t h e . r i d i c u l o u s . p a n d a

on our summer vacation:

silas took a bus to a train to a bus in order to settle in for a four hour flight to san francisco on his parents' laps.

taught his mama how to properly use the barf bag.

gawked at the foot traffic on the golden gate bridge

while riding on (another!) bus with papa.

all to get to momo's haus and see anthony and rie.

drove up the coast while taking breaks to and throw rocks.

spent an overcast afternoon at point reyes. (we packed our sweatshirts but brought nothing for the baby. so we dressed him in all his clothes and wrapped him in a towel. thumbs up for excellent parenting!)

harvested kelp for miso soup.

surveyed the pacific with anton.

took note of the waterfowl overhead.

headed back to the car when silas's teeth started to chatter.

looked out for hawks and tule elk.

went to soccer practice in mill valley. interference!

drove the bus in the park when practice turned injurious and tried to avoid the california mom and her stylish toddler who mentioned that she had "read on the internet that you're not supposed to tell your children to share."

headed up to the humboldt redwoods state park to do a bit of camping with these three professionals.

tried to stay on the straight and narrow.

crossed the eel river bridge.

but stopped to throw some more rocks before dinner.

waited around to get thirsty for another beer.

took sam on a walk to brush teeth.

but left momo behind to huff at any intruders to site twenty five.

posed in front of our tent.

took a morning walk before the sun got too high.

stopped to say hello to a barely hidden buddha.

relaxed with rie back at our home.

listened to sam's stories.

went on a mission to find giant & tall trees.

made the baby pose for vacation photos before he's old enough to be a sourpuss.

watched sam play early settler.

and then helped silas climb like papa.

posed in front of the campfire that silas and i built while everyone else was out restocking firewood and beer.

relaxed after dinner.

woke up early the next morning to point at the big trees and pack up our site.

headed to the lost coast brewery for fresh beer! (and lunch)

silas had the sampler plate and the ten tasters.

freed momo from the car for a family picture.

went to the san francisco aquarium of the bay to ride the moving sidewalk through the fish tunnels. (don't ask silas what he would like to see during the day unless you are prepared to seek out some fish. it's always his answer.)

stopped to pet the bat rays with anton and papa.

took a big boat bay cruise under the bridge and around alcatraz.

stopped for tomato soup in a bread bowl at boudin. (don't ask sam what he would like to eat during the day unless you are prepared to seek out some bread bowls. it's always his answer.)

finally back in san rafael and with rie home from work, we stopped for sushi on our last night of summer vacation.

headed back to the airport and silas ran off his last nuggets of craziness before sleeping for three straight hours on the flight home. ridiculous.

thank you to anthony, rie and momo for taking such great west coast care of us for the entire week. we will be heading into the studio sometime this weekend and hope to cut "momo's house" the single. stay tuned.

on our flight back to chicago from san francisco, we knew we had just missed ann marie in the airport by a couple of hours on her way out to dc. that was a bummer and i mentioned to sam that it would have been great if we could've whisked her to our place for a quick visit before her connecting flight. lo and behold, her return trip got all sorts of messed up and a layover in chicago got magically extended to an overnight. silas got a good half hour of amma in the morning and spent the rest of the day talking about the taxi that took her to fly.

i know her face is cut off in this, but look at those dazzling smiles!

soaking up the early morning love.

saturday evening, sam and i toasted to our newlywed-ed neighbors at the lincoln park zoo. a romantic ceremony & a perfect evening with special thanks to b-rad who pulled a babysitter first by taking care of silas from five pm on. i'm not quite sure all of what they did with their time together but silas was a barrage of prepositions the next morning when we asked him. "out, on, in, house, in, brad, books, in, out."

sam and i posing at the giraffe table.

vonzele and annie take their love to a new level.

lions sleeping at midnight. this was incredibly cool after a lot of rum and cokes.

currently, the buffalo branch of the family is visiting and keeping silas well entertained with living room hockey games, poker and piles of bedtime stories.

silas's choices for the mornings spent with his cousins were not surprisingly a visit to the aquarium one day followed by the beach the next. thankfully, sam's side of the family is full of good sports.

clay . silas . owen . turtle

the last lizard of the day

pointing out the komodo king to owen.

hanging out in the oceanarium after watching the dolphin show downstairs. underwater viewing is highly recommended - when the dolphins jump the water/bubble ripple effects are crazy and fireworkesque.

