The turn of the year is always a blur. I like to use the end of the year to motivate myself to tie up loose ends, purge our closets, and clean the house. It is also a time of celebration, with Mattias birthday coming just 2 days after the new year. This New Year's Eve we hosted a small, quiet celebration at our place with sushi and video games.
Linus insisted on staying up to midnight, to my dismay. (Personally, I would have liked a full night's sleep.) Poor Magnus tried his best, but only stayed away until 11PM. We were tired, but it was fun showing him how the ball dropped in Times Square and how everyone kisses at midnight.
The following morning Linus woke up with a cough and fever at 6AM. As a parent, there isn't much worse than being woke up by a sick kid and being both hungover and sleep deprived. After lazing about the house and letting the kids watch a whole lot of PBS while we drank coffee, we decided on a stroller caravan to Golden Gate Park.
We made it as far the the Conservatory of Flowers, which was unfortunately closed for the holiday. So we veered back East for lunch in Cole Valley.
After lunch everyone was tired and there was a lot of crying, so instead of heading home we said "Fuck it, let's just keep strolling to Hayes Valley so we can at least drink good coffee while we listen to the kids cry." Magically, coffee, ice cream, and an empty parking lot to run around put everyone in a better mood.
The following day Linus got a special treat: he finally came to watch me work at the animal shelter. He was still a little sick so I set up a space for him to read. I tried to convince him to lay in a dog kennel... I was so proud of how well behaved he was, and how interested he was in my work and the patients. He even took pictures with his digital camera (Linus' first blog post soon!) Afterwards I treated him to lunch at Vik's Chaat House.
Per Mattias request, we kept his birthday low key. "Low key" for the Karlssons is a day trip and hike around Angel Island, which involved a drive to Tiburon and a ferry.
It's super impossible to have any clear distance objectives, especially when you have to catch a ferry back. The boys were mainly focused on collecting seeds, rocks, and sticks from the trail.
The slow meandering drove this goal-oriented-agro-mamma crazy, so I cracked the whip-- I wanted views damnit! We did eventually make it to a nice vista, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
We had just enough time to book it back to the ferry stop to catch our boat.
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