Our Visit To Bay Wolf Restaurant. Oakland

Some meals are so delicious or so surprising you want to share them with everyone. Since I can't share my previously eaten dinner, I thought about posting a Restaurant Review. We are spending a long weekend in Oakland with my lovely sister-in-law and her equally lovely husband who have lived in the bay area for over 20 years. We try to come up here at least once a year but never come as often as we would like. Northern California and especially the bay area are so seductive. I can see why people move here: the food, the cool weather, the cosmopolitan and somehow European feel, the beatiful old houses instead of mass housing developments, the food. Hmm, did I say that one twice? Yes, the food! Last night my sister-in-law tells my husband to take me out to dinner while they watch our girls. We pour thru food magazines and see tons of interesting restaurants and my sister-in-law proceeds to share even more suggestions, some a bit farther afield in neighboring areas, but still
very many in a short drive here in Oakland. Amazing to have so many tasty choices, not a one a mass homogenized chain reataurant! (Have I blogged yet about the dismal crappy food options in my little hometown of Simi?) My sister-in-law even called around and found us a last minute reservation! My only regret was that a number of places that sounded delicious were closed on Sundays and out of the running.

Eventually, on the advice of my sister-in-law, we settled on Bay Wolf, right here in Oakland, with a reservation within 30 minutes. We arrived almost on time (with a bit of a delay for us spoiled So Cal residents as we searched for a parking spot on the street). The restaurant was sort of unassuming with a neat covered patio as you enter, almost fully enclosed, and a more traditional space behind. We opted for inside since it was stinking cold tonight! They led us immediately to a small table for 2 in the corner, which sounds kind of cramped but was actually pretty nice (fairly quiet and private and plenty of room for 2). The service was prompt and I never waited long for a water refill or for anything.

The menu selection was seasonal and limited, but I had some difficulty deciding what to order which is always a good sign. They have some appetizers but also some dishes that can be ordered as a small plate or a dinner portion.

We settled on the Early Girl and shell bean salad with arugula, manchego cheese and basil vinaigrette for my starter and my husband ordered the Duck liver flan with grilled Acme bread, cornichons and and olives. I must say I love me some duck liver and the flan was delish and not flan-like (which was good because I pictured me some duck liver egg custard). It was smooth, creamy and full of flavor with some lovely peppercorns for some spice. It came the the olives and cornichons and also some red pickled onions (I think they were pickled). The Acme toast was wonderful too and perfect for spreading with liver. The real surprise was the salad, however. I am not a big veggie person although I was in the mood for salad tonight, BUT this salad was delicious and I wanted to lick the plate the basil vinaigrette was so scrumptious. The tomatoes were fresh and flavorful. The greens were tasty. The beans and the manchego cheese. Wow it all just came together beautifully that it was on
e amazing salad. (I have to add that my other observation was that this was the first meal with my husband where I thought both of our dishes were the best. I am usually pretty judgemental and leave the restairant thinking my dish was better than yours or his dish was way better than mine!)

For our main courses, I chose the Goat cheese-stuffed peppers with black beans and rice, avocado and salsa fresca and my hsuband went with the Slow-cooked coriander-scented pork roast with grilled escarole and sherry. I thought the peppers were spicy and delicious which is pretty high praise considering I don't really like goat cheese! They were packed with flavor. I just wished they had more of an acid component and think if they had put more salsa fresca on the plate it would have been perfect. My husband loved his pork and said it was cooked perfectly. I thought it was flavorful and very tender for a big slice of pork.

We were both stuffed and decided we would only get dessert if something on the dessert menu thrilled us so we did order the Bittersweet chocolate soufflé cake with Earl Grey crème anglaise and chocolate sauce. Unfortunately, I wish we had passed. Frankly, something with souffle in the title should be warm and lovely and fluffy, but what showed up was a very nice flourless cake. I am over flourless cakes. I did not feel this dessert was worth the calories I ingested or the exercise I will have to do to work it off!

However, the rest of the meal was fabulous and I would highly recommend Bay Wolf to anyone near Oakland. You can check out there website at: http://www.baywolf.com

This Should Be...School Behavior, Reward Charting, and General Confusion, Part 2!!!

After blogging the other day about my youngest and my struggles to figure out how to help her navigate the school system and follow the rules in kindergarten, I also had to opportunity to discuss this with a friend of mind and I realized another larger problem I face.  I wonder how to name this dilemma. It feels so huge and such a huge part of many of my parental conflicts.  This is the big question I face almost daily.  Do I raise my kids to embrace the values I have used to guide my life and the values that the majority of our society and culture embraces or do I raise my kids to embrace the values I am working on developing that seem more conducive to happiness and a better balanced life?  I think most days I lean toward the later, however, this is one of those things that is much more difficult to do than to talk about.
 
In reflection, I could probably mine this topic for a lifetime of blog posts.  However, my discussion with my friend last night made me realize that most of the time I think my youngest is pretty amazing.  I really do not want to mess her up!  Deep down I think that most children are pretty good at living in the moment and enjoying life and then society takes them in hand and in the interest of education and the belief that we need to guide children in learning how to follow the expected rules, we crush their healthy little spirits and turn them into achievement driven unhappy adults.
 