early birthday celebration and fancy night out with my mom and godmother fran.

yesterday we hit the pool on the west side with olivia and friends. we planned on staying all afternoon but decided to take off after lunch when somebody took a poop in the water. there's nothing like hearing "fecal matter" announced over loudspeakers. sarah was trying to figure out which swimmer was the culprit by examining guilty faces in the toilet upon our exit.

site of their first solo encounter solicits a grip/hug a year later.

this smile totally justifies the five buck entrance fee.

good lord, is it monday already? these past few days truly felt like vacation. with the cool weather and so much to get out and see, we were barely at home. but maybe that has more to do with the fact that our television internally exploded during the lightning storm last week.

summer in full swing with tita lynn at foster beach.

silas's first veggie dog! with lynn's encouragement he took on the whole thing.

friday morning breakfast with georgia. pretend coffee helps them get in gear for those cartwheels at toddler gymnastics.

walking the fox river boardwalk with grandma and grandpa.

cicada on a stick.

hiding behind grandpa might stave off the ride home for a few more moments.

after nap/before party ankle soak with grandma.

swimming like polar bears.

my parents' neighbors, peter, sandra and helena, are moving back to switzerland come fall. so we crashed their backyard farewell bbq on saturday evening. helena had tons of kids over & silas was fascinated by all of them, but he was (deliriously) happiest while jumping on the trampoline.

helena commandeers the de-meating of the pig. the kid on the left was really, really into the pig head. i think he ate the tongue, but my swiss-german is not so great.

silas . me . peter

sandra and just two members of her fan club.

he even thought it was fantastic when his face would bounce off the trampoline. and we just want him to be happy.

midwest buddhist temple ginza fest on sunday. we encouraged silas to get a movin' with promises of drums, buddha and noodles. it totally worked.

one bowl of udon down, one to go.

judo demonstration. we kept of shady back row heckling to a low murmur.

titi holds on to silas while his papa makes a kirin & popcorn run.

leading the crowds in a hula dance during the ukulele performance.

audible architecture at pritzker pavilion with califone, amy, forrest and lisa.

the neighbors are home from vacation! let's remind them how much they missed us by climbing on them the second they sit down for their lunchbreak!

hey, we know that hippie! silas checks out eric's button fashion.

don't even try to stop this dancing fool.

there is no greater relief at breakfast then being in the heart of the summertime bounty. silas chooses his breakfast from the bowl on the counter. if he can say it, he can eat it.

big kid waiting for the sound of the morning trash trucks in the alley.

because amy vetoed my big plan of staying in and sitting on the couch all day, we ended up in lincoln park. i dropped them off at the entrance to the zoo, spotted them after parking the car and found all three of them elbow deep in some serious fountain splashing.

fish can be found pretty much anywhere you hope they'll be.

they spot the aardvark lying in the blue barrel and promptly lay down in the pathway in order to truly observe. honk if you know the sign for aardvark!

the michael phelps of the toddler set.

baby seats are for babies! silas rocks his new papa-made booster seat at breakfast.

after a long week of economizing, scott spends some time with us at tweet.

one last jam before the professor departs on a jet plane.

more often than not, sam and i do a whole lot of nudging each other with our elbows in disbelief that our experiences are just that, ours. what have we done to deserve such friends and good fortune? also that there is this small wonder boy now included in all of our happenings who just thinks that this is his norm. but so far, he's been right on.

this weekend was a strong case in point. our friends, rachel and doug and now their very own wonder baby, charlotte, were in town from seattle. but instead of trucking down to chicago they invited us up to doug's family lake house in wisconsin for a two day uninterrupted visit.

it was beautiful weather, perfect company, savory meals and lots of beer - all those things that i imagined my perfect summer camp that i never got to go to to be.

silas on the drive up north chooses his snack food from the bag in the backseat - one apple, one apricot. eaten simultaneously.

baby girl warms up to our crazy faces immediately.

silas makes himself right at home with doug (still very comfy).

rachel and her charlotte!

auntie sian coordinates lake house wear with toddler amusement seamlessly.

daylight has broken, hallelujah. he spent the one am until two am hour demanding in sleepy wails to be transferred back and forth between our twin bunk beds: papaaa! mamaaa! papaa! mamaa! and in the end, papaa! wins.

