EARTHQUAKE!

This is the worst I've experienced since coming to the States. I was putting Kayla to bed when I felt the bed move and pretty much the entire house shaking. For a moment, I thought this was it and it wasn't going to stop. Mikey rushed into the room, shouting "Earthquake", grabbed Kayla and we got out of the house right away... Let's just say I'm a little freaked out.

I'm totally convinced now that we need an earthquake emergency/preparedness plan of sorts. And I'm praying this isn't the precusor to the BIG earthquake that everyone says is long overdue.

From the Contra Costa Times
Magnitude-5.6 earthquake shakes San Francisco Bay area
By RON HARRIS Associated Press Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif.—A magnitude-5.6 earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay area Tuesday night, rattling homes and nerves, but there were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.

The moderate temblor struck shortly after 8 p.m., about 9 miles northeast of San Jose, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The shaking was widely felt within an 80-mile radius, as far away as Santa Rosa, Sacramento and Monterey.

The quake occurred on the southern end of the Calaveras fault, said Rafael Abreu, a geophysicist with the USGS' National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. It was the strongest tremor in the Bay Area since 1989, when a magnitude-7.1 quake killed 62 people and caused nearly $6 billion in damage, according to the USGS.

The effects of Tuesday night's quake were considerably less dramatic than the Loma Prieta disaster.
Local and state authorities fielded a numbers of calls about gas leaks and broken water pipes, but there have been no reports of fires, widespread damage or serious injuries related to the quake.

"I hate to say it, but this one sort of seems like a non-event event," said Santa Clara County Sheriff's Sgt. Don Morrissey.

The epicenter was near Alum Rock, in the Diablo Range foothills east of San Jose—not far from the mayor's own home. Pictures fell off the walls of Reed's house, but he said there was no major damage there.

"It was a pretty strong ride here, a lot of shaking but nothing broken," Reed told The Associated Press in a phone interview from his home. "I've talked to a few people and we have no reports of injuries or damage. There was a lot of shaking, but it wasn't the big one."

Amrit Shergill, a night cashier at Alum Rock Shell gasoline station in San Jose, said there was no damage other than some small items that toppled off a shelf—but the intensity of the shaking sent her outside and crouching on the sidewalk.

"My God, I felt like running because the roof might come down on my head," said Shergill, who was born in India. "I've never felt anything like this in 16 years in the United States."

The USGS reported about a dozen aftershocks, the biggest with a preliminary magnitude of 2.1.
Rod Foo, a resident of south San Jose, about 10 miles from the epicenter, said everything in his house shook for several seconds, but the electricity never went out and his telephone was still working.

"I could hear it coming up the street before it hit the house," said Foo, a former reporter with the San Jose Mercury News. "It was rattling for a long time and really loud."

At Eastridge Mall in San Jose, employees reported chaos when the shaking began.
Donnie Moreno, 17, a retail store worker, said merchandise fell from the shelves, and one man ran into the store and pushed his child under some clothes.

"It was very scary," Moreno said. "Me and my manager, we're like, 'That's an earthquake. Everybody stay calm,' and it just started rumbling really bad. ... You could hear cracking in the mall."

Allison Guimard, 25, a technology executive who lives in Mountain View, about 18 miles west of the epicenter, said her china started shaking and she grabbed her dog. It was the first significant earthquake for Guimard and her husband, Pierre, who moved here from New York six months ago.

"It felt like the apartment was rolling—shaking and rolling," said Pierre Guimard, 25, a home entertainment installer. "Almost like a boat on the water."

Bay Area public transportation officials said Caltrain and Bay Area Rapid Transit trains halted for several minutes after the quake, then resumed at reduced speeds. There were no reports of injuries or damage to trains, officials said.
T
he 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which struck just before the third game of the World Series at Candlestick Park, was centered in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the San Andreas fault. The tremor collapsed a section of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge and left more than 12,000 people homeless.

In 2003, a magnitude-6.5 earthquake jolted the Central California coast, pitching an 1892 clock tower building onto the street and killing two people. In 2005, a magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck about 80 miles off the coast of Northern California, briefly prompting a tsunami warning from the Mexican border to British Columbia, but no damage or injuries were reported.

