MLK - SFO

For MLK, I treated myself to a trip to SF to meet my new niece. I saw her in her "witching hour" as her mama calls it -- that aching time for infants when they transition from daytime sleep to nighttime sleep (I kind of thought that there was no such thing as nighttime sleep after the weekend was over...but I did not mind at all, as NMK-foos is so cute.) Then I went to bed and, unlike her parents, was mostly undisturbed until the next morning. (I did offer to take a shift, as Any Reasonable Auntie would do, but my offer was declined.)

I got to hold her for the first time on Saturday morning. I ate most of T's home-made yogurt (a neighbor had made it for her...and normally I would have been sensitive to a mother of a newborn and let her have all of such a lovely treat, but as NMK is sensitive to dairy, I got the benefit of being first on the scene and so devoured it.)

Then I went to lunch with my friend D. He provided me with A Culinary Experience - I had never before had oyster, or lobster. Here is the "before" (what you can't see are the short ribs and the popcorn leg popper things that we also ate.) It doth look lovely, no? There was shrimp, and sashimi (tuna and salmon [I let him eat all the salmon; as, dear readers, you know how I feel about it]), and crab legs, and oysters, and half a lobster, and five sauces. L-R: oyster, creamy, cocktail, sweet and sour, soy.

An hour later (I eat slow; D eats fast; together, we eat too much--hence the "it hurts so bad but it tasted so good" grimace on his face), this is what remained (see middle).

And above, left: Here are our plates, to show we didn't just throw it all on the floor:

And here's another pic of NMK to round things out:

All in all, it was a very satisfactory visit. NMK seems to enjoy Fleetwood Mac a lot and seems equally comfortable in pink and in frogs. (This seems like a very important life skill that her Auntie M has yet to master. And no, I am not being facetious!)

I consider it a miracle that my arms didn't give out. I was worried that she might be so heavy that I wouldn't be able to hold her for long stretches. She is a little girl yet, though, so I was able to hold her and sing to her and smile at her and my arms held up like champions. Now all I have to do is keep my bicep strength up with her growth...