Gabriel's "snowflake"

Another rainy day! I took the boys to the park anyway this morning, only to find it soaked and empty. Still, we took a walk around the soccer field and got sprinkled on, getting lucky that the rain picked up for real just as we got back to the car. Even if we get rained on a little, I absolutely have to get the boys out of the house every day.

Gabriel was very taken with a 100-year-old photo in the paper this morning, of a building that had toppled in San Jose from the 1906 earthquake (the upcoming 100-year anniversary of the disaster is a big deal around here). All day he was talking about buildings falling over and the ground shaking, and piling toys up to make rubble, and I talked to him about earthquakes. Later, when Dave got home and I asked him to tell Dad what the ground shaking is called, he said, "a snowflake!"

What really caught my ear in all this earthquake talk was his new acquisition of a figure of speech. He said something along the lines of: "The ground was shaking, and it was, like, 'Oh no!'." Two weeks in a new school and he's already using expressions such as "it was like,..." !! Can valley-girl talk be far away?

Julian's appetite is virtually nil, and his energy is down a little too, but he's been in a sweet mood and seems to be OK otherwise. 48 hours and counting since his last upchuck!