I also think that the push to make our children learn more and do more at an early age does not seem to be working.  The generations after mine do not seem that much smarter, more successful, and certainly not any happier than my cohorts.  America does not seem to be developing in a positive way in any area from my own observations, and I am not blaming any generation for that fact, just noting that our pressure to educate and mold the children of America does not seem to be benefiting the children themselves or our society in any way that I can see.
 
Unfortunately, I was raised to be the ever-obedient, overachieving, good student and citizen, and every day I fight the urge to value achievement and productivity over intrinsic values like family, love, happiness, pleasure, and so on.  So there is a strong part of me that expects my children to excel in the school system.  I want my children to have the good grades, the good behavior reports, the fancy certificates, the praise from the teacher, etc.  Therefore, I feel like a bad mom when the notes come home from the teacher or the report card grades are not "straight A's."  As I write this I feel sort of sickened to find this is so important to me.  On the other hand, I clearly see teachers, professionals, and other parents, who would gladly judge me and hold me out as a terrible mother if I stopped encouraging my children to excel.
 
It seems pretty clear to me that the American school system promotes unhealthy learning habits for children, but I also feel hopeless at times on how to navigate the system.  Why do five- and six-year-olds have daily homework when there brains and bodies would be better served by playing?  Why do I hear of elementary school children falling asleep during homework?  Why is my child able to complete all of her school work in 30 minutes, but is criticized daily in a socially-acceptable way (behavior chart) because she would rather do what she wants to do rather than follow the kindergarten schedule?  However, even if there were a good way to opt out of this school system, will my children be at a disadvantage?  And if so, in which way?  Is it my responsibility to see my children can follow the demands of the society we currently live in, even if most people seem pretty miserable living by these demands?  I run into people daily who spend more time
living up to the demands of others than they do to their own needs.  I have spent most of my career teaching people to actually care for themselves in some way.  Why does our country excel in creating human beings who value success and productivity over meeting their own basic human needs?
 
Okay, I feel myself getting too philosophical in this blog post, and think it is time to end this and send it out into the universe.  I hope it makes some people think about ways we can reshape the world and the American school system.  For me, at least it helps to remind me that although a part of me wants my children to excel at everything, I should spend more time thinking about the lessons I really believe my child should be learning and finding ways to cultivate those lessons rather than just letting society and the school system override the lessons I have learned over my entire life.

School Behavior, Reward Charting, and General Confusion!!

I have two beautiful daughters, age 8 and 6. School has always been a bit of a challenge for me due to their unique skills and abilities and my status as a full-time working mom. (Let's not even talk about my positive history for perfectionism and overachievement in schoolwork). My most recent challenge has been to survive my youngest daughter's entrance into kindergarten. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say my girl is smart. She is very smart, reading well before start of kindergarten. She is pretty outgoing and sweet too.

HOWEVER, she does seem to have a lot of difficulty with sitting down, following rules, and focusing on what the teacher thinks is important. Now, these problems have been around since before kindergarten. In preschool, we had a fabulous teacher who loved and appreciated Sofia, but also worked with her to help keep her on track. I suspect I might have a few blog posts on her preschool days. I remember walking in to preschool and feeling oh so frustrated after getting the "What am I going to so with Sofia?" head shake.

I still believe that children develop at different rates in all areas. I hope that in time Sofia's weak areas will develop and even out in comparison to her strong ones. However, the school system does not seem to share my vision on child development (and at times, i do believe that the school system seems not to care much about any well-documented child development beliefs). I want to say here that this is no reflection on my daughter's teacher. I do feel that Sofia's teacher does have to put in way more effort to keep her on task in addition to her primary job of teaching 24 kindergarten students.

Okay, so this is not entirely a venting session.  It is actually a bid for help! I suppose in the perfect world I would have blogged for years about Sofia's development, her successes, and her challenges in school. But get real, I barely have to time to keep up with the minimum here people!

The issue today is my most recent behavior note I received from the teacher. We have tried a simple smiley face/frowney face chart, a red/yellow/green light system, and our newest behavioral system developed by the teacher. The teacher rates Sofia on 3 global behaviors: following directions, completing work, and focusing/listening. Sofia's day is broken into 5 time frames with a rating for each behavior 5 times per day. So basically she has 15 boxes to be rated as smiley or frowny. Since this chart system started, we have had good days and bad days and I can find little pattern to the madness. I have not found any link between better days/worse days and sleep, food, encouragement, etc. She did do better the one day I took off work and sat with her all day (but then I did what I do at home for homework and sat right next to her and basically redirected her as soon as she wandered off).

Anyway, enough with the context! I just wanted to share one of my recent behavior charts. Sofia received 15 frowney faces! Fifteen! The comments from the teacher were the following: "Sofia had a difficult day today.  I repeatedly asked her to finish her work but she continued to be unfocused and pay around. After lunch I sent her to the office to finish her work. Amazingly she finished all her work for the day in 30-45 minutes." So...what the he** does this mean?

