Sailors Cry "FREEDOM!" (or, "The Independence Day Staycation")

It's definitely a little hard sometimes to plan your weekend around a baby.  The kid takes 2 naps a day, which isn't exactly conducive to fun outings.  Sometimes the weekend gets eaten up by errands, laundry, and Little Gym classes.  But Hubs and I have been talking about it, and we really want to be the parents who take their kids out on adventures.  They don't have to be extreme or expensive, just as long as we're together and experiencing something other than our three living room walls.

The awesome part about family fun days?  Everything is a new experience for HD, and her enthusiasm is so infectious.  She's past the age where I can just wrap her in Moby and she'll sleep through my adult conversations & lunch dates.  But I'm fully realizing that HD being a toddler is basically my free pass to relive my own childhood.  No one questions your craziness (singing Disney songs loudly, pointing out and counting everything, making animal sounds at random) when you've got a tiny kid on your arm.

This weekend we absolutely did not travel (saving that for a trip to Charleston next week to see my folks, YAY).  But we did go to some pretty awesome places...  The 3-day staycation began with a low-key day in our neighborhood.  Cleaned house, went to the local park and library, and beat the heat in our very own kiddie pool:

HD looks ever so "coolsville, jellybean" in her sunglasses.

Sunday, we risked the kid taking her nap in the car rather than the crib.  This is so we could spend the day hanging out at the San Francisco Zoo.  HD adored the petting zoo and getting face-to-face with the meerkats in the Children's section.  And, yes, all animals (from grizzlies to kangaroos to scarlet macaws) were deemed "puppy" by our butterbean.

It's a little tough to tell since the shot is grainy, but the goat is having a blast.

That same night, Hubs and I put the kid to bed and made ourselves a super romantic snack or strawberries, cheese & bread, and the last bottle of sparkling wine left over from our wedding a couple of years back.  It was only after all of that that we actually remembered that it was our original anniversary; 6 years from the time we started dating.  [Side note - I suppose marriage anniversaries trump all prior ones, but I feel it's a bit wrong not to recall that we've been together a good 4 years longer than we've been married!]

Then on the 4th, we headed out to Half Moon Bay.  For those of y'all that don't know, that's a beach near SF (a mere 8 miles from our house!) that is freezing, foggy, and windy 95% of the year.  This was the one day it wasn't.  We picnicked on the beach and played for hours.  While HD loves her some sand (but didn't try to eat it -- VICTORY), she was not so keen on the waves.  I'm hoping she reacts to the Atlantic Ocean a bit better next week.  Although truth be told, this Carolina girl can barely function more than 7 seconds in the frigid Pacific too, so can I really blame her?

We wrapped the whole weekend up with some pork ribs (Hubs is so grateful he married a Southerner), and bath time out on the front porch.

So this 4th of July, we celebrated HD's newfound independence along with that of our country.  Next up, the long awaited vid of the kid...walking.