Scientists have warned for decades of an imminent major earthquake on the Hayward fault, which runs through the eastern Bay Area. But the southern end of the Calaveras fault is only capable of producing a temblor of a magnitude 6.4 or lower, said Tom Brocher, a USGS seismologist in Menlo Park.

"There wasn't any one big, strong wave or jolt—it was this rumbling, nothing else going on," Brocher said. "I knew right away this wasn't a big one."

Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the state "will review and inspect all important infrastructure," including levees in the coming days.

Earthquakes powerful enough to be felt through the Central Valley have been of increasing concern since Hurricane Katrina because of their potential to weaken the earthen levees that channel rivers throughout the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Toy Tantrums

For those of you who don't have kids, don't bother to buy any toys when you do decide to have a baby. These munchkins don't play with their toys; they wanna play with yours. And by that I mean, your cellphone, the tissue box, your stapler, pen, notepad, garbage bin, your hair - in short, anything that doesn't remotely resemble a toy.

Either Kayla has a super short attention span or her toys are simply not captivating enough. Of late, she's taken a huge interest in my stuff and seizes every opportunity to lay her tiny fingers on these forbidden objects whenever I'm not looking. When she's caught red-handed, she tries to smile it off. And don't even think about wrestling it away from her, she'll throw a huge fit...

That said, her playroom now looks like a war zone, peppered with remnants of our daily battles. Bits of tissue, Post-its, straw wrappers, torn magazines (tons of them) and what have you. But her favorite un-toy toy is my cellphone. She knows how to flip it open and loves punching those tiny buttons. So if you do get a mysterious call one day with a very brilliant baby "Hi there," you know who won the fight.

Baby Bribes

The most challenging hours of staying home with Kayla every day are in the evening. She's tired and cranky. I'm tired and cranky. Throw dinner prep into the mix and our little home goes from haven to "hell" (for lack of a better word).

Like clockwork, at about 5pm every day, Kayla gets super attached to me and refuses to let me out of her sight. She starts crying the minute I turn my back on her, which makes it hard for me to cook her dinner in the kitchen or do anything for that matter. But I think I've found the solution.

Bribe her with her favorite Gerber Graduates fruit and veggie puffs. Shaped like stars, they melt in your mouth and are pretty healthy (80 puffs add up to only 25 calories!). All I do is put her in her walker, throw about 20 puffs on the tray and she's a very happy baby. It's worked two days straight, and I think I'll have no choice but to keep doing that. Cos when she's happy, I'm happy.

Time Out

I'm running low on sleep and high on stress. I need a break - any kind of break.

What's the buzz?

Presenting Kayla the Killer Bee.

Garlic Capital

If all goes well, we'll be spending Christmas this year in farm country. Yes, we're moving again. We've spent a happy two years in our current townhouse but it's just not the baby-friendliest place in the world. Three flights of steep stairs and no backyard for Kayla to prance around in. (Actually, it's the steps that are really killing us). We've been looking around for a while and finally found something we really liked (and at a bargain price) in Garlic capital, Gilroy.

Of course, garlic gastronomists will dispute Gilroy's claim as the "Garlic Capital of the World." According to the San Francisco Chronicle,

"In reality, Gilroy hasn't even been the garlic capital of California for 20 years, since most growers moved their operations to the San Joaquin Valley. Only 300 acres are planted around Gilroy, said Don Christopher, chairman of Christopher Ranch, the nation's largest fresh garlic shipper.

And China has far surpassed California as the world's garlic supplier, growing 13 billion to 16 billion pounds a year, compared with the state's 400 million pounds, he said."

But it's all good - we're not seeking the reek. :) Gilroy's a wee bit off the beaten path, but it's home to the outlets! With slightly more room and a small backyard for us to grow some vegetables and hopefully a lemon tree, I'm really looking forward to moving in. And I hope Kayla is too. Did I mention there's a little tot lot right across the street?