early morning on the pier, amazement and a peach.

navigating crystal lake with papa on the paddleboat.

for those of you keeping tally, silas's boating history thus far: pontoon, dragon, ferry, paddle.

the turtle pool right next to the water was a huge hit.

taking it easy with a local brew.

charlotte maintains composure even with my constant need to document.

sam and charlotte share un beso esquimal.

princess of the toys takes on auntie sian before dinner.

silas focuses his "gentle" baby touches on the skull.

charlotte . doug . rachel

when rachel and i used to get into boatloads of trouble as teenagers, my mother had a mantra of this too shall pass. well, look at us now. all grown up and unsupervised with whiskey & men over thirty at a lake house far away from our parents. funny, eh?

monday morning group picture before we travel apart.

sam and i stopped for breakfast in milwaukee. silas has been around for nearly 22 months and this was his first time at beans & barley. that's some slacker parenting.

oh, milwaukee, why do you continue to try and woo us? with your discount museum coupons that fall into our lap, museum guards that are actually delighted to see you, beautiful view of our favorite lake, easy street parking, uberfriendly residents and public men's toilets that have cloth diaper dumping instructions posted?

silas flies, sam supports.

it's like i do fashion shoots all of a sudden.

one of the exhibits at mam was called "sensory overload" or in my own opinion, more suitably, "screw the mr. potato head exhibit at children's museum around the corner. bring your toddler in here to have his little mind blown."

any final thoughts on the weekend, sir?

georgia at the beach last friday. she places that cap just like that herself.

no cameras please! theo and silas scale the fence to get closer to the flowers.

orgia, e-o and whee! (according to silas)

after these shots, eliza, kerry and i enjoyed lunch at huey's. let me repeat that: we had three children around the age of two at a restaurant and ate a meal after spending the morning at the beach. only minor meltdowns, silas clonked himself good on the wall and the eye level foosball controllers, but everyone ate lunch, we enjoyed a semi-complete conversation and driving home afterwards, i was so proud. honestly proud.

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little boy. not so little any more. the recurring theme. something we hear each other say even more times than you request BJ Thomas's "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" is that you're so big... how'd you get so big? used to be a sweet boy. you're still sweet, just so big...
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and big is nothing. big can't compare to pure kinetic power. straight up energy made physical. this month you left the ground. 21 months of "jumping" to tip toes and all of a sudden you're flying. put you on a trampoline, mama and papa's bed or an air mattress and you're downright gymnastic. oh right, and the running. when did you figure out running? i actually remember when you figured out fast. fast was a father and two teenage sons jogging through the redwoods. you figured out fast 2,259 miles away from home. you took off running "FAST!" right after them and have barely stopped since.
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and as we get closer to just saying you're two years old and not 22 months, or almost two or 88 weeks, the many faces of Silas Lee have started asserting themselves almost as much as you have. and you're a character, whether it's wishing our guests a fond farewell hours before they are scheduled to leave; or leaning over, lightly touching their arm [after being right next to them for the last half hour] and sweetly saying "hi!"; or crying the light fantastic when one cookie just isn't enough — you are yourself and you are ridiculous and in the end you are really just mama's sweet boy.
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actually, strike that. you are everybody's sweet boy. this past month, you've visited and been visited by more family and friends than most people see in a year. you started it in the Humboldt nation with Anthony, Rie and Momo and finished it in McHenry with just about everybody. In between there were visits from amma, the wilk-ruppert family, and did i mention that you got to see just about every Platz in existence including the Blaises and Tarters [freshly returned from China]. Not to mention tita, titi & emily, georgia, forrest, olivia and their parents, brad and professor dressler.
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and all i can say is thank you. i've been reading a lot of books lately that deal with some serious, negative situations – real bad stuff, and a lot of it involves family. and they all kick in what amma calls that "low grade state of constant terror" that you might not always be happy. that you might not always feel totally loved and appreciated. i know i can't control every situation. and i know that there will be times when you are sad and angry — and that knowledge breaks my heart every time i think about it. but all those feelings pale in comparison to the absolute joy i feel when you run to me. when you hug me and every time you say "papa" it makes it all okay. i know you know i love you. i know you don't doubt it for a second and that keeps me in a high grade state of euphoria. you are my monkey. my stinky pete. my little boy. my baby. i love you Silas Lee.
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