Year of the Snake

Today is The Dragon Boss' last day as a zero year old and this is the last of the hundreds, and more likely, thousands of pictures of his first year. Had he been born tomorrow instead of exactly one year ago, then he might not be The Dragon Boss, but The Serpent Boss. 

The Window

The Dragon Boss loves the living room windows. It's his domain back there behind the two chairs, with the ledge just high enough that he has to stand on his tip toes to see what he's missing out on.

If the soccer ball falls under the chair he can get down low enough to grab it. If he's doing the counterclockwise loop behind the chairs I'll surprise him on the fireplace side which makes Whit laugh and laugh which makes his dad incredibly happy.

But while he'll tire of that after two or three times, what he doesn't tire of is looking out that window. There's a lot going on out there and he wants to be part of it.

Single Dad Observations

Change takes time. Just ask a California gay couple or female executives. Sheryl Sandberg says three decades after women became 50% of college graduates it's a shame they're only 16% of Board members on Fortune 500 companies while two weeks as a single dad showed it's not just Fortune 500 companies that haven't changed.

Two comments stand out. The first was from a Walgreen's clerk who told me sometime last week when I checked out with one item, Johnson & Johnson No Tears soap, Do not leave this on your desk. Hmm, I laughed, but not sure what he meant? Does it look like alcohol, I asked? No, I'm pretty sure you were told, DO NOT FORGET THE BABY SOAP.

The second was from our French office manager, who when she learned that Baleen was gone for two straights weeks said, Now you know what it's like to be a working mom. Yes, I thought, it's a lot like what I do each day, which is a lot like what Baleen does each day. We're a team. 

Baleen's Back!

Baleen returned from two weeks in freezing London and humid Brazil (having packed for something in between, which left her a little like a hybrid bike, too slow for Hawk Hill and too valuable to be locked outside Papalote) wondering if The Dragon Boss would shun her like she'd heard from Henry's mom that boys tend to do when their mom leaves.

She got off that plane at 10am, showered at home, and went right to the park to the biggest grin and hug, she said, melting a mom's heart. The snuggle didn't last as long as Baleen would have liked, there was a leaf on the ground that soon looked more interesting, but it was definitely a grin and a hug.

They spent the rest of the day together and by the time I got back from work TDB was happy to see me, but happy mom was back so it was a family of three again.

Rags

Of the things I can't wait to tell Baleen when she returns on Friday, what The Dragon Boss wore isn't high on the list. If I don't show it here, I might not mention it.

I'm sure Baleen thinks I put him in the Bulgarian gymnastics pants every day, the ones that 3-Speed said give his legs that oh-so-familiar bowed look, but that's not true. I had three thoughts each time I tried to wrestle TBD into his clothes.

1) Would Baleen like it and if she would, I don't dislike it, do I? 2) It doesn't have too many buttons, does it? 3) Since it's raining, let's go with something dark. Baleen, here's some of what TDB wore these last two weeks.

Just a man and his diaper

The Luke Perry look

Stripes like mom

Who cares if I'm wearing pajamas outside? I'm operating heavy machinery.

Goin' Places

It's a whole lot easier spending 48 hours on the move with The Dragon Boss than watching him move so when he woke up on Saturday morning just before six, as he's done all week, we had our breakfast and got on out of there, first to The Mill on Lower Divis, where the old biking breadmaker now has a roof over his head, then home for a nap, because, after 10 1/2 hours of sleeping, three hours of waking is about all we can take.

The place where good bread is made

A detour on the way home before the day's first nap

When TDB woke up, it was another quick meal, then off to Pac Heights to pick up Uncle Slim, the pre-TDB friend who's made it into the post-TDB world, then off to the Dipsea steps to meet Henley and Annie et al for a hike to the Tourist Club.

That required another nap, a little indoor wrestling, then bottle, bath and bed before Sunday's trip to Golden Gate Park to see what San Francisco does on a Sunday. They play volleyball, lindy hop by the deYoung, roller skate near 6th and Kennedy and drink lots of beers from cans. TDB? He likes to wrestle bike seats laying on the grass.

