Boating on Stowe Lake
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'm posting something that I wrote several days ago and kept forgetting to post -- and then I'll update later in the week with notes from our festivities here.
On Saturday morning, we were going downtown and decided to stop by the playground at Yerba Buena and try it out. I had seen it a few weeks earlier when I went bowling with a team at work; the bowling center is right across from the playground. It is an interesting playground: it's got two enormous tunnel slides (these are huge) and a jungle gym and a little water feature but no swings or other more typical playground equipment. Devon wasn't quite sure what to make of the slides -- they're enclosed, so they don't look like traditional slides -- but she was interested in climbing up to the top of them. Once she got up there, though, she didn't want to slide down; I finally got her on my lap and we slid down together, but she really didn't want a repeat of it. I can understand, actually, since this slide was really steep and fast -- I couldn't believe how fast we went. It's definitely a slide for older kids.
Walt also suggested that we take a ride on the carousel, since it's right in the same area at Yerba Buena. The carousel has an interesting history; it was built in 1906 in Rhode Island but then wasn't installed in San Francisco because of the earthquake. In 1907 it was installed in a park in Seattle, and after a few mishaps (including a fire that demolished everything in the park except for the carousel) and several stints in the hands of private collectors, the city of San Francisco bought it and restored it. It's a neat carousel, with not only horses but also camels, lions, goats and all sorts of other animals. We rode on a goal and then on a horse during our rides, and Devon just loved it. She sat by herself on her own animal and went up and down, up and down. I think she could have ridden on it all day -- in fact, when it was time to leave, she had an absolute crying fit because she wanted to keep riding on it.
By the time we got back to the apartment, she had fallen in the car; but I she woke up when I carried her upstairs, and despite everything we tried, we couldn't get her to take a nap. This should have been a big warning sign for the afternoon, but we didn't think it through (to our great despair later). Walt has been wanting to take Devon on a paddle boat ride for quite a while now. When she was really young, they used to take walks around Stowe Lake where they'd watch the paddle boats and chase the ducks. Since she wouldn't take a nap, we decided to give the paddle boats a try and biked over to Golden Gate Park to ride on them. I'd say that overall she liked the boat, although it wasn't nearly as exciting or thrilling as the carousel. We pedaled for about 45 minutes, and she was getting pretty antsy to get out by the end of that time. The real problem was that she kept wanting to stop the boat and get out on the shore, but of course we could only embark and disembark from the dock -- so the fact that she couldn't explore the pagoda or get out and walk around the waterfall was very frustrating for Devon.
The real problem came after we got out, however, when she decided she wanted to ride on the red boat (we were in a blue boat) and we tried to explain that we were finished boating. I think her lack of nap finally caught up with her because she ended up having a total meltdown. On top of that, we had forgotten to change her diaper in the hustle to get to the boats, and she was absolutely soaking (which was probably adding to the tantrum). We ended up bicycling all the way home with her screaming at the top of her lungs in the bicycle seat; Walt mentioned that people in the park probably thought we were kidnapping her. I was just having a conversation with a colleague who has a daughter about 3 months younger than Devon, and he mentioned how she's really gotten willful about trying to assert herself and she'll yell and scream when leaving playgrounds or something that she wants to keep doing. He said it's particularly awkward in public situations like playgrounds because he gets a lot of sidelong looks -- a man carrying off a screaming child -- that his wife doesn't get when she is in the same situation. I was thinking about this as we were pedaling home; even though Devon was on the back of my bike, it must have looked awkward at best.
On Saturday morning, we were going downtown and decided to stop by the playground at Yerba Buena and try it out. I had seen it a few weeks earlier when I went bowling with a team at work; the bowling center is right across from the playground. It is an interesting playground: it's got two enormous tunnel slides (these are huge) and a jungle gym and a little water feature but no swings or other more typical playground equipment. Devon wasn't quite sure what to make of the slides -- they're enclosed, so they don't look like traditional slides -- but she was interested in climbing up to the top of them. Once she got up there, though, she didn't want to slide down; I finally got her on my lap and we slid down together, but she really didn't want a repeat of it. I can understand, actually, since this slide was really steep and fast -- I couldn't believe how fast we went. It's definitely a slide for older kids.
Walt also suggested that we take a ride on the carousel, since it's right in the same area at Yerba Buena. The carousel has an interesting history; it was built in 1906 in Rhode Island but then wasn't installed in San Francisco because of the earthquake. In 1907 it was installed in a park in Seattle, and after a few mishaps (including a fire that demolished everything in the park except for the carousel) and several stints in the hands of private collectors, the city of San Francisco bought it and restored it. It's a neat carousel, with not only horses but also camels, lions, goats and all sorts of other animals. We rode on a goal and then on a horse during our rides, and Devon just loved it. She sat by herself on her own animal and went up and down, up and down. I think she could have ridden on it all day -- in fact, when it was time to leave, she had an absolute crying fit because she wanted to keep riding on it.
By the time we got back to the apartment, she had fallen in the car; but I she woke up when I carried her upstairs, and despite everything we tried, we couldn't get her to take a nap. This should have been a big warning sign for the afternoon, but we didn't think it through (to our great despair later). Walt has been wanting to take Devon on a paddle boat ride for quite a while now. When she was really young, they used to take walks around Stowe Lake where they'd watch the paddle boats and chase the ducks. Since she wouldn't take a nap, we decided to give the paddle boats a try and biked over to Golden Gate Park to ride on them. I'd say that overall she liked the boat, although it wasn't nearly as exciting or thrilling as the carousel. We pedaled for about 45 minutes, and she was getting pretty antsy to get out by the end of that time. The real problem was that she kept wanting to stop the boat and get out on the shore, but of course we could only embark and disembark from the dock -- so the fact that she couldn't explore the pagoda or get out and walk around the waterfall was very frustrating for Devon.
The real problem came after we got out, however, when she decided she wanted to ride on the red boat (we were in a blue boat) and we tried to explain that we were finished boating. I think her lack of nap finally caught up with her because she ended up having a total meltdown. On top of that, we had forgotten to change her diaper in the hustle to get to the boats, and she was absolutely soaking (which was probably adding to the tantrum). We ended up bicycling all the way home with her screaming at the top of her lungs in the bicycle seat; Walt mentioned that people in the park probably thought we were kidnapping her. I was just having a conversation with a colleague who has a daughter about 3 months younger than Devon, and he mentioned how she's really gotten willful about trying to assert herself and she'll yell and scream when leaving playgrounds or something that she wants to keep doing. He said it's particularly awkward in public situations like playgrounds because he gets a lot of sidelong looks -- a man carrying off a screaming child -- that his wife doesn't get when she is in the same situation. I was thinking about this as we were pedaling home; even though Devon was on the back of my bike, it must have looked awkward at best.
posted by Devon Szalva at
9:37 PM
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