry-on bag, Sophie looked at me and asked, “It’s my birthday?” Then we got to add singing “Happy birthday to Sophie” to our toolkit of things to do during those 20 hours in airplanes and airports.
Still, somewhere over the Atlantic, after passing her naptime and her bedtime wide awake, cooped up in the airplane, quietly flipping the pages of her book and fiddling with the doodad in the airplane armrest for controlling the in-flight movie, all of a sudden, Sophie howled. It was a gut-wrenching, from-the-soul howl of terror.
“Is she hurt?” all our airplane neighbors asked, awoken from their naps.
No, just tired, I said, tired and terrified. Shush, I said to her, rushing to clear the felt pieces off my lap so I could hug her.
She looked up at me, swallowed her howl mid-breath, and announced, “I big girl.”
It nearly broke my heart. Big girls can cry too, I told her. It’s alright to cry. It’s alright to be scared.
But, also, I was happy that she was now quiet on that long, crowded flight.
It’s surprisingly satisfying to divide up Sophie’s bulky, non-transportable possessions among her British acquaintances. Emma was the only one small enough to inherit Soph’s outgrown clothes. Carla gets her tricycle, because — despite that one day of hitting — Carla has the most beatific smile on her face whenever she borrows Sophie’s bicycle. Robert gets her paints, and Robert’s mom gets my novels. Siwan’s older siblings get Sophie’s less-favored books, especially the paper-doll book which I can no longer bear the sight of. Each of them gets a ball or marble. Lino gets her plastic shopping-cart and plastic food. Each of them also gets a good-bye note, written by me, decorated by Sophie. We made those last night.
We have all those packages ready for delivery, today, and could conceivably spend all day delivering them, but I also want to get in one last bike-ride, too, past cows and rivers and cathedrals, before Ben boxes up my heavy British bike for me to lug onto the airplane. Also, I’m afraid of the Sophie tears that may result when she realizes we’re going to give away that plastic grocery-cart and big plastic balls.
We’re keeping a few of Sophie’s new British toys: the tea-set, most books, and the baby-laptop that plays irritating songs. Also the pipecleaners. I need to go find more pipe-cleaners, today, for airplane activities. Where does one buy pipecleaners? Art stores? Pipe stores? In the manual of how-to-rear-a-child, there should be an entry on where to buy pipecleaners, because I just don’t know.
When we get back to San Diego, I’m going to have to figure out how to move a big bed into Sophie’s room without Ben’s help. I don’t think she’ll fit in her crib anymore. I’m going to have to find Sophie a lot of larger clothing, because she has shot upwards this summer. I’m going to have to find some children’s books about potties, too, to really start the potty-training in earnest. Sophie is far more certain, now, when she announces, “I big kid.”
All of this planning is a way to displace my dread at a 15-hour plane ride, alone with a two-year-old. We have sticker books, though, and at least the 15 hours will be over by midnight tomorrow, San Diego time. I can’t really comprehend going home. The streets will seem so wide. The people will seem so loud. My attention will become more divided, once the semester starts up again. But mostly it’s unimaginable, so all I do is step-by-step, packing up Sophie’s outgrown clothes for Emma.
At the park the other day, I was telling Vera’s mother that Carla’s mom had just seen two teenagers sleeping in the tunnel to the toddlers’ play-gym, when I paused to help Ton-ton and Bertie locate their own mothers. “You’re new here?” Vera’s mom asked me, incredulously. “You’ve only been in Britain a few months, and you’re about to leave, and yet you know so many people at this playground.”
Well, I explained, it’s my local park. And it was Tuesday, the day that St Matthew’s Church playgroup meets at the playground. And I know only kids’ names, not moms’ names.
Still, she had a good point: I am finally making friends in Britain. I am finally starting to feel comfortable here, now, when I’m about to leave. I think it has something to do with beginning to master British styles of self-deprecatory conversation — as the preceding paragraph may show. I’m going to miss this place when we leave.
Maybe it just has to do with the British penchant for inviting us over for tea or a meal as soon as we tell them we’re leaving.
Sophie, on the other hand, isn’t so sure that she wants to make friends here. “Carla hits,” she tells me, clutching her left eye, even though it’s been five days since Carla slapped her in that particular eye. “Siwan pinches,” she declares, clutching her back, “that’s not good.” Siwan’s own mother has arms covered in bruises and bite-marks from her violent child. If we were staying, I would have to figure out how to teach Sophie to deal with the aggression of British children. Sophie’s current cry-baby response only exacerbates the bullying, I’m afraid. But I don’t know what to teach her how to do, other than use her words and walk away. Maybe it is a good time to leave after all.
So there you have it, two British stereotypes confirmed: British reticence and British hooliganism. They are so true — at least in my case — that it took more than 2 months to talk about anything much in the park other than the weather, and so true that the children, even at age 2, are already exhibiting this bizarre hooliganism.
There’s also an amusing hauteur to the British kids. Yesterday at the wading pool, I asked Sophie, “Can I play with your toy fish, please?” I wanted to show her how to make the fish squirt water, and to demonstrate sharing, and to alleviate my own boredom.
“You’re a MOM,” a four-year-old told me, with exasperation. “Moms aren’t allowed to play.”
At this same wading pool, last week, some five-year-olds firmly informed me, “You’re a bad mom because you let your baby play with ladybirds.” They wanted me to force Sophie to drop the ladybug, so that they themselves could play with it.
“You have to leave now,” a three-year-old announced. “It’s tea-time.”
No, I don’t have to leave now, I told her, I’m American. I don’t do tea-time.
But it is, perhaps, time to leave.
