Petaluma
So back to part two... a couple of weekends ago Devon and I got invited up to Petaluma for a girls weekend with our friend Tricia and her daughers. Tricia lives a rather urban farmer life -- she and her husband have a house with a 1/4 acre and a big garden plus a family of chickens.
I'm not very fond of chickens myself -- I'm not much of a pet person, honestly -- but it's amazing how excited kids are by chickens. Devon had a grand time chasing after the chickens in the backyard and trying to pet them. The extra bonus was that Tricia had just gotten some additional chickens to increase the population, so they had baby chickens too (not chicks but not chicken-size either). Walt was quite enamored of the idea of having chickens for a while, but after spending time with Tricia, I'm glad we didn't go that route. There's nothing to recommend them except for the eggs, and Tricia mentioned that they eat stuff in her garden as well as chicken feed, worms and the usual. I can't imagine how crabby I'd be if we had gotten some chickens and they started eating our garden; I don't like eggs, so at that point they're not even at net neutral with me.
Ellie and Amelia's cousins, Maddie and Alexandra, were also there, as was our (adult) friend Jen. We also had a fun surprise visit from another friend Jean, who was in my book club until she moved back to Manhattan last year. It was a houseful of girls and really fun. Devon got along pretty well with Amelia, who is 3, all things considered. Tricia actually mentioned she was surprised that there weren't a lot more fights. The older girls weren't that interested in Amelia or Devon, which left them lots of time to hang out with each other, play in the yard and such. After Devon warmed up to Tricia's house, she was running around and playing in the garden with abandon. I'm completely uninterested in moving to a place like Petaluma, but a weekend there defintely gives me an appreciation of how a smaller town like that could be great for kids. Part of the fun Devon was having was just reveling in the sheer space of the place.
Tricia, bless her heart, arranged for a babysitter on Sunday so we could go to a winery that was having an outdoor sculpture in Santa Rosa. I was especially excited about that because we can't generally afford one in the city (another mark in Petaluma's favor) and Devon had woken up at about 2:30 the night before screaming at the top of her lungs (waking Tricia, too, and making me sound like a child abuser since she was yelling, "No, Mommy, no!" for about 10 minutes). I was excited for a break.
I was actually rather amazed when the babysitter, who is 14, showed up. Perhaps this is just my general lack of interaction with mid-teen girls, but they all look (and act) a lot older than I certainly remember acting. This girl was so together she asked us for cell phone numbers before we left and the address of where we were going. All I could remember is one time when I was babysitting and studying for the SAT and fell asleep with the book -- and subsequently not having the kids in bed by the time the parents came back. And I think I was about 16 at the time. I was having a bit of shock over Alexandra too, though, who is 10 but to my eyes looked like she was about 18. Either kids are a lot more sophisticated than I was at that age or the generation gap is in full view.
At any rate, the winery trip was wonderful, although the wine was terrible and the sculpture mediocre. The winery building had a lovely wraparound porch with a great view of the vineyards and hills, and even though the rose was worse than lousy, I still really enjoyed sipping on the wine and chatting with Jen and Tricia.
The only downside of the whole trip was that the next morning at home I found a tick on my arm, very likely picked up as we were traipsing through the grass at the winery. Luckily it was a "large" tick (apparently some are the size of a pin prick) and it hadn't really latched on yet (I guess it was trying to find an especially tasty spot). It was pretty gross, though. And I didn't know this, but apparently ticks are related to spiders; it had 8 legs and is actually an arachnid. Who knew? Devon was delightfully tick-free, and even though she ended the weekend with a knock-down, drag out fight with Amelia over the tree swing, she had a wonderful time.
I'm not very fond of chickens myself -- I'm not much of a pet person, honestly -- but it's amazing how excited kids are by chickens. Devon had a grand time chasing after the chickens in the backyard and trying to pet them. The extra bonus was that Tricia had just gotten some additional chickens to increase the population, so they had baby chickens too (not chicks but not chicken-size either). Walt was quite enamored of the idea of having chickens for a while, but after spending time with Tricia, I'm glad we didn't go that route. There's nothing to recommend them except for the eggs, and Tricia mentioned that they eat stuff in her garden as well as chicken feed, worms and the usual. I can't imagine how crabby I'd be if we had gotten some chickens and they started eating our garden; I don't like eggs, so at that point they're not even at net neutral with me.
Ellie and Amelia's cousins, Maddie and Alexandra, were also there, as was our (adult) friend Jen. We also had a fun surprise visit from another friend Jean, who was in my book club until she moved back to Manhattan last year. It was a houseful of girls and really fun. Devon got along pretty well with Amelia, who is 3, all things considered. Tricia actually mentioned she was surprised that there weren't a lot more fights. The older girls weren't that interested in Amelia or Devon, which left them lots of time to hang out with each other, play in the yard and such. After Devon warmed up to Tricia's house, she was running around and playing in the garden with abandon. I'm completely uninterested in moving to a place like Petaluma, but a weekend there defintely gives me an appreciation of how a smaller town like that could be great for kids. Part of the fun Devon was having was just reveling in the sheer space of the place.
Tricia, bless her heart, arranged for a babysitter on Sunday so we could go to a winery that was having an outdoor sculpture in Santa Rosa. I was especially excited about that because we can't generally afford one in the city (another mark in Petaluma's favor) and Devon had woken up at about 2:30 the night before screaming at the top of her lungs (waking Tricia, too, and making me sound like a child abuser since she was yelling, "No, Mommy, no!" for about 10 minutes). I was excited for a break.
I was actually rather amazed when the babysitter, who is 14, showed up. Perhaps this is just my general lack of interaction with mid-teen girls, but they all look (and act) a lot older than I certainly remember acting. This girl was so together she asked us for cell phone numbers before we left and the address of where we were going. All I could remember is one time when I was babysitting and studying for the SAT and fell asleep with the book -- and subsequently not having the kids in bed by the time the parents came back. And I think I was about 16 at the time. I was having a bit of shock over Alexandra too, though, who is 10 but to my eyes looked like she was about 18. Either kids are a lot more sophisticated than I was at that age or the generation gap is in full view.
At any rate, the winery trip was wonderful, although the wine was terrible and the sculpture mediocre. The winery building had a lovely wraparound porch with a great view of the vineyards and hills, and even though the rose was worse than lousy, I still really enjoyed sipping on the wine and chatting with Jen and Tricia.
The only downside of the whole trip was that the next morning at home I found a tick on my arm, very likely picked up as we were traipsing through the grass at the winery. Luckily it was a "large" tick (apparently some are the size of a pin prick) and it hadn't really latched on yet (I guess it was trying to find an especially tasty spot). It was pretty gross, though. And I didn't know this, but apparently ticks are related to spiders; it had 8 legs and is actually an arachnid. Who knew? Devon was delightfully tick-free, and even though she ended the weekend with a knock-down, drag out fight with Amelia over the tree swing, she had a wonderful time.
posted by Devon Szalva at
9:17 PM
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