Uptown Oakland

We started with Mama Buzz cafe for salads (clerk referred to Mark as Papa Bear and Melanie as Mama Bear), then to the various neighborhood art galleries and finally to the Lake Merritt to play peeka-boo under the blanket Nana made for Liam. We love San Francisco but Oakland is the most underrated part of the bay area.

Wooden Train!

From steam trains, to grandpa Nemeth's Christmas train, to pretending his food is a train and now Nana's wooden toy train gift, Liam likes trains! Just make the train sound and he usually smiles. Nana's dad, Mark's grandpa (known to Mark as "Man Banca") loved trains and took Mark on his first train as a kid. Our favorite local restaurant, the Egg Shoppe, has miniature running BART and AMTRAK trains as well as many train photos.

For Liam's upcoming six-month "birthday", he received a handmade wooden train engine, made by the same man in Minnesota who made Liam's wooden blocks.

For more on trains, tune in next month, says Nana.....

Discovery Museum

Mark and Liam had lunch with Paul Brown in Mountain View, where he sat in a restaurant highchair for the first time. Liam digs Paul and smiled a lot at him and the lady waitresses. Even the bus boy came by to check him out.

Afterword, it was off to the amazing San Jose Discovery Museum. This is yet another place better suited for kids a bit older than Liam, but he still enjoyed it, especially anything with gears or levers. He was also fascinated with the ball-suspended-by-air-flow device, which we played with for awhile. In the store he was told he could have whatever he wanted, and the only thing that excited him was a placemat with animals on it.

That night while showing the photos to Melanie on the phone, Liam managed to delete one. Ouch dad, there's even a confirmation required to do that!

Hmm

Steam Trains!

We've live a very active and exploratory life in the SF Bay area now for almost 17 years and yet we are always still discovering great new things. Redwood Valley Steam trains in Tilden park was originally a steam train club and years ago was opened up to the public. This is a must-visit for SF Bay area kids and train enthusiasts. There a miniature track and a super-miniature track. Along the way are miniature fake hotels and saloons, as well as great forest and bay views.

Like many things we take Liam to, he was probably a bit too young for this. It was a bit cold and windy on the train. He wasn't exactly fussy, but was somewhere between fascinated, tired and cold.

Video of Redwood Valley Steam Train

A Quality Eater

The order of the foods he ate was:

1. Avocados
2. Sweet Potatoes
3. Pears
4. Banana
5. Brown Rice
6. Oatmeal
7. Yoghurt
8. Millet

We tried each food for four days in a row to insure there were no allergies. After a few weeks, he began having two solid food meals a day. He's a really good eater. As time went on, dad and Liam learned how to make feedings far less messy than these photos suggest. Mom had that right from the start, of course. :)

We bought him a "sippy cup" but from his first drink of water in a restaurant, he's preferred drinking out of adult cups or glasses.

He plays every day

Eating on his Own!

He gets SO excited when eating these days. He hasn't quite mastered holding the bottle on his own, but he's getting there and he sure loves trying!