Boom Town: The Barbary Coast's rowdy, anthomaniac's past

The Cranes of the Dogpatch

It's Carb Week here in the Mission suburbs where dinner so far reads pasta, pasta, pizza, pasta. These meals have all been drive-by's - Lucca's on the way home, pizza from the freezer - but that doesn't mean I won't travel for flour.

Yesterday morning took me to the Dogpatch, past all the construction around the new UCSF medical facilities; past 34 acres of the Portrero Power Plant that cranked out 141 years of energy for San Francisco shipbuilders, for Claus Spreckel's California Sugar Refinery, and for residents of what was then called the Central Waterfront; past the big ships doing I don't know what docked just south of Mission Bay, to the pop-up Thursday morning bakery of Greg Mendel and what's been called the city's best croissant.

Good thing I did, too, because yesterday was his last day in that location. One can master yeast, it seems, but not finding a place to sell your bread. The texted picture to Baleen in a London conference room was enough for her to declare that I'll be back when he finds a new location, but next time with Baleen and The Dragon Boss.  



Ride by here...



...and here...

...and here...

...to get to here.

Bedtime Stories

Baleen was worried that in her two weeks away The Dragon Boss would forget all about her and hold it against her when she returned and not let her put him to bed with a bottle and a bedtime story as she normally does.

I promised her that TDB wouldn't forget her or punish her for leaving and that he really wouldn't even know the difference, but just to make sure, we've been reading stories that remind him about Baleen.

Normally that's Baleen's territory, the reading, as I can't quite remember to grab the bottle, the binky, the sleepsack and a book and just tell him a story instead, but to make sure, I've put 365 by his bed each night and when it's time for bed, we flip the pages and talk about Baleen.

Boys Gone Wild

Baleen's gone for two weeks, off to London and then straight to Brazil because her employer needs her in those two places and won't pay for her to come home in between. She's very sad, especially today this day of departure with her afternoon flight to Heathrow so she walked The Dragon Boss to the park on his daily jaunt with Rowan to say goodbye.

While we are sad, and we do wish that mom was here, too, we're making the best of it. It's whole milk and carbs on day 1 and tomorrow night is looking like more of the same.

We've got an itinerary of bike rides, maybe an East Bay hike, and if mom has her way, a shopping list for our second father-son IKEA trip. We'll just stay away from the horse meatballs.

Walked

The Dragon Boss has definitely walked. We're not ready to say he's walking, as his preferred travel mode is still crawling or being carried, but he's definitely walked at least 50 steps by now.

The first steps were in January. He'd been standing on his own for a few weeks and walking with his hands on something, like the wall or the coffee table, so when he stood up in front of Baleen from a sitting position, we weren't ready for the two wobbly steps he took to Baleen's arms. Did he just walk, Baleen asked? He did, I said, and then we clapped and hugged him to let him know that he'd done something good, which probably didn't impress him all that much as we clap in unison a couple times a day at such tasks as eating puffs on his own or pointing to the soccer ball and saying, Ba.

We didn't see a repeat of those independent steps for another week and then it was a few days before they appeared again, but in the last week, it's been a few times a day now. It's still never more than 2 or 3 steps at a time and it's really, really hard to prompt him to walk, he seems to do so when he wants to and only when he wants do, but we can definitely say without hesitation that TDB has walked.

Maximum Exertion

Ants can carry up to 50x their bodyweight. The Dragon Boss is figuring out what that multiple is for him.

He's in Maximum Exertion phase, as Abigail's mom calls it, where he's trying to pick up the largest thing he can just to see if he can. So far, that's included pewter serving dishes, full water bottles and a very small bicycle.

It's even prompted Baleen and me to weigh the water bottle (4 pounds) and then try carrying something 20% our weight with just two fingers. No video of that, I'm afriad, but it did include video of Baleen making sounds oddly similar to TDB's.

Tahoe

The Dragon Boss climbed to 8,000 feet this weekend, the highest he's even been. It's a lot closer to the sun up there so we lathered him in sunscreen and put him in a Red Sox cap to stave off snow blindness as we snowshoed from Boreal Ridge to the Pacific Crest Trailhead.

