smoove like buttah

Some new favorite things have emerged of late. For example, Jonah likes scrambled eggs for breakfast. He didn’t, for a long time, and now he does. Lots and lots of scrambled eggs.

So I made us scrambled eggs for breakfast, at the start of our almost perfect day. A smooth day. Like butter. Buttery eggs. Mmmmmm.

And then after we all got ourselves cleaned up and organized, and my MIL2 (the step, as opposed to MIL1, the original, who visited last month) packed all her bags because our outings would wind up at the airport, dropping her off for her flight out.

We spent the morning at Habitot. Jonah showed Grandma Judy all of his favorite nooks and activities there. They painted faces, fished, painted on the wall, played in the barn, at the train table, the water table, read books in the pillow filled reading lair, did puzzles, shopped for plastic fruit in the grocery store, visited the rabbits sculpture in the library. When he was ready to go he literally just started walking out the door, no warning. But we were close by and it was lunch time after all, so…

Next stop, pizza. Another favorite thing of late. He’d read about pizza for months in various of his books (I blame the children’s book authors) and eventually, one day, it came to pass that I ordered a slice of pizza while we were out together and gave him a bite. Bliss. He loves it so much that when he encounters other round flat food items, he often declares them Pizza!

The other food item he met in print before real life and became obsessed on? Cupcakes. And yes, I’ve recently introduced him to the real life version of that too.

After pizza, we walked to the parking lot. I have to mention this because on the way the boy correctly identified a “Stop Sign!” and inside the parking structure he was reading the numbers on the walls of each level. Correctly. I’m a little stunned. He mixed up 1 and 4 one time (With the little angled slant on the top of the 1, I can see where it looks 4-ish). But otherwise he was spot on.

Then we drove to the cupcakery for treats, which we took with us to the Oakland Aviation Museum. My brilliant plan being we’d hang out there, enjoy the exhibits, have a cupcake picnic, drive a few blocks to the airport terminal to drop off grandma, and head home at which point he’d fall asleep for his newly-minted late-afternoon nap.

He LOVED LOVED LOVED the aviation museum. It was a little pricey for such an odd, out of the way, specific, museum but it supplied us with a good two hours of activity. “So! Many! Planez!” “Diff-ur-ent! Playunz!” He ran around pointing, touching, announcing the different colors of the planes, declaring them big or small. One had a Big Nose. Another looked “Like a Tur-tull!” down to the shape of it’s beak-like front end.

And the “Little House” outside? A playhouse-like “control tower” with recordings of air traffic communications and old mouthpieces on wound cords? And the couple of planes you can actually sit in and touch the controls? Joy. Pure joy. By the way, for the budget-minded, the sit-in planes and little house are outside the museum and thus can be accessed for free.

We pulled out the cupcakes for our picnic, on the stairs of the little house. I asked him if he wanted chocolate or vanilla. Chock-O-Lette!

I gave Jonah his mini-cupcake. Perfect Jonah size. He danced and bounced as he held the cupcake, bit half into his mouth. Chewed with delight. Swallowed. Demanded and guzzled down milk from a straw. Then he gave the other half back to me, and tried the vanilla. A taste of the frosting and he decided to forgo. Returned to playing with the air traffic controls.

At 3pm we dropped Grandma off at the airport terminal, said our goodbyes, exactly 90 minutes before her flight. Smoove. Like buttah.

As we drove away from the airport, Jonah said: Good Bye, Grand Ma Judelee. Cry. Sad. Good Bye. Grand Ma. Judelee. Back Again. While.

I almost called Judy on her cell phone to tell her, took it out of the diaper bag, but I recently got a ticket for talking while driving so I plugged it into the charger instead and kept driving.

On the way home, Jonah and I sang songs. He demanded El Trenecito Va — a new favorite from the canon of songs contained in the yoga class breaktime songbook. I know it’s that song because he says “Tringalingaling!” I sang it through three times, in English mostly because I could only remember the last line in Spanish. The fourth time I paused before “clouds” and then he laughed. And said “Claouodds.” And so we went, me pausing, him filling in. “Chooo chooo trinlinlin.” More delight.

Blocks from home, my phone starts vibrating. It’s Scott. “I’m a minute from home, I’ll call you back,” I said, and hung up quickly. He called again and again. Buzz buzz buzz buzz. I pull up to the house. Jonah is asleep in the carseat. I answer the phone. Judy has left her purse in my car. I pull out again and drive back to the airport — on the way, I try calling her cell phone and yes, had I done that on the way out, it would have rung, and I could have saved myself the round trip. I deliver her purse to her curbside, about 35 minutes before her flight. Oh well.

It was almost almost almost a perfect day. And hey, at least I hadn’t transferred the sleeping kid to the crib and THEN answered Scott’s call. That would’ve sucked.

Meanwhile, Jonah is still asleep. That’s 3:30 to 6pm and counting. So when is his bedtime going to be tonight, hmmmmmmm?