A week of firsts

Even though it seems that every one of the blog posts recently have been about “Sirena’s first [insert something cool here]”, we had one full week of pretty exciting “firsts” that deserves its own post…

First trip to the zoo

I’m sure the words “Oakland” and “Zoo” together don’t conjure up visions of really cool animals but, surprisingly, the Oakland Zoo is quite the zoo!  We met up with my co-worker Debra and her 18 month old son Cruz for a visit to the park and we’re so glad we went!

Getting ready for her first safari

The gang ready to see some animals!

Sirena and Cruz, the little buddies

Happy mama, daddy and baby

Kevin, Debra and the kiddos walking through the park

We saw so many cool animals!  Like a mama and baby giraffe…

Me and my baby with the mama and baby giraffes in the background (awww…)

And a lion!  Apparently this guy never comes out into the open and we happened to be there in the 2 minutes he left his little enclosure…lucky us!

That zebra musta been real scared

Pumba was there

And so was this handsome fella

And this crazy monkey who was putting on a good show for us

We visited the fruit bat enclosure and got up-close-and-personal with some kinda cute/kinda creepy creatures.

Sirena wasn’t too impressed with the bats as you can see here

After all of the animals it was time for a break!

Is he not the cutest thing ever?

A tired and very full baby getting burped by daddy

Family photo outside of the flamingo enclosure

The Oakland Zoo is a gem in the middle of this big city and we would highly recommend it!

First college campus tour

We took Sirena on her very first college campus tour at UC Berkeley (it’s never too early to start, right??)  I have been wanting to go for a long walk on Cal’s campus since before my maternity leave started and I was so glad we finally did it.  Too bad the weather wasn’t spectacular that particular day but that didn’t keep us from having a good time.

It was chilly that day so we put on her going-home-from-the-hospital beanie and it made her look like a brand-speankin’-new baby again

Lola didn’t have to wear any sort of hat with that gorgeous fur coat of hers

Lola going for a stroll with good ol’ “Pappy” (Kevin and I are weird, what can we say?)

This face can only mean one thing…dirty diaper!

And what better place to change a dirty diaper?  On the bench in front of some old building on the campus, of course!

I couldn’t resist taking this picture, it looks like the Invisible Baby or something (I know, I’m a dork)

One of my favorite things about this campus is The Campanile

Sirena with The Campanile in the background (if she ends up going to Cal I think it would be awesome to take a similar picture of her standing in this spot on her first day there. Gah, I’m such a mom.)

First concert

We made it back to Stern Grove for one of the free summer concerts and once again it did not disappoint!  Jess and I went to a Stern Grove concert my first weekend living in San Francisco in 2009 (see post here) and Kevin, Lola and I went with some friends last year (see post here) and I had been looking forward to taking Sirena to see the band Ozomatli before she was born. We met up with Jessie who snagged a great spot right in front and hung out with some of her friends that afternoon.

As new parents we naively brought S to the concert without having thought through how to protect her tiny little ears and we were prepared to sit away from Jess and her group to keep S far from the speakers but luckily the Red Cross booth had ear plugs that we could use and they seemed to do the trick!

Happy baby getting ready for the concert to start!

Ma and Pa enjoying a baby-free moment while Aunt Jessie was dancing with S

Mama dancing with Sirena

Here are two short videos of Sirena dancing with me and dancing with Aunt Jessie (notice how deep asleep she is in both videos even with all the ruckus going on)!