February was a nice month of outings for us. Manny planned a lovely date to Sausalito for my birthday/our anniversary. We went to Salito's Crab House and Prime Rib for lunch and a bakery and Lappert's ice cream for dessert. He doesn't love seafood, but thoughtfully takes me out for it on special occasions. We've been to Sausalito a few times, once before kids, once with my in-laws, once with our kids, and now just us again. Time flies but a lot changes, too!
My friends got me a gift certificate for a birthday cake, and I got a guava cake from La Patisserie bakery. It was not as pretty as Bijan's bakery's guava cake, but tasted better to me. I also ordered Mediterranean food for my birthday meal. Lamb and yogurt mansaf is one of my favorite special occasion meals. Lucas was asleep, and Naomi was really sick (but she did join us). Manny had to go to a meeting as well, so it's just Isaac and me in the photo. Nevertheless I had a really nice day, and feel blessed by the well wishes of friends and family.
My friend and I take each other out every year for our birthdays, and I always look forward to that. We went to Pacific Catch for seafood. It's hard to believe we've been friends for two decades. We've grown a lot in some ways, but in other ways we're still the same. I mean, she still likes My Little Pony, and I still like Peanuts and Sanrio. We have some very deep talks, though.
Naomi volunteered as a camp counselor for a YMCA science camp for a week in February. She had a terrible start, getting double the usual number of students due to a shortage in volunteers and also getting the most challenging of the cabins. But she worked hard and turned it all around and received the honor of being chosen by staff and students as the Counselor of the Week. Several of the girls drew her pictures and wrote notes of gratitude. The counselors chose a nature-related pseudonym for themselves for the sake of privacy, I assume so the kids couldn't try to find her later. She also had the most challenging naturalist, a woman from the South who ended up being reported, though I'm not sure what came of it. It was like a case of having to manage difficult people above and below her level, similar to Manny at work.
Isaac was adjusting well to school by this time, but his teacher would write these long emails about her opinions without concrete or even logical evidence to back it up. I heard later from other (boys') parents that she did the same with their sons. To appease her, though, I took Isaac to his pediatrician during February break with the list of concerns from the teacher, and the doctor didn't see any of it. In fact, she saw a couple of other traits in Isaac which made much more sense to us. Anyway, I sent the teacher the doctor's note, and she was partly dismissive and partly trying to pick it apart, so I told Isaac we would just need to hang in there the rest of the year until it was over. This year has been like night and day with his new teacher, who told me at the parent-teacher conference that she has absolutely no complaints or concerns about him. Isaac also had a field trip to the Tech Museum, but for whatever reason the Imax showing didn't happen, and I heard one of the parents say it wasn't well-organized this year.
