Spring break!

This week was my mom's spring break, which coincided nicely with Berkeley's spring break, so I was absolved of any duties on campus, not that I have many these days anyway. But with no students to supervise and no students to babysit Jack, I felt completely fine about not going in. It also must be other people's spring breaks, because two of our good friends' parents were in town as well and we thought it such a funny coincidence that we spontaneously decided to host a Parents Weekend, like they used to in college.
We invited said friends and parents (moms, it turned out) over for a Sunday brunch that Danny whipped up before anyone could even offer to help. They were all too engrossed in the ice-breaker material Danny had laid out on the coffee table. (E.g., on a map of California: "can you find the 10 UC campuses?"; on the San Francisco architecture book: "How many of these buildings are found on UC Berkeley campus?"; on the Bay Area Backroads deck: "Which of these Bay Area destinations has your kid not been to?") Let it never be said that my husband doesn't know how to throw a party. That got people mingling, and we furthered the cause by setting up a boy table and a girl table. I don't know about the boy table, but the girl table talked about everything from weddings to politics. And, incidentally, discovered that we were all Democrats, despite hailing from Minnesota, Ohio, and Southern California, not necessarily hotbeds of progressiveness (although Minnesota used to be). So that conversation was much less awkward than it could've been.

Wow I am going to have to move a lot faster or I will never get through the week! After brunch, we went looking for wildflowers and waterfalls at Mt. Diablo. We found both! (Although in this collage, I'm noticing the waterfall is that tiny little thing in the upper left-hand corner that you can barely see. It was much bigger in real life!)
This was Jack's first real hike. We'd tried to take him on hikes before this but it was always too cold or too muddy or we were just generally too neurotic as new parents and we had to turn back before getting very far along. This was a six mile hike with some pretty hairy ups and downs in some areas, or at least it seemed that way with a babe strapped to me because everything seems more dangerous with a babe strapped to you. Stairs seem dangerous. Seriously. Every time I walk down some holding Jack I tell myself, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall. But no falling occurred on this hike and Jack really seemed to enjoy it. Danny had him in the beco at first, which requires him to face inward, and he slept peacefully for the first couple of miles. But then he woke up and was displeased with the view of his father's armpits (and possibly the odor as well), so we put him on me in the moby so he could face outward. Did he ever love that! He oohed and aahed-- literally! he was making all kinds of noises-- over every bend in the trail, he turned his head constantly looking back and forth, as though there was too much cool stuff and he didn't know what deserved the most attention. And he even tried to walk along with me, kicking his legs in beat with my stride. That makes for more difficult walking, especially uphill, but it was pretty darn cute. So that was a very special day for Jack, and I'm glad his grandparents got to be there for it. Especially since it was only through years of perseverence in the face of some fierce whining that they turned me into such a hiker.

Then the work week started and while Danny slogged away at the office, I took my parents and grandma with me to the field. Jack was a good sport, though it was a lot of driving and he's become less enchanted with his carseat as of late. Lucky for him (and all of us who dislike baby wails), he had his grandma and his nana in the backseat to keep him entertained. I think I heard more laughing than crying back there, those grandmas were evidently so much fun.
We drove up and down the central coast, looking for mustard around my field sites because my hypothesis that I didn't explain in my giant geek post about my research back in November is that mustard is a refuge for the pests that eat broccoli. So we found some mustard (that's me showing it to Jack, who looks very interested) and we even found some aphids, which was exciting, but even more exciting was how much Jack likes the outdoors. If he started to get so fussy that even his grandma couldn't distract him, all we'd have to do was take him out in the sunshine and fresh air and he would pipe down immediately, looking around wide-eyed and speechless. It makes me wonder whether there's something instinctive in all of us to prefer being outdoors, because that's where we belong, but it just gets beaten out of us over all the time we spend indoors so that at some point some people actually start to prefer it. It probably helps that it's California springtime, and outdoors doesn't get much better than this. Maybe this alleged instinct wouldn't be quite so evident in the dead of winter in Minnesota.

We stayed over at my aunt Annette's house in Pacific Grove because that was enough driving for one day. Everyone had lots of fun playing with Jack.
I went for a run by the ocean like I used to when I lived in PG, and I can't believe that I ever took that little path winding in and out among the rocky shore for granted. I miss living down there, even though it was for such a brief time while I studied at Hopkins, but sometimes I kick myself for not becoming a marine biologist. I think I thought my options would be more limited-- i.e., that I could only get jobs on the coast, but suddenly I'm wondering why did that seem like a bad thing? Why did I decide to study agriculture instead, when the mecca for that field of study is in Kansas or Wisconsin, which is not at all where I want to live (no offense to Kansas or Wisconsin)? I am just going to have to declare myself a California agriculture specialist, I wouldn't be the least bit useful to the type of farming they do out there in the midwest (no offense, midwest!).

The week ended with another hike, nice bookends for my parents' visit. We went to Garin/Dry Creek regional park, which was much greener than the last time I was there. I took my sister and her family when they came out to visit in December. I thought of that as we were walking along with Jack-- you were supposed to have been here last time, too! But you were reluctant to come out. The last time I was walking those trails I was impatiently awaiting your arrival, I even huffed it up a big hill with Matthew and Ethan to try to encourage you to come out, to no avail. I was wondering when I'd ever get to meet you. That seems like such a distant memory now! Sometimes it doesn't even seem possible that you were once not in my life. It was neat to return to this place and remember how I was feeling then, and how much has changed since. Everything.

Thanks for a wonderful visit, mom and dad! I wish you lived closer and we could see you more, but we sure make the most of the time we have!