Chenery Park Kids Night

It's Tuesday and time for dinner. There's good reason to have anxiety about taking a baby or toddler out to eat, sometimes they scream. At Chenery Park your kid may still let out a holler, smash their dinner to bits, or generally embarrass you, but this restaurant has reserved Tuesdays just for such an occasion. Have a glass of wine, eat their bbq special, enjoy dessert. Ruth had spinach and French fries, thumbs up to both. She made a racket playing drums with her spoon, but otherwise enjoyed her night out. One table of ladies near us seemed exasperated (they, apparently, did not know it was kid's night) as I overheard one huffing and puffing "I just want to tell parents..." Located in downtown Glen Park, a block off the BART, several buses run by, we have no idea about parking.

Yerba Buena Gardens

On the way to the Steinhart Aquarium we stumbled upon the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. We stopped for a picnic and listened to some music, went and looked at the playground but didn't play, listened to the sound of bowling but didn't bowl, rode the carousel twice. Walked into Zeum. As school has let out, the city's attractions are teeming with children wearing brightly colored and matching t-shirts, which is why we skipped the Aquarium and did more gazing than participating. Although Ruth (who made another developmental leap last night by discovering she could twirl in circles until she fell down) would have loved to have thrown herself in with the big kids, her parents are not yet brave enough. The music on the Esplanade was great, and the calendar lists a month of free puppet shows next month. We'll be there.

Parque Ninos Unidos

We actually like calling this park "Parque de los Ninos Unidos" just because it rolls of the tongue a little easier. Love this place, but it has odd hours. Usually open till 6, we wish it was open till 7 since Ruth prefers her evening stroll to not end before 6:30. We can always go home early, but it just adds another half hour of screaming if she is having trouble with the gloaming, which she often does. When do they outgrow this? Dinner time is fun, naked play time is fun, bath is always a chuckle, bedtime is never too problematic, but getting to these evening activities can be like trying to toast fingers.

How We Ended Up at the Zoo

A goat!

The trick is to come very close to tears at breakfast, "you don't appreciate the level of anxiety this schedule change has created for me." Add other modifiers to suit individual needs. By lunch you can look forward to the offer of "do you ladies want to go to the zoo? I can take a day off." Remember to stipulate ice cream before agreeing.

SF Zoo

Ruth has made some impressive cognitive leaps lately, including noticing things like large animals.

Maritime Park

It is closer than Chrissy Field, and would be a shame to waste one of the few truly warm days we get by not going to the beach. Ruth enjoyed the surf so much she had a tantrum upon leaving it. The tourists gave us dirty looks as Ruth screamed and pointed at the water while trapped in her stroller, covered in sand, wet, wearing only a diaper. These same tourists blankly starred at us like we were a TV while we struggled, without any offer of help, to get on the F line. At the end of the park there is a green spot out of view of the water where we gathered ourselves, put on clean clothes, shared a banana and some goldfish. The 49 bus begins its line right up the street which we were pleased to board, not wanting deal with the F on the way home. We got off at 21st and Mission, and a Mexican woman, without prompting of course, helped us disembark.

Golden Gate Park

Once you get past the guardians of the Gate, those toothless teenagers who are sometimes menacing, sometimes threatening, most times just pathetic, it is just a few minutes stroll to the playground. Jackson's dad mentioned the other day that the homeless in New York weren't nearly as haggard as the homeless in SF, but he didn't know. It's not the cheese, it's the crank!

The merry go round is .50c for kids, $1.50 for adults, manned by another teenager, but just an extremely bored one. Ruth could not get enough, left crying. Another successful outing.

Noe Valley Rec Center Kid Gym

The gym is jaw dropping for a kid the first time they visit. It is filled to capacity with primary-colored plastic joy. Ruth has not been here in a while, her parents had a fit of germ phobia and consequently skipped going for a couple of months, which made the experience all the better upon returning. Now, she can walk, now she can ride one of the many cars, now she can go up the stairs and down the stairs and in the ball pit all by herself. It's a little grungy, a little chaotic at times, and full of regulars. Outside, there is a full playground as well as tennis and basketball courts. A little girl looked right through me when I told her she could not go down the ladder with the babies at the bottom. "Don't talk to strangers," I suspect, and when she began throwing all the balls out of the pit her mother told her not to. She stopped throwing the balls, and the mother actually thanked her.

Waiting in line to buy bananas later on, a man remarked that fear is becoming a sign of patriotism when the proprietor good-naturedly chided him for talking to Ruth.

Free gym is open M, T, R from 1:30-5:30, W 3-5:30, F 10-12. Saturday is usually reserved for a birthday party, so call 695-5011 before taking the walk.