When we paused to drink water or rest before a steep section, TDB got antsy. But when we were moving, he was happy, especially that half kilometer stretch where we followed a dog, whereby TDB metamorphosed from captive infant to human jockey. He'd grab my hair, kick his legs and coo until I sped up and closed the gap to the dogs, which just made him kick, grab and coo all the more.

Baleen and I never got around to skiing - it was too warm and it's been too dry to ski without grandparents' free babysitting - but our CraigsList Deuter Kid Carrier II got plenty of work. TDB even showed us he can  fall asleep in it, so we don't have to plan our future hikes only between the hours of 11am to 3pm, but can hike all day long. Maybe we'll even invite Cooper's dad for a hike one day.  

Ski Weekend

When we told The Dragon Boss that this was a 3-day weekend, he said, Take me to the mountains. So we're off early tomorrow morning to the van Often's house near Truckee, a 3 hour drive, with a promise of an early lunch at the Tahoe drive institution, Ikeda's. That'll be Baleen's first Ikeda stop in her half dozen trips up there and my first in probably 60 trips over 12 years.

That early morning departure means our bags are packed (feeding and packing TDB into his carseat should take at least half an hour of constant activity) so I spent a good half hour in the garage yesterday trying to find all our winter clothing, including TDB's various one-pieces from REI, Hanna Anderson and Patagonia.

I haven't packed the heavy winter gloves as it'll be 45 and sunny on Saturday and Sunday, but when the sun goes down it'll dip below freezing. That's when father and sun pull out the ski sweaters.

Houston

The Dragon Boss almost came to Houston with me. The week before I'd had one half of me in my boss' office trying to coordinate with her boss in Houston while the other half was on the phone with Baleen asking, When are you going to Brazil, When are you going to London? When are you going to the UAE?

Instead, Aunt Wizzie and Uncle Margarine just got me, as I slept in the same guest bedroom at the top of the stairs where our family of 3 did over Thanksgiving except this time, instead of TDB sleeping in the closet, I hung some clothes in there.

Baleen called me on her drive back from work on Tuesday, interrupting the second gargantuan plate of meat in front of me in as many meals, and told me what I'd told her two or three times before, which is what I had told Cooper's mom and Rowan's dad and almost anybody else with an infant and an iPhone, which is that she was surprised how attentive she was with TDB when it was just the two of them. No distractions, no assumptions that your spouse has TDB or could get to him if he were to fall, just the two of you. So while I'm glad that I saw Aunt W and Uncle M and got to see my boss' boss again, I'm really glad that Baleen learned what I already know. 

The Hawaiian Paradox

Thanks to The Big Hawaiian (TbH), Baleen and I have 3,000 wonderful, incredible, gorgeous photos of our family of three from the highest point in San Francisco.  Yes, 3,000. In town for a few days, we invited TbH over for dinner. He asked if he could swing by early for some family photos at twilight. 

We rushed to the top of Twin Peaks, Baleen's first time there, and TbH did what I've seen him do dozens of times before, which is weasel the dozen other people up there out of the way to get the best shots, except this time, I gladly followed his lead. Thinking about it afterwards, as TbH washed and cleaned the pot I cooked the pork in while I dished it out, I decided that TbH lives his life like Germans in line for the ski lift, which is, Don't wait for anybody else and don't apologize, just go for what you want and assume everybody else will, too. 

I still don't think I'd trust The Dragon Boss for a day in The Big Hawaiian's care, which might sound harsh, but what I mean is that TbH has no consideration for his own health - this is the photographer who had blurry vision for a few years in one eye because he had a street doctor perform surgery on his eye in Bangkok after getting swiped in a rooftop water polo match - so it's a leap to think he'd treat somebody else differently, but if TDB ever shows an interest in surfing photography, one in a million entrepreneurism, or, just generally living a little closer to the edge than I can show him, I'll put him on a plane to Hawaii with a thousand bucks in his pocket, a few six-packs to hand out to whomever they offend, and a laminated list in his pocket that starts, Under NO circumstances will you...which, we all know is useless as the thing I'm trying to protect TDB from with TbH is something I can't possibly imagine. And neither can you. 

