places i wish i could bottle and keep.
One year ago: We see The 13th Warrior.
Two years ago: Everybody has an upset stomach.
Three years ago: What is a sigalert?
Four years ago: A good day.
I went away for a long weekend. And I went away without a computer.
This is that story.
Thursday
Traveling with a baby has introduced a whole new level of difficulty. We have:
- our suitcase
- Sophia's suitcase (clothes, toys, diapers)
- a stroller
- Sophia's car seat
- my handbag
- the daily diaper bag
And, oh yes,
- the baby.
When you fly Southwest, you don't bother with checking bags, because it's the Greyhound of the air -- everybody expects you to bring as much crap on board as you possibly can. And now that we're members of the Preboard Generation, that's a lot of crap. Although we do leave the car seat and the stroller at the gate.
We flew from Burbank to San Jose on Thursday morning. Sophia rode on Darin's lap. I think she fell asleep. At San Jose a woman stopped by me as I was holding Sophia and said, "Oh, what a good baby, she didn't make a sound during the flight." And I felt like saying, "Hey lady, my baby can make any noise she wants! She's always a good baby!"
We drove directly from the airport to the Original Pancake House to meet Rob, Laura, and Mitch for breakfast.
"I'll have the chocolate chip pancakes, please."
Then Rob took Darin to work and I drove to Redwood City to meet my friend Allison and her friend Dana. Allison is six months pregnant and Dana is three months pregnant. We talked Baby for several hours, with much cooing over the Cutest Baby In The Universe.
And during lunch at Stacks I discovered why every other mother I know has lost the pregnancy weight and I haven't -- it's because Darin and I have had most of our meals together and have traded her back and forth so we can both eat. I took care of her this meal by myself, and as a result I didn't eat anything. (Of course, I wasn't terribly hungry after pancakes, but I would have liked to get one or two bites in.)
Allison went to take Dana to the airport and I went to check in at the hotel. Darin and I decided to spend one night at the ultra-fancy (with a price tag to match) Westin Palo Alto. The room was sumptuous: king-size bed with tons of pillows, a sitting area with a couch and an armchair, an office area complete with fax. The bed was extraordinarily comfy with soft linens and wonderful pillows.
Of course, Sophia had napped during my visit with Allison, so she was rested and raring to go. She was not having any of Mommy taking a nap.
I bundled her into her stroller and went for a walk in downtown Palo Alto. As always, there's tons that's familiar and just enough that's new to make me feel like a visitor. We walked down to the drugstore to buy her a pack of diapers and then to Borders to see if a book I was looking for was there. (Wasn't.) I didn't run into anyone I knew either. There was a time when I always ran into someone I knew walking down University Avenue. Sigh.
We walked back to the hotel -- the doorman brightly said, "Hi again, Mrs. Adler!" -- and I discovered why Sophia had gotten fussy: she'd had a poop attack, which she often does after a flight. I changed her and then we took off to pick up Darin for dinner.
We had taken this trip to the Bay Area because Darin had agreed to come up and give a talk at Eazel at Eazel's new digs, craftily located right near the Bay Area's new Krispy Kreme. He had also come up, of course, to have some real-time interaction with his teammates, some of whom have never met him. I like to think of Darin's job as being a triumph for telecommuting.
We went to dinner with Jim, Renee, and Greg Marriott at Kabul. Darin and I will always have a soft spot for Kabul, because it's where we had our first date. (Immediately followed by our first movie together, Wayne's World. And we stayed together, yes.) When we arrived, however, we discovered Sophia had had a serious Poop Explosion, and Darin had to spend fifteen minutes cleaning her up and changing her outfit. Oy.
At dinner Jim caught us up on all the Silly Valley nonsense -- a masked ball he went to with a mask that had dollar signs over the eyes. I wasn't sure which part cracked me up more: the mask, or the masked ball.
Friday
Despite sleeping with us, Sophia didn't wake up until 4 (as opposed to her usual 1 - 3 - 5 pattern when sleeping with us). She might have this sleeping through thing down.
Darin and I woke up and we discovered we had two different ideas of how the morning was going to go. In Darin's mind, we would go to breakfast, I would drive him to work, and then I would come back and pack up to move to our new hotel (because I had offered to do it this way). In my mind, we packed to go to the new hotel, then had breakfast, then went to work.
We did it my way. We packed up, we got everything into the car, and we went to Hobee's for breakfast. Man, I miss Hobee's. They should open a branch in LA: they'd make a fortune.
I dropped Darin off and took Sophia to Palo Alto, where I went to Caffe Verona, a place I used to hang out at a lot. It was different. The cafe mocha used to be amazing; now it's just ordinary. I read some of the paper while Sophia flirted with the guy who was sweeping the floor.
Then I headed off to the Stanford Shopping Center, where I met Karen for lunch at the California Cafe. She came all the way down from Berkeley to meet Sophia and me, which I thought was extraordinarily generous. We had a pretty good time -- Karen is as intelligent and well-spoken in person as she is in her writing. (And she looks radiant, of course -- she wore this flowing dress, the sort I wouldn't have dared to wear while pregnant.) Sophia was in High Fuss mode, unfortunately, and I spent a good third of our lunch in the corner nursing Sophia and trying to get her to calm down.
Karen had to head back to Berkeley (and that job she's been working on nonstop) at 3, so we said adieu. I promised her next time I would bring the Babysitter (who would probably get on marvelously with Pär). Of course, at that point she will need her own Babysitter.
