There was a nice area specifically for preschool age children, with fun activities, a little puppet theater and lots of things to crawl on and touch.

Jocelyn had a grand time, running around, staring at other kids, chatting up the other parents.

She probably would have stayed there until she ran out of steam completely, she had such a good time.  A great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Spending quality couple time is a serious challenge when little ones come along, so when such an opportunity is arranged, the hopes are high.  Matthew and I hadn’t had a “date” in many, many months, so with the romantic holiday coming up, we thought it would be nice to get someone to watch Jocelyn and go out and do something together, an afternoon at the movies sounded nice.

If you’re making the effort and incurring the expense, you want to pick a movie that will benefit from a large screen showing.  Naturally we chose Avatar 3D.  About an hour into the movie, I started to feel unwell, my stomach was tying up in knots and my head was pounding.  I tried taking off the 3D glasses, not watching, but I had to leave the theater.  Now a movie ticket in Cali is crazy expensive, even a matinee, so I decided after a breather, to head back in to the show.  I didn’t watch much, didn’t put on the glasses, but after about another hour (it’s a long movie), I had to run out of the theater.  I’ll spare you the details, they weren’t pretty, and I think I scared a bunch of ladies in the restroom.  I couldn’t text Matthew because my phone was in my purse under the seat in the theater, along with my wallet and gum, which I so could have used at that point.  So I went and waited in the lobby, as long as I could before I was afraid Matthew might think I was dead and come looking for me, then I went back in for the last 10 minutes.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see credits roll in my life.

To Matthew’s credit, he kept suggesting we go, but I didn’t want to ruin our afternoon, I didn’t want to make him leave the first movie he’d gone out to in six months.  In the end, though, my determination to stick it out made things much worse.  If we’d left, we could have just enjoyed our afternoon together, instead of me praying to the porcelain gods and Matthew worrying about me.  I’ve suffered from minor motion sickness before, flying, windy roads, but never at the movies.  I’ve seen other movies in 3D, though none as motion-intense as Avatar.  Turns out the not wearing the glasses thing, which I thought would be helpful, probably made things worse, causing my brain to be even more confused by what it was seeing but not feeling.

When we got home, I did a bit of research.  Turns out a lot of people had similar reactions.  Motion sickness is a quirk of our anatomy, an unfortunate side effect of biology.  Kinetosis, or motion sickness, is caused when there is a disconnect between the stimulatory signals received by your brain.  When flying, your body feels you moving, but your eyes do not perceive the motion, confusing your noggin; in a 3D movie, it’s the opposite problem, your eyes tell your brain you’re flying through an alien world, but your inner ear is saying you’re simply sitting in a seat in a theater.   These conflicting inputs cause your body to conclude you are under the influence of a toxin; by vomiting you might be able to expel any toxin that’s still in your stomach before it affects you further.  Great for poisons in the jungle, not so great for 3D movies.

After our less than stellar attempt at romance, we spent the actual holiday doing family activities.  We took Jocelyn to the Little Farm at Tilden Park; she was interested, if a bit frightened of the strangers and huge animals.  Later in the day, we went to the tot park and pushed Jocelyn on the swings.  All my disappointment over our previous-day’s outing evaporated as she laughed with glee when flying through the air.  You see, baby smiles and laughter are addictive to parents, they stimulate the reward centers in your brain, much as drugs do.  So here it is, my own personal perfect drug.

P.S.  I hope you’ll forgive me for getting a little photoshop happy with the last image, I loved Jocelyn’s smile in it, but as she was moving, the focus was a bit blurry, I did some extreme sharpening and ended up with this, which I thought was pretty groovy.

Jocelyn would rather sit on her gifts than open them!

Helping Daddy open his presents.

Monkey Bread

4 cups biscuits (one can “Grands” biscuits, I like the flaky layer kind, but plain work well too)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar, loosely packed

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

1.  Preheat oven to 350oF.  Grease a simple bundt cake pan.

2.  Mix together the sugar and cinnamon.

3.  Cut the biscuits into 1/2 inch pieces.  Roll the pieces in the cinnamon/sugar mixture and then distribute evenly in the pan.  Sprinkle some of the remaining sugar mixture over the biscuits if you’re a fan of cinnamon like me.

4.  Melt the butter in a sauce pan, add the brown sugar and bring to a boil.  Pour over the biscuits.

5.  Bake approximately 20 minutes or until well browned and cooked through.

6.  Try not to eat the whole thing by yourself!

She insisted on wearing these and showing off her new teeth!

With my favorite holiday fast approaching, I received an unanticipated request, to bring a jello salad to Thanksgiving dinner in SF.  I shouldn’t really be surprised, about half of the attendants will be displaced mid-westerners, but I find it funny all the same.  A few years back, we went to a wonderful Turkey Day celebration given by the same couple who will be our hosts this year.  For that holiday, I prepared my family’s traditional holiday Jello-salad.  This layered strawberry and sour cream salad was a specialty of my maternal grandmother.  When I was a teenager and learned how to make this dish myself, I remember being a bit dismayed that there was a layer of sour cream between two layers of sweet jello, it just didn’t seem right.  I’ve since gotten over that initial quibble, and love that jello salad dearly, but I’m not going to make it this year.  It doesn’t travel well.  The year we took it the city, the BART trip caused its carefully deposited layers to slip and slide, so it wasn’t as appetizing as it had been when we left home, but it still tasted good.  I thought however, that I would share the recipe with anyone who reads this blog, should they feel like a traditional Cook family holiday dish.

Grandma Cook’s Strawberry Sour Cream Jello Salad

Directions

So here she is, in all her adorable glory!

For comparison purposes here I am at roughly the same age.

And here’s Matthew in back in his sweet baby days!

I think she got all our best features.

*I reserve the right to use this post title again, as I don’t think I’m original enough to come up with something new for her next milestone.

More about Wordless Wednesday here.

The second memory is in my bedroom at about the same time (at least I think it was).  A neighbor girl who is a little older than me is playing with me in my room, and she finds a pair of safety scissors.  She uses these scissors to cut my hair, practically scalping me, as she cuts in big chunks down to the roots.  I remember my mother’s face, pure horror, when she finds us.  Apparently I took the hair and hid it before we were found, stashing the evidence beneath my favorite blanket in an old stone crock which my mom didn’t find until some months later.  I guess even then I knew I was in trouble.  When I think of this memory, I can’t help but laugh, I know my mom was very upset when this happened, but now as an adult, it seems comical.

Since I know Jocelyn isn’t going to remember this part of her life, I’m busy trying to build memories for her.  Taking lots of pictures, breaking out the video camera, just letting her be a baby.  And I’ll keep remembering moments, like when she had her first solid food and the melodic sound of her sweet baby laugh.