The Dragon Boss spies The Big Hawaiian for the first time

Man Clothes

The Dragon Boss has a pair of jeans. They're Polo, to be sure, Baleen hasn't abandoned the reins, she's just loosened them, but they let a young man crawl all over the park without worry that they'll accumulate what Tide can't fix.

We put them on whenever we're headed to Mission Dolores or the park at 30th where TDB spends half his time on the ground, at first staring at all the big kids running about, then crab crawling toward something to climb.

Right now, a few months or maybe even weeks from stumbling around on his feet, TDB loves the roped webbing. It gives a little as he stands like he's on the deck of a boat and it lets him walk from one side to the other, all while staring at the bigger kids climbing to the top, while his parents know that if topples, the jeans and the kids are alright.

Fish

I've found my biking peer group: new fathers. They can get up early on a Saturday and craft a route that gets a little bit of climbing in, some sprints, and a few deserved downhills before ending at a spot that opens just as Baleen and The Dragon Boss arrive.

While it's great to pass along toddler tidbits in the saddle, and compare them afterwards with Baleen to get the other side's version on her walk with the wife, what's most appreciated is the pace. New fathers haven't spent the last three weeks doing intervals in the morning and indoor training in the evening. They're lucky if they've slept 42 hours in the past week.

This past Saturday was with Annie's dad, ending at Fish a few minutes before 11.30, making us the first in line. Papa and Marmee first took TDB to Fish when he was just a few months old, then sent us a check to take Uncle Margarine and Aunt Wizzy, so TDB seems to make it over there every few months. It might be his go to lunch spot, at least when he's in Sausalito.

Super Bowl Sunday

We went over to Baleen's colleague's apartment for the Super Bowl where The Dragon Boss slep thru the first half. When he awoke, it was banans and avacadoes, then Beyonce. Ten minutes of Beyonce, in fact, a few seconds of which were spent as close as he could get.

He had a little competition for attention, a 12 pound, very well behaved dog picked up just two weeks ago from the Marin Humane Society, which was his first continued interaction with a four-legged friend. Since TDB was almost double his weight, and Alexander the Dog was very mild-manered, they got along just fine.

At first, TDB was a little shy around Alexander, especially when Alexander started licking TDB's fingers as he sat there, but once Alexander laid down under the coffee table, TDB showed his heft. He walked guided circles around Alexander and the coffee table, roaring and reaching for the beer bottles in hands around him, not for what was inside, but to put his finger inside the opened glass top.

The Dragon Boss and Beyonce

The Dragon Boss and Alexander

Picking up Baleen

There's a new shuttle from 30th and Church straight to Baleen's satellite office, which means that Baleen doesn't have to take a second shuttle from HQ to her office, which saves 20 minutes a day, which means that she's now taking the shuttle about 3 times a week.

To reward her, The Dragon Boss and I will meet her on her walk home. It's not much of a task, we normally see at least a J or two along the way, which is almost as exciting as seeing Baleen, so we're happy to do it.

It's dark by the time Baleen gets off the bus, which means we can't see her until she's just a few yards away, but when we do, it's even better than a wooden bench surrounding a tree covered in lights. It means mom's home for the weekend.  

$5 Coffee

The new dad survival guide says that all new dads need some sort of man cave, even if it's a walk-in closet that's stuffed with a chair, newspapers and old Sports Illustrateds. A place where dads can get away from all things parenting and return for a just a moment to the life they used to know before the little one arrived.

Well, that parenting guide never rented an apartment in the most expensive city in America where not even the clothes in our closet have nearly as much room as they need. I still like the concept, it just occurs outside the apartment, at one of two coffee shops on the way to work, Four Barrel deep down Valencia, with their preferred music, $2 house blend, and 7am opening, or, if I'm ready before then (but not before 6am), Ritual Roasters further up Valencia.

Ritual's daily cuppings of Colombian, Kenyan and whatever other beans they feel like brewing range from $2 to $5 and I, predictably, always choose the cheapest because even the cheapest is incredibly good. They also have a loyalty card which allowed me on this Wednesday morning to sample a $5 cup of coffee for free, a Colombian microblend. It was good, though I didn't prefer it to the $2 version, and even if I had, no way I'd return to it at 2.5x the cost of the incredibly good option.