More fun on the central coast

Though we've seen some rain during our trip to California, there's been less rain than predicted. Wednesday it rained all morning, but when we saw patches of blue in the sky we ladies (my mom, Amelia and I) decided to walk over to the local park. The walk was very nice, and Amelia was very excited to be at the park again. However, shortly after Amelia sat down in the swing - her first fun task at the park - it began to sprinkle. Well, we weren't going to run at the first sign of humidity, so we stayed and let Amelia swing as long as she liked. Then we went to the see-saw, rocking "horses", and the slide where mommy's bottom became soaking wet.

Despite the fact that the rain was falling harder and harder, Amelia still struggled and fussed when we tried to get her back in her stroller. She really did not want to go. When we got home mommy, the only person without a hood to protect her from the rain, looked like a drowned rat. Still, we did have a lot of fun.

Wednesday night we all went to the Klondike Cafe for pizza. Amelia enjoyed the place but nothing, absolutely nothing, could distract her from the balloons she didn't have that were placed on a table marked, "reserved." She fussed and fussed and nothing seemed to make her feel better: not the Alaskan art, not the flags and bumper stickers on the wall, not Ms. Pacman, not even the giant moose head with a bear on it's back. Luckily, my mom convinced the nice staff members to give Amelia a big red balloon. For a while she was still unsatisfied because she was hoping to have a balloon for each hand, but she settled down and ate some peanuts (with mommy's help and constant supervision) and pizza after a bit.

On Thursday, grandma came up with the excellent idea of taking Amelia to the Atascadero zoo. Now, this isn't a big zoo or a fancy zoo, but it's usually pretty empty so Amelia got to run around a bit ("walking...walking") and see some animals. Her favorite animals at the zoo were the meerkats and the flamingos. The meerkats were really friendly and came right up to the glass around their enclosure to see Amelia and her toy monkeys. Despite the sheep, wallabies, tigers and emu Amelia's favorite part of the zoo was the plastic chain barrier that hung down as a door at the entrance to the zoo aviary. At first, she felt a little nervous pushing through the chains, but after experimenting and sending her monkeys ahead of her, she started enjoying moving back and forth through the door. Like many other things she enjoys, Amelia wanted to do this over and over again ad nausea until it was finally time to go.

With grandma and grandpa available to babysit, daddy and mommy went out to dinner in Pismo Beach. This was followed by cake at the Madonna Inn. I was really disappointed that the coffee shop was all out of black forest cake, but one of their special cakes du jour was German chocolate, which was an adequate substitute.

Today it's raining again. We'll see what the day has in store. There's a toddler at my elbow crying, "mommy, mommy, mommy," so I'm going to go for now. We'll post pictures when we get back to Indiana.

Lisa