Fearless in Seattle: September 2013

Das Mami and Tavi Nendi

Callum finally got to meet his uncle this month! His Das mami and his girlfriend (hereafter Tavi nendi), came to visit! There first comment was "He's so small." And then Callum spewed everywhere.... perhaps he took offence and being called small? Perhaps he wanted to christen Sea-Tac. Who can tell?

Fun in the car

Callum has totally benefitted from having companions in the backseat while he travelled. Every time he got grisly Tavi nendi would put his hands together and sing "clap, clap, clap". Now we have a baby who practically claps on command. All it took was 3 weeks of constant "clapping".... easy as pie.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, then you'll know that the Giniges travel to eat. As a matter of fact before they even got here Dasi was clear that he was coming to eat, and eat we did, all of us.

While they were here

Since they were here to eat, we expressly planned our days around food - at home, out and about, at fancy places and cheap-and-cheerful diners. The US is awash with food options, some of them great, and some of them horrible, so it as much an exercise in exclusion as it is anything else. We managed to squeeze in:

Awesome burgers, and surprisingly good burgers
Solid BBQ and whiskey, from both a restaurant and the Ginige residence
Crabs galore
Divine brunch here and here (both in San Francisco)
Fusion (??) Indian food (again in San Francisco)
Bagels!

The two of them also commandeered the kitchen at regular intervals, turning out wonderful meals - delicious payment for their accommodation!

At the end of the trip, Dasi reported that he had put on a good many kilos to his waistline, so from that perspective it was mission accomplished. That, as always, is surely a sign of a good holiday!

San Francisco

We all headed down to San Francisco for a few days to enjoy one of our favourite places in the US to date. We booked an apartment near the Painted Ladies at Alamo Square Park, and it was always nice to head out for the day and see a cultural landmark from the days when TV was wholesome and family-oriented (I'm showing my age here). This perk came with a downside though - an inability to find a parking spot easily (leading to Nuwan circling for 45 minutes once trying to get one, finally jamming it in backwards up a hill against a wall... don't ask...) as well as the incessant stream of tourist buses singing the "Full House" theme song.

Notable highlights from our trip:

Dasi stacking it down a hill while cycling, then losing their ferry tickets for their return trip and having to pay for them again... only to discover them in the laundry once back in Seattle
Nuwan and Dasi almost getting arrested when trespassing on restricted federal land when photographing the Golden Gate bridge
La Boulange bakery (fantastic pastries to kick off a morning)
Buying ridiculous amounts of macarons because we could. Passionfruit, lychee... who could say no?
Driving back and forth between the apartment and the Australian Consulate because we (Nuwan) kept forgetting documents we needed to present to them
Callum cracking it in the car while stuck in traffic going from the airport to the city
Callum cracking it because we took him out for dinner, and forgot to strap him into his carseat before he fell asleep
Finding the most inauthentic pizza in Sausalito, because everywhere else was packed to the rafters. American pizza can be surprisingly good... this place was a notable exception

Baseball anyone?

Dasi and Tavi wanted to check out a couple of American sport leagues games while they were here. They headed to a Sounders FC game one night, and went with Nuwan to a Mariners game on another. Being the meticulous planners we are *ahem*, we had all these dates in a shared calendar so we could keep track of everything that we were planning to do. Dasi bought the tickets in Australia, and put the game in the calendar. All was well.

In the words of Nuwan now:

"We headed into the city after work, and made good time too - traffic was unusually kind to us that evening. Parked the car, headed to the gates with our tickets, excited about watching our first baseball game. I gave my ticket to the attendant to scan, and started walking through the gate - but the gate didn't open, it buzzed at us like there was an error. The attendant had a closer look at the ticket, at which point she exclaimed 'This was for last night's game!'

"When the game went into the calendar, it went in at the correct time... for Sydney. Of course, when viewing the event in Seattle on the calendar, the timezone translation didn't work, and it appeared on the next day. None of us had thought to check the physical ticket itself until we actually got there! On top of that, we were incredibly fortunate that there was actually a game on at that time - we could have turned up and it could have been a ghost town... apparently they play back-to-back games in baseball.

"So we sheepishly found the customer service desk and explained our predicament, putting on our best bogan Aussie accents to try and explain our mistake away. The person behind the counter was fantastic - a key taps on his keyboard to confirm our story, and he issued us new tickets in roughly the same area. We got our baseball experience in after all, it just took us a little longer than we had anticipated to get through the gate. Still made the first pitch though!"

Damn those timezones... all was well in the end, thanks to some strongly applied Aussie bogan accents and the great customer service staff at Safeco Field.

Solids

Callum started on solids this month (July), a little earlier than the promised six-months but our Doctor thought it worth a try to try and help give him a slight caloric boost to make up for the:

copious spitting up
constant movement

We started on plain old baby oatmeal but have quickly graduated to fruit, vegetables and last week even a meat ball. It's a lot of playing and exploration at this stage and unfortunately more food ends up on the floor or the kitchen counter or clothes than in his mouth, but I think that if food isn't fun at this stage, it might not be fun when he's older and we actually want him to eat 3 meals a day.

Our first taste of oatmeal...we weren't sold on it then and we're still not sure.

Watermelon! Now this we love

It's been fun picking things off our plates and letting him have a taste and this mini Ginige has a definite taste for Guacamole!

On the move

So, the doctor suspects the Callum's slight figure might have something to do with his constant moving. Here are some videos to illustrate my point! This kid is in an hurry of some sort to get away from us.

And then there is this... this baby can move!

Date night

Nuwan and I were treated to our first date night since Callum was born. Dasi and Tavi very kindly bought us a voucher to SkyCity, the restaurant at the top of the Seattle Space Needle. It was a wonderful night and Callum was on his best behaviour.

The restaurant is one of those revolving ones, but revolves a lot faster then you would expect. The waiters and friendly and even offer to give you a geography lessons as the restaurant revolves.