Mother's Day in San Diego

We started off Mother's Day with some serious excitement: a flight to San Diego! After our last airplane flight, I wasn't sure that I could face another flight with Natalie, but she did great. Well, okay, she did really well (oddly, she actually did better on our late afternoon return flight - perhaps because the flight didn't interfere with any of her naps but "merely" delayed her bedtime?). Anyway, here's Natalie getting hydrated before we board.We arrived in San Diego in time for a lovely Mother's Day brunch. This was quite the festCheck out the picture with Oma, Grandma Pat, Aunt Pru, Aunt Polly, and cousin Emilia! (Also, dear family, I have a couple of frames of this picture - through the magic of photoshop, I can actually produce one where everyone looks decent and is looking at the camera, but that will take time).
I had a lovely Mother's Day. Mike and Natalie gave me a wonderful bakery box, complete with home-made tequila sea salt marshmallows, espresso shortbread, moonpies, etc. If you ever need to send a little gift to someone, this is one awesome mail-order bakery!

Natalie enjoyed seeing her extended family.This was also the first visit that I feel like Natalie really "got" the beach. She wasn't afraid to take off running, chase birds, break for the water, eat sand, collect rocks, roll in the sand, etc.One super-sweet thing that Natalie did one day one the beach was to run around giving hugs in turn. So, she'd run to Grandma Pat, give her a hug; run to daddy, give him a hug; run to me, give me a hug; and then repeat the whole thing. This lasted, like, 5 minutes. So sweet!The beach was, of course, beautiful and lovely.Natalie also still enjoyed the swings. Interestingly enough, she seemed to have a real sense about which end of the beach had the playground, and she would eagerly walk in that direction.Here are a few flower pics. You know, for variety. Because I used to photograph things like that back in the day.You know what lives at Oma's house? A kitty cat! Natalie was SO EXCITED about the kitty cat - at least every ten minutes, she'd need to run and look through the window at it resting on its special chair. And whenever someone new arrived (or awoke), she'd eagerly show them the kitty cat all over again.Here are a few Oma pictures.It was also really fun to see Natalie discover my grandmother's house. I feel like she had the same sense of wonder and excitement and magic that I felt as a kid when I explored that house. That is one special house - interestingly, I have much more emotional attachment to that house than I do to my own childhood home.(special note to cousin Jesse regarding the above picture: that is a New Yorker. I'm just sayin'.)

One other thing Natalie discovered was stairs! Oma's house had just enough stairs that were just impossible enough to close off that Natalie really got some good practice - she can now go up and down stairs with pretty minimal assistance!And then, having packed a lot of living into six days, we headed home.