:)

A is for Aardvark

Aard what? In the part of the world that I grew up, we call okra "ladies' fingers", eggplants "brinjals" and ant-eaters, "ant-eaters." Never knew what an Aardvark was until today when I flipped open Kayla's "Super Chunky First Words - ABCs for You and Me!" Right below A is for Apple was A is for Aardvark. Do they seriously expect a tiny tot to pronounce that? What were they thinking? And besides, what's wrong with saying A is for "ant-eater"?

Kayla's doing pretty well these days, learning more words and still struggling to say mommy. I've given up. She still has no teeth, save for the two tiny ones on the bottom and now enjoys eating what we eat. Her fav foods: slices of microwaved bananas, bread, cheese, ice cream (we only give her a wee bit) and anything that doesn't require too much chewing. She's resisting the No. 3 jars of baby food because they're chunkier... I think we've a picky eater.

Sick again

I don't know it is ...but I'm down with a flu again. This time, a horrible sore throat and a headache that makes me feel like my head's gonna explode. I've been on painkillers but if it persists, I think we'll have to go to the doc's. I've been drinking lots of water and sleeping as much as I possibly can (with a 11-month-old who's an extremely light sleeper and poor napper). But I just don't seem to be getting any better.

Trash Talking

Lately, I've been on a mission: to clean up the kiddie mess that's infiltrated almost every corner of the house. It seems I can't go anywhere without finding a sock or toy hiding someplace. I can't call myself a neat freak (those who've worked with me know how infamously messy my desk can be - though I call that controlled chaos), but this is driving me nuts. And no matter how hard I try to pack the books, put the toys away, pick up shredded bits of books, magazines and napkins, the mess isn't going anywhere. Give me one of those HGTV homes. NOW!

To escape the mess and madness (work's getting a wee bit overwhelming again), Kayla and I attended a free Gymboree play class today. We had so much fun - or rather I had so much fun -
that we signed ourselves up for another 12 sessions. It really isn't much. 45 minutes filled with singing, rhymes, and gym time. Kayla's pretty sedate compared with the other kiddos who were crawling, climbing over just about anything and anyone. She seems awfully tiny too, sitting beside them (and I always thought she was big). She kept to herself mostly, amusing herself with the colored balls. Perhaps she was just shy. We'll see how she does next week.

Shot!

Flu shot. :) Kayla got hers, and so did we. She recognizes the doc's office now and absolutely hates it. She cries the minute we step into the room where she gets examined and pleads tearfully when I hold her down so the nurse can administer the shot. Ouch! It's tough hearing her cry so so hard.

All is well

So we finally squashed the nasty flu bug and I hope it doesn't go around terrorizing another family. It seems practically everyone's sick - even my dearest friends back home - so there's definitely something in the air. All I can say is eat your vitamins, drink lots of water water and make sure you get plenty of sleep.

I'm glad Kayla's up and about terrorizing me again... :) It's comforting to know she's eating and sleeping well again. She was having so much trouble sleeping with a congested nose that we took her to the doc again. And maybe that was a bad idea. She spent more time crying than he did examining her. Plus we didn't even feed her the over-the-counter cold meds he recommended, even though the temptation to, and I quote, "knock her out," was a wee bit hard to resist. Perhaps all that loud crying cleared up the congestion but she slept instantly well that night.

There's so much I wanna write but can't because a ton of work has piled up because the publisher's sick (see, told you everyone's ill) and hasn't been able to do much! But stay tuned for posts to come: Storytime at Morgan Hill (and how a 25-pounder scratched Kayla's porcelain face) and Kayla's favorite junk food. :)

Baby's Sick

It appears my body is taking longer than it usually does to fight this horrible flu. I'm still nursing a sore throat and I can feel a cough coming on. But the worst thing that's happened is that poor Kayla is sneezing now too.

For the past three days, she has had a persistent fever, that came and went, depending on when she got her dose of baby Tylenol. She's better today, but still warm to the touch. And she's pretty miserable. Lethargic (and by that I mean, she's still active, just a little slower than usual), whiny...and has little or no desire to eat. I hope she feels better soon. And I hope I do too.