Duboce Park

A great deal of TLC has been put into this playground, including the hand-tiled thrones. This is a great place to meet your Sunset friends with the N dropping off adjacent to the park. Composite rubber turf (what is the name of that stuff?) pads the entire play area which includes a separate jungle gym for toddlers, swings, much needed open space. Gobs of flowers, grasses and flowering trees enclose this gated (no dog bombs!) favorite of Ruth's. Ciao is a ten minute walk away, serves good cheap food and is baby friendly. And speaking of which, please remember to tip extra when you bring your pride and joy.

Douglas Park

If it is a sunny and warm day, the hike up the hill (and I do mean hike) is worth it. Perched on top of the valley, Douglas (is that with two s's? we don't care) this park will remove you from the urban landscape into something green and easy. The playground itself is excellent for kids and babies alike, with a great jungle gym, plenty of open sand space, leftover plastic toy kitchens and playhouses donated (dumped? who cares!) by parents from cramped apartments just like yours. There is also a pristine basketball and tennis court. And the slide built into the side of the hill, the 4-10 year old set grooves on that. Your kid will get dirty. Isn't that the best?

Noe Valley Saturday Farmer's Market

It used to be a dingy old gas and service station, then a big chained off lot, then, lo! a much needed parking lot for the merchants of Noe Valley, except nobody could use it. Come Saturdays, however, this gym sized space is transformed into a (kinda pricey) farmer's market. As a neighborhood response to the closing of Real Foods and the consequent long and continuing stalemate between Nutraceutical Corp. and the rest of the world, (lots of name calling and suspicion on all sides) the market gets bigger every weekend and the hours have been extended until 1 p.m. The big draw, beside the strawberries, is the live music and baby activity. We counted not ten, not fifteen, not twenty two, but TWENTY-FOUR babies and toddlers eating fruit, drawing with sidewalk chalk, and adding their tags to the butcher paper rolled out in front of the acoustic duo. (Ziggy Stardust renditions. Can you beat that?)

Located on 24th Street between Vicksburg and Sanchez across from Martha's Coffee.

Lapsit! (or, how I learned to love brown bear)

Thursday mornings, 11 a.m., Mission Branch library, guaranteed to crack you up. The kind librarians are persistently upbeat even at the 11:15 midway, otherwise known as the edge of the precipice of baby tolerance. By 11:16, somebody is crying. By 11:18, somebody else is crying. By 11:20, the room is brought back from the brink of utter despair by the beloved "uno dos tres CHO, uno dos tres CO, uno dos tres LA, uno dos tres TE!"

Never fails to rouse. Don't miss this weekly baby event. Check your local branch for their lapsit times and make a round robin of it.

Teething Lucca Ravoli

It is the week of pain as two molars, possibly three, begin their relentless eruption through the gums of Ruth. Tears, sadness, short-tempered fits sprinkled with glimpses of the usual good cheer leave little alternative than to seek out her favorite foods and parks so off we went to Lucca Ravoli (22nd and Valencia) and Mission Playground (19th between Guerrero and Valencia).

The men at the deli are old-world cranky, stare hard at the lookers, love to talk sports and are sweet to the little ones. Like merchants who keep dog biscuits behind the counter for their customer's pooches, Lucca hands out long thin breadsticks to the babes, a usual delight for Ruth, except for Ruth with tooth. The breadstick, something she usually waves around like a victory baton, caused shrinking fear, leaving me no alternative than to pick up a bottle of Chianti for the promised night of difficulty ahead.

The park was a bright spot. Clean, fenced, with beautiful flower beds and two jungle gyms. One of our regular spots now.

Babies love ravoli, even teething babies. And the fevers that the doctors say are not associated with teething? Ask anyone with a sweaty, screaming, bleeding gummed ball of fury if they believe correlation is not causation.

Preschool Already?

Benny's mom is preoccupied with admissions and applications for her goldilocked 16 month old. "And can you believe," she said, in her more than slight less than heavy Russian (Yiddish?) accent, "you have to write these essays about how you think your child will enhance the school, or how they will somehow make it better or something. I don't even understand it really."

But she is forging ahead through the process, excitedly. "Benny is really into the alphabet, and figuring things out, he isn't so creative yet. So maybe a Montessori school, I don't know. And there is a preference for siblings so I have my applications in my first and second choices already cause I am not sure we can get in."

Ruth is into her orange ball. She also likes to take things out of bags and put them back into bags. It seemed, although this comes from a removed perspective, that Benny also likes the orange ball and may like to take things out of bags.

"So, where do you want Ruth to go?"

"Um," I said, "We're going to move before she goes to school."

Baby preoccupier of the day: Ruth has a drawer full of toys. This morning, I took the toys out and replaced them with clothes that no longer fit her.