I drove to Palo Alto and saw my friend Laine, with whom I worked at Apple Computer for many years. I haven't seen her for years, unfortunately -- and now she has a gorgeous little two year old. We talked about children. If you had told me ten years ago that Laine and I would be sitting around discussing babies, I would have thought you were nuts.
After seeing Laine and her daughter, I drove Sophia to our new hotel, the Garden Court Hotel in downtown Palo Alto. Very nice -- not as big a room as at the Westin, but also way less expensive. I climbed in bed with Sophia, who immediately conked out for an hour while I read my mystery novel.
Then we went to pick up Darin -- who was so wrapped up in talking to his workmates that he had forgotten to come out to the front. He introduced Sophia to everyone (okay, he introduced me too) and then we went to dinner at Osteria with Lee and Ali, two of my oldest friends from Stanford. I don't know when the last time I saw them was. They had a great time playing with Sophia.
Saturday
Once again, Sophia only woke up once during the night. It was great.
Surprisingly, we had no plans to meet anyone for breakfast, so Darin and I had breakfast at Il Fornaio, the restaurant below the hotel.
As soon as we knew we were coming up for the weekend, Saturday was devoted to my family. My parents hadn't seen Sophia since she was a week old and my sister saw her when she was a month old.
We went to my sister's house (better babyproofed than my parents' house) and Sophia got to meet her cousin Madeline again! The last time we saw Madeline, she looked a little strange, because she was in a growth spurt and her head was way too large for her body. Her body's had a few months to catch up, and now she's a gorgeous little girl, running around and babbling. I can't believe how big she's gotten.
It took a little while for Madeline to warm up to Sophia, but eventually she did, and she kept bringing Sophia toys to play with. And the two played together a lot.
Sophia and Madeline
After spending the day playing with Madeline and Sophia, I was completely exhausted, which meant it was time to...drive back to Palo Alto and have dinner with Andy, Darin's mentor!
We went to Mandarin Gourmet and I spent most of the time corralling a slightly cranky Sophia. We totally screwed up her bedtime during this trip. I felt terrible. We had dessert at the Prolific Oven -- I was determined to make this a Greatest Hits tour of our favorite eating places -- but eventually I went to the hotel room with Sophia and Darin went off to talk to Andy some.
Sunday
The windows had blackout curtains, so Sophia wasn't up with first light, which meant we all got to sleep in until 8! Quite the treat.
The big festivity for the day was dim sum at the completely excellent Hong Kong Flower Lounge.
"Bring me some egg custard tarts, and step on it."
We met up with Rob and Laura, Laura's parents, and David, Alaina, and Felix Sloo. Felix is two weeks younger than Sophia. We have high hopes they will announce an engagement soon, but Alaina suspects Felix has been taking an interest in some older women of about 4 years of age.
Me, Rob, Sophia, Laura, Felix, Alaina
We spent some post-brunch time socializing with the Sloos, but then Darin and I took off for Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park. We called Mitch and he came down to visit us. We toured Kepler's Bookstore for a while, but after a while we decided to go back to Mitch's condo. Darin went with Mitch, and I took Sophia.
On the way back to Mitch's I took a detour by one of the first places I lived after graduating from Stanford -- I shared a house with another Apple employee in Portola Valley. I only lived there for about six months, but for so long the experience has been imprinted on my brain. And when I drove back there I realized I couldn't even remember the name of the street. I remembered where the house was, and when I saw the street sign I remembered it, but I'd forgotten it in the meantime. And when I saw the house it was white -- hadn't it been blue?
It was a long time ago. Another lifetime.
Darin and Mitch were doing some kind of calculus problem when I walked in with Sophia -- the exact conversation as I walked in was "So f(x) equals f(x-1)+(x-1)" -- so I put her on a comforter on the floor and played with her for a bit.
Darin and I headed to the airport early enough to drop off the minivan and get in line at the Southwest counter. There were quite a few preboarders for this flight, so we had to sit a few rows back, surprisingly. Every seat on a Burbank - San Jose flight is full, so Darin and I had to wait for the hardy soul who wanted to chance sitting by a man, a woman, and a hungry, squirming, very unhappy baby. I didn't want to start feeding her until we had our seatmate, so that we wouldn't be interrupted.
A woman took the window seat and I positioned Sophia so that her head was near the woman but her kicking feet were by Darin. I try to be as discreet as I can in close spaces like this -- I realize not everyone is psyched to be close to someone breastfeeding.
I felt the woman lift my elbow up. She pushed her folded up sweater underneath my arm, which made it much easier to hold Sophia. "Is that better?" she asked with a smile.
That was totally the coolest interaction I've had with a stranger in a long time. That it happened while nursing was great.
We came home to 15 phone messages. I had over 400 mail messages. (Once again, I am so far behind in my mail I can never catch up.) My new jogger stroller arrived while we were gone, but I had no energy to take it out of the box.
Monday
Sophia was so exhausted she slept from 7pm until 3am and then again until 7am this morning, which is a new record for her. (Once we get rid of the 3am feeding...whoo hoo!)
Today was an extra-special day: Sophia's first solid food!
"Is it supposed to go in my mouth, too?"
She slept all afternoon practically, which made me wonder if there is anything to the solid food/more sleep old wives' tale. (I know there isn't. But still, the coincidence was startling.)
There's an interview with Darin at Linux Planet.
The answer to the last question: The Millenium Summit was a big get-together hosted by the UN in New York. Quite a few world leaders showed up -- just about all of them, actually. One big scandal is that someone who wasn't a world leader managed to make it into the Photo of World Leaders. Running the world really is just like high school.
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Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@nobody-knows-anything.com