Paw Paw in town

My dad came up from Fresno this weekend to visit, especially to see Devon and take a look at the progress on the apartment. Unfortunately, of course, there is far less progress than we would have hoped for by July 15, so what he was was probably not what he was expecting (I should note that it's sure not what I was expecting!). He was also kind enough to bring up his chainsaw; Walt has been working diligently to remove the huge tree stump in the back yard so we can start on a patio. This is the remains of one of the two trees we removed from the back yard several months ago; the arborists brought in a stump grinder, but they didn't get far down. We're now trying to level the yard, and this stump is creating a big hillock right in the middle of the yard, so we're digging it out and then will have to cut it out in chunks. Unfortunately, my dad's chainsaw is a rather small affair and wasn't up to the rigors of what Walt has nicknamed "Stumpy Pete." Oh well. The rest of the visit was a smashing success.

He came in on Saturday, and after a little drive in the afternoon (to get Devon started on her nap -- if she's in need of a nap and we're not at home, which is the case most of the time on the weekends, a little drive in the car will usually get her to sleep -- and most of the time we can transfer her to the bed to finish it out at home), my dad, Devon and I went for a post-nap stroll down to Union Square. I'm trying to enjoy these walks now, since once we move to our new place we're not within walking distance of downtown, North Beach or any of the other great locales that are close to the current apartment. My dad wanted to get a map of a particular section of California, and I wanted to go into Nieman's and take a look at the sale items. Since Devon is still on her stroller kick, we loaded her up and off we went. All went well on the way down; she was happy to be in the stroller and had plenty of sights to keep her busy. Once we got into the stores, however, things started to go sideways. Devon has also recently developed an aversion to wearing shoes; most of the time we can wrangle her into a pair, but many times she wants to go barefoot. Once we got into Nieman's, she wanted to take her shoes off -- we let her take them off, and she had a ball running around. But when we wanted to get back into the stroller and go down to the Rand McNally store, she didn't want to put the shoes on again -- and she wanted to walk herself. A long "discussion" ensued about the relative merits of shoes when one is walking outside on public sidewalks, but it all ended with a meltdown and me having to carry a (shoeless) Devon most of the way to the map store. It turned out that she had had her fill of the stroller by then, but luckily we took the bus back to the apartment, and there was enough activity on the bus to keep her occupied during the ride.

Jim mentioned in one of his recent blog posts that he thinks kids have a special affinity for family, even if they are not old enough to really understand the difference between a relation and someone else. I think I agree with him on this point. I do think that she was making some kind of distinction with my father that she doesn't make with other people, at least relative strangers (I say this since she sees my dad once every several weeks, and for a child, if you don't see someone at least once a week, they pretty much qualify as a stranger). She couldn't get her mouth around the word "grandpa" or any other similar variation, so she settled on "paw paw" as the closest thing to it. She really had a ball when my dad was in town -- they had tickle-fests, she ran around with him and asked him to hold her hand (which she really never does with people she doesn't know), and basically it seemed like she knew that he was in a different class from all of the other people who fly through her life.

After Walt and I got back from our yoga class this morning, we went to meet my dad for lunch. We walked down to Clement St. to get some food, and Devon wanted to walk, alternately, holding hands with me and Walt, me and my dad and Walt and my dad. Later when we got back from lunch, she got to "drive" his truck, which was clearly tons of fun for her. Walt and I were upstairs prepping for Guillermo (who is supposedly starting tomorrow), and when I came down, she and my dad were sitting in the front seat of his car. She was busily pushing all of the buttons in the car (he has a much newer car than we have, so it has expotentially more buttons, levers and knobs than ours -- clearly way more fun), shaking a pill container to make noise and generally having a great time. She didn't have any anxiety about being left alone with my dad, which was another sign to me of her instinctual feeling that this was someone who had some import in her life. When he left this afternoon, she wanted to make sure that she said bye-bye to him (and she also blew some kisses, a new trick that she's picked up at Elaine's). It was really quite a nice weekend.

We came back this afternoon to do a little more packing (or I should say that I am doing the packing -- so far Walt has packed 0, yes that is ZERO, boxes for the move). The place is now truly in disarray -- there is about 1/4 of stuff packed, and the rest of it is in strewn about the apartment. Half the time I can't find anything, and the other half of the time it only shows up after 30 minutes of looking. It is not a good way to live your life. I think next weekend we'll have to do an all day of packing fun so we can get the bulk of the boxes done and keep out just the bare necessitites. The good thing is that this is forcing us to throw stuff away; I've already gotten 4 boxes for Goodwill. I frankly just don't want to deal with a yard sale, so we're donating everything we don't want. I'm just not up for spending 4 hours on my stoop trying to sell off our crap; this way doesn't generate any money, but at least we get everything out as soon as possible, and in my book right now that's a real win.