Sunshine (and Overstimulation) in San Francisco
Had a lovely day walking around San Francisco, eating incredibly yummy chocolate pudding from Cafe Tartine, soaking up the sun in Dolores Park, drinking cappucino at Squat 'N Gobble, and just generally enjoying spending time with Kristin yesterday. I had less fun trying to get Austen to nurse properly at practically every place we stopped, but I got him fed and calm eventually. Everyone (including us) thought the long plane ride would be the hard part about traveling, but overstimulation has been a much bigger problem.
We have loved introducing Austen to all our friends and taking him to our favorite Bay Area places, but we've learned that the little guy has limits: He can really only smile at so many new people each day before he melts down. By about 4pm yesterday Austen was done for the day, but we still had things to do and people to see. We drove to the Outer Richmond to see Beth & Matt (who served us wine and cheese in their lovely back yard), and then met up with Kristin again for dim sum at Ton Kiang. That's where the meltdown happened, unfortunately; the food was great and so was the company, but I felt bad for possibly ruining other diners' dinners when Austen started wailing. I know I would have hated it in my former childless life.
Today we're trying to spread out the activities and introductions a bit. After a quiet morning I had a really nice lunch with Heather and Derek down near the ballpark (it was my first time meeting Derek in person—such a great guy!); to my relief Austen was calm and smiley and sweet the entire time. I was glad to see that he could recover well from the trauma at Ton Kiang. Derek was more of a natural with a baby on his lap than he realized, and Heather impressed Austen with her knowledge of cartoon theme songs (I've now got the Banana Splits theme stuck in my head, too).
While I was lunching with people from my early Internet days, so was Al: He and his friend Morgen, with whom he worked at @Home (and later at OSAF), were taking on tapas at the Thirsty Bear. I stopped by the restaurant so Morgen could see Austen, and then we went back to the hotel so Al could work and Austen and I could rest.
I know we're pushing it going down to Palo Alto to have dinner with our friend Ken, but hopefully Austen won't go ballistic until the car ride home...