This is what greeted me when I returned from a morning away, with Grandma on grandson duty.  From every other angle it’s an elaborate drape of blankets, towels, and sheets.  But through this one peep-hole, you can see the raison d’etre.
That little computer mouse-shaped object at the end of the white cord, sitting on the footstool [...]

His Mama’s youth music theater company’s Once Upon a Mattress might have closed this past Sunday, but not in the boychild’s mind.  Every day brings a fresh opportunity to dress up and sing along to pretty much every part, from Princess Winifred the Woebegone to Prince Dauntless the Drab and the whole royal retinue in [...]

At Mama’s Royal Cafe, Oakland, CA.
We went to Oakland’s legendary Mama’s Royal Café the other day as a foursome, for the first time in forever. Or rather, for the first time since the little guy was in a baby seat, which feels like forever. It’s a long period of diminished engagement with the world, these [...]

The boy and I are driving back from a morning’s peregrinations — hardware store (my idea, natch), bakery (we both agreed, natch), library (his suggestion) — and we were listening to one of his favorite songs on the Free to Be You and Me album: “When We Grow Up.”
It’s sung by Diana Ross, and here [...]

And so we enter the terrible threes. Again.
The variation on this theme? BOY! Who, like his sister, certainly isn’t limiting his contentiousness to his second year. All folks near young humans know that the phrase “terrible twos” is only in common usage because of the alliteration thing.  Three years old is when most young humans [...]

The Tonka truck: a holiday gift from his special cousins. (Who?) In it were a clutch of dollies, which, so far, he has given a bit more attention to. Though he loves the truck.
The dress: mooched from his sister for the day. He said it made him look like “Nina,” whoever that is. Off and [...]

I could have also entitled this “Baba’s mood is…” since the image captures that pretty nicely, too. Okay it’s a bit understated. It’s more like this other picture, by his sister.  But I don’t want to impose my interpretive vision on that of the artist.
He was having a perfectly fine time with the paper, but [...]

Whoosh! ‘Round the zoo’s merry-go-round, Oakland, CA.
Blurry Photo Week Photo #2, cheating a bit on the blurry, since we have a bit of a kid in focus. But I think the pop-flash boy does have a now you see him, now you don’t kind of quality. Which is precisely what a child’s childhood is. That [...]