Halloween

There was no doubt what The Dragon Boss was going to be for Halloween. Ever since he stared at that blue name card in his crib back in March wondering why his name didn't sound like the Tsi and Sanchez on both sides of him (actual names), he said he wanted to look like his last name.

Halloween, we said, we just have to find some clothing to make what's apparent even more apparent. Plus, it'll be a preview of your Christmas trip to the Alps. So we put him in faux lederhosen, some echte knickers and long stockings, and carried him down to Fair Oaks in the rain.

The only thing that he asked for that we couldn't comply with was a good German beer in his sippy cup, brewed according to the Reinheitsgebotor, or even a Radler. It's just a prop, pop, he said. But not even in Germany will we give that to you, TDB.

Sandy

San Francisco doesn't get frequent natural disasters; it just gets a big one every now and then by geological time, which is every fifty years or so. But the East Coast does, lying as it does along fall's hurricane path. Even Uncle Margarine and Aunt Wizzie start to worry once the temperature stops rising.

Though The Dragon Boss doesn't have to worry about hurricanes, at least not yet, his grandparents do. Papa and Marmee reported strong winds and rain all weekend, but no damage. That's a welcome improvement over the trees that came down all around them during Irene last year.

Further up the coast, Gigi and Mikey kept their power on and the trees off the house. The waves just behind their house on West Beach got big enough for a brave surfer to take advantage of the once a century conditions, while further inland, Babu and Nyanya are doing just fine, according to Baleen, though it's not clear if they were in Pennsylvania or Vermont when the storm hit.

Anchor Sprints

I'm out of practice. I haven't been biking in a while, I haven't been drinking in a while, and I haven't had a whole lot of boxed pizza in a while either, surprisingly, perhaps, but our family of three has comprimised on the first two activities while excelling in the third with healthy, home-cooked meals. After all, home is where we normally are beginning around 6pm every day when The Dragon Boss returns.

And if I haven't done much of those three things, I certainly haven't done all three at once over the last seven months. But that's what Thursday night called for as Mission Cycling descended on Anchor Steam Brewery for a sprint-off. 32 entrants, single-elimination, 250 meters on side by side stationary bikes with your times projected on a big screen.

250 meters isn't very far and just under 12 seconds isn't that long to be going at your max speed. Doing it six times doesn't seem like that long either. I mean, that's barely a mile at 1.5 kilometers and about 70 seconds of effort. But when you're doing it at max gas on a belly full of Anchor Steam Liberty Ale and Goat Hill pizza, it feels a whole lot longer than that. The only thing that helps is coming in second and bringing home a gift card to Locanda. Goodnight, TDB; hello date night, Baleen.   

Uncle

Uncle Margarine took a plane to San Francisco yesterday. That's all he would have taken had it just been Baleen and me in San Francisco, for Uncle Margarine is a busy man.

But The Dragon Boss changes things. After the plane, and nearly working through the night, Uncle M took a train and a cab to see TDB this morning before heading back to the airport for another plane to another place that wasn't home to Aunt Wizzie.

TDB showed his affection by crawling all over Uncle M and promised to do the same next month when we bring TDB to his sixth state as Baleen visits Houston for the first time as Thanksgiving guests at Aunt Wizzie and Uncle M's new home in the Heights. 

Mark Spitz

The Dragon Boss entered his first public pool on Saturday. He'd been in over his head a handful of times, first in Lake Anza over in Berkeley, then the Presidio's Petite Baleen, a private pool on the North Shore of Massachusetts, the Atlantic Ocean (a couple of times), and Moonraker up at Sea Ranch, but never a public pool.

The locker rooms aren't as nice, the pool area always looks more East German than West, and the crowd looks more like what I see in jury duty than my social circle, but it's close to us and, best of all, TDB loves it.

He gets in there without a rash guard or a swim cap like some of the others and just swings his arms for 30 minutes. I was lucky enough to get splashed this time, next time it might be Baleen balancing him on her chest as I take pictures.

The Crawl

Build some walls, put some chewed gum on the sharp edges and keep the cleaning solutions far from the ground, the Dragon Boss can crawl.

Last week all he wanted to do was stand, holding onto either you or some flat surface. If you put him down, he'd rock back on forth like he was warming up in the 100m sprinting blocks, get a little frustrated and mope at his lack of progress.

Now you put him on the ground and it's a 10 foot race. 10 feet, because that's about all our apartment affords between bar stools and glass coffee tables. Once he gets his left and right turns down, then I'll be vaccuming the whole apartemnt every other day, not just those two areas where he likes to crawl.

NLCS

We're rooting for the home team. San Francisco comes togther when the Giants are winning, surprisingly, when tickets cost as much as they do, but that doesn't keep the roofers and the techies from all rooting for the same thing, a Giants victory.

The Dragon Boss and I are hoping that we'll come back to beat the Cards and play some World Series games the last weekend in October. If we do, then I'm buying a seat for the back of my commuter bike and we're headed on over to the ballpark.

Hopefull,y Baleen will get over her aversion to riding in the city for this and see her husband and son together on two wheels. We might even have to get Cooper and his dad involved. It's entirely flat from the Marina to the ballpark without any trouble, that is, unless you're riding on the sidewalk right next to a bike cop.

