Proud of my Kid

We took Evy to San Francisco for the day, and she was very good!  She has some social problems which include her not dealing well with crowds.  Too many people pushed in too close tends to make her irritable and angry.  For the last year we've been avoiding crowded places with her completely.  She was good on a trip to Santa Cruz a few weeks ago though, so Sheldon thought San Francisco might be fun.  We decided to have lunch with Daigan and then head to Pier 39 to see the sea lions and then do whatever seemed fun around there.

She did pretty good at lunch, and she didn't complain at all when we had to park a few blocks away from Pier 39 and walk.  She has flat feet and kind of poor coordination as well, so she does NOT like to walk very far normally.  She stood right in the middle of everyone and watched the sea lions for a LONG time, and didn't get mad or shove when she was jostled.  I didn't mind watching them either, they're really entertaining.  She spoke very politely and appropriately with the naturalist that was there too.

After that we went into the interior of Pier 39 and she was in awe of all the gift shops.  The gift shop is pretty much her favorite part of any outing, but she didn't get upset that we couldn't go in all of them.  We went to the back and looked at Alcatraz and talked about it, and she was a lot more interested than I thought she'd be about seeing an old building way out on an island.

Then we decided to go to the aquarium and she was very patient and interested in looking at all the fish.   She asked good questions too, and finally I did let her get a few things from the gift shop, including a sea lion stuffy she promptly named Happy.  She also got a little monocular thing, and wanted to go all the way back to the back to see Alcatraz again.  We wearily trudged after her so she could look, and we all agreed our feet hurt a LOT on the way back to the car.

On the way home we got dinner at The Dead Fish in Crockett.  It felt SO good to sit and eat a hot meal after all that walking around.  It's kind of swank-ish, nothing for kids to do, but she sat nicely and made conversation, and actually turned down my offer of my iPhone to entertain her while we waited for our food.  After dinner she fell asleep on Happy while we waited for the check.

She'll graduate from 5th grade Tuesday.  She's a little worried about moving to Jr. High, but I'm optimistic.  Days like Saturday make me pretty hopeful!

In other news, I CAN ride my bike now.  I went out and stuck Evy's Hanna Montana helmet on, told myself that I didn't want any more farting around about it and to get my ass up on the seat and pedal.  Then I did just that and pedaled up and down the driveway and across the street and such.  I'm having a teeny bit of trouble making tight turns, but otherwise I think I can go out on a bike path soon.