Glam-ma

Gigi and Mikey are in town, bringing some North Shore chic to Northern California. On Friday they were his primary caretakers, bringing him a few dozen yards from me in my downtown office as they strolled down Market Street to the Ferry Building, and then strolled him back by the ballpark. It was his first visit to either of those places.

This weekend we all went to the Dipsea steps and the Tourist Club that we've successfully visited on two consecutive second Saturdays of the month. But it's not for the German bier that we climb those steps, it's the views so we might be back on November 10th, too.

We showed them the treehouse we almost bought, 140 steps from the Mill Valley floor. Mikey thought they weren't up to code, not in structure, but in stature, and Gigi agreed, saying the shallow steps didn't make them seem like 140. But everybody agreed that maybe, it just makes a lot more sense to hike up the Dipsea steps than to own a house on them.

Report Card

The Dragon Boss got his first report card. It's from Bright Horizons, the back-up day care facility right downtown. When Baleen and I poured over it, as we will in the years to come, we noticed a lot of exclamation points. He also had five wet diapers.

Whitby loves bubbles! He would watch them float around and try to catch them with his hands! A bubble that landed on his cheek surprised him and then he laughed! While he was watching the bubbles, he would make funny faces, too!

Downtown

The Dragon Boss came to work with me this morning. We took the early J train right outside our door, early enough to get a comfortable seat in the last car. TDB hung out in the Baby Bjorn on my chest watching the San Francisco downtown working crowd: men in sharp suits with nice shoes and nice haircuts, the jeans and t-shirt crowd, and the man who got on with golf clubs, looked down at TDB and said, Good morning, blue eyes.

On the 5.45 train home, we were squeezed in like sardines. TDB, again on my chest in the Baby Bjorn, seemed just as happy as before, even as I worried he'd soon start overheating like his dad. People talk to you when they're forced up right next to you with a baby on your chest like they wouldn't if there wasn't a baby there.

One woman asked how old TDB was and said she was on her way home to her 10 month old. Another told him he was being so good. The closest guy, wearing a nice, crisp white shirt and closest to TDB, right in front of him, actually, said, loudly, I'm guessing becasue of the earphones connected to his iPhone, He's not going to spit up on me, is me?   

St Francis

The Dragon Boss thinks churches are petting zoos. Papa and Marmee took him to the church up the hill from us on Sunday morning while Baleen and I were down in Salinas for the Western Chic wedding.

One might assume that the animals outnumbering the children in the church was just San Francisco being San Francisco, but there was an excuse this time: Sunday was the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, our city's namesake and the patron saint of animals.

So while my Brooks Brothers jacket was getting chewed on by a horse, Marmee was keeping TDB's hands by his side and they navigated the pews in a stroller. Down doggie, she said in church for the first time in her life.

Baleen's Return

Baleen returned from a little jaunt to Europe and Asia with presents for our caretakers and our son. German chocolate for the caretakers and Turkish shoes for the The Dragon Boss. They're just the right kind of shoes, too, because those onesies with the booties Baleen puts him in don't have any grip. These Turkish shoes do.

TDB needs grip on his shoes because his legs are his motors, steering wheel and propulsion all rolled into one. So far he can move in only one direction, which is backwards, pushing in the direction of his head when he's on his back and toward his feet when he's on his stomach.

But he can't do it when he can't grip the ground. And if he can't grip the ground then he can't motor around. Which just might mean that we'll have to wait on the shoes until we get a gate for the stairs because TDB just become mobile (but only in one direction).

Red and Blue

I've flown in the cavalry, or rather, they've left the Wasatch and crossed the Sierras in their rental car and driven here. I mean, I could have taken care of The Dragon Boss all on my own, and I was looking forward to it with Baleen straddling Europe and Asia all week, but instead of just making me happy, I could make two other people happy two.

So I called up Papa and Marmee and said why not head out to San Francisco on Tuesday morning. They were headed out here on Thursday anyway to take care of TDB for our weekend wedding in Monterey. I think Papa started packing the car before I was off the phone with Marmee.

They arrived Tuesday night in time for dinner, which was San Francisco fast food of Lucca's fresh-made fettucini, hot sausages and meat sauce, and even brought a white peach pie from Ikeda's outside Auburn. And while they loked dinner, what they really, really liked was watching TDB drink his unvarying 8oz dinner in a bottle.

Men

It's all men over here in the Mission suburbs. Baleen got the call on Friday that she was needed in Istanbul this week and that she'd have to leave on Sunday. So we're back to eating pasta from the pan and tiny spoonfulls of plum and applesauce instead of spinach and cauliflower. Then there's grasshopper pie from Mitchell's. Don't tell Baleen.

We also get to pick our own outfits each day which hasn't been a problem for me now that Baleen has directed her attention down to my ankles, not to the shoes I wear, but to our little son (almost) crawling around the floor down there.

It's hot here in the city, I'm talking 90 degrees outside the apartment and 80 degrees inside hot, so we're wearing next to nothing around here, just a simple white onesie. And at night, when I tuck little TDB into the sleep sack, we're really wearing nothing, just a diaper to catch anything if TDB decides to let loose during the night.