With my training and work history, I have long pondered the diagnosis of ADHD.  I would say both my children show signs of attention problems. Do the meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD? I don't think so and frankly the diagnostic criteria for ADHD is pretty vague anyway. Sofia has always had difficulty focusing. Her problem seems to be that she wants to focus on what she finds interesting or important to the exclusion of anything else.

I fully understand why it might be hard to focus on your work with a classroom full of interesting things and people. I find it shocking more children don't have this problem in kindergarten. And I could see a child being able to focus in the school office which is probably quieter than the classroom. But the fact that she does the entire days school work in 30-45 minutes without supervision sort of stumps me.

No matter how hard I try to set better realistic goals for myself as a person and a mother, this still bugs the crap out of me. I hate not knowing how to handle things or feeling like everything you try does not seem to make a difference. I want to be the kind of person who just enjoys the moment, but I was raised to be an overachiever who craves perfection and reward for good behavior. I have always been a person filled with contradictions. I hate that stupid word balance. BUT, how do you balance the need for your child to learn to follow rules and achieve because the world does value and judge you on those variables with the need to appreciate the unique and wonderful person you already are (great for happiness but may or may not lead to school or career success).

Okay, input appreciated now that I have rambled on with some of my thoughts.  Any comments appreciated below!!

Carpool Craziness

My children go to a public school. However, it is a special public school where parents had to submit their child's name to a lottery prior to kindergarten to gain entry. Hence, almost none of the children live in the school neighborhood. So far, we love the school and find that both girls are receiving a great education and many additional extracurricular activities they might not have found at our neighborhood school.


One of the huge drawbacks to our school, are the parking and drop off/pick up situations. Typical to most local elementary schools, the parking lot barely provides spots for the teachers and staff. Since almost every child has to be transported via vehicle to the school every morning, drop off is a zoo. The school tries to minimize the whole operation, but somehow every morning I have to practice anger management to survive the whole process and make it in to work on time.


Today, my coping method of choice will be to bitch copiously. Frankly, I am tired of being the rational parent who follows the rules when I just feel like screaming. Remember, my oldest is in 3rd grade, so this is year 4 of the daily debacle. I can not comprehend why parents can not follow the simple drop off procedure. They actually have three separate drop-off zones. Drive into the drop off area and pull as far forward as possible, shove your kid out of the car, and move on once safe and the car in front of you leaves, right?


Alas, the idiots at my school can't seem to do any of this. We have the parents who just pull in, park their car, and exit the vehicle to actually walk their kid to class, leaving their huge SUV sitting in the middle of the too small drop off zone. (…and I do not care if you have a child too young to walk alone to their class. If this is you, go park your darn car on the street like you are supposed to and then walk your child to class!) We have the parents who pull in, but still exit their car and help children out of vehicle or take things from the trunk, or stand and have long conversations with their children in the drop off zone. My favorite today was the dad who actually dropped off his two children in a timely fashion and actually stayed in his vehicle, only to then slowly inch by inch follow his kids as they slowly walked toward the school entrance, while the rest of us were unable to drop off our children because we were stuck behind him as he slooowly moved. I know I sound like a cranky bitch but I have years of anger here to let out.


I could go on and on complaining about the traffic jam of trying to exit the school with drop off zones full of idiot parents who can't follow rules on 3 sides of the campus, the parents who illegally double park or create parking spaces to suit their needs, or the parents making illegal turns and maneuvers to secure what is best for their family everyone else be damned.


Actually, I do spend way too much time contemplating why this happens every morning over and over again. Do you think these parents really don't understand the rules? I don't think so myself. Do you think they feel that the needs of others are less important than their own? Now, this I am more inclined to believe. Is this yet another situation where people think they are raising kids with good self esteem, but actually are just teaching their kids that the rights of one outweigh the rights of others? I suspect there might be some other explanations. Do you have one?

Birthdays, Perfectionism, Reality Check

So I have had birthday parties on my brain of late.  I find birthdays (at least for my kids) inherently stressful.  Birthdays, or at least the planning thereof, stress me out.  I do enjoy entertaining, but my resting level of perfectionism, combined with anxiety related to planning an event whereby others may judge me, combined with the anxiety of wanting my child to have a wonderful and memorable birthday, usually yields crazy-making levels of stress.   Sofia turns 6 in April.  For some reason, my lovely baby girl number two has not benefited much from my birthday anxiety.  (Emma, the first-born, has had some memorable although crazed-mama parties.)  Sofia had the big "Baby Turns One" party, of course, but I doubt she remembers that event.  I think I convinced her a trip to Disneyland would be a good way to celebrate a birthday or two to avoid the whole party planning craziness.  Of course, if mom also gets a trip to Disneyland in the process, who am I to mind?  The end result of this haphazard party planning is that my guilt over doing less than my first-born means I worry way too much over every successive birthday.   I just realized that Sofia's 6th birthday will occur during Spring Break and a previously scheduled trip.  I figured out I'd have to actually have her birthday celebration at least the week before our trip and that is in March, exactly two months away and clearly into the "planning window."  Now for me, two months before the actual event seems like it would be sufficient to plan an actual party.  Somehow I use this timeline every year.  Yet, every year I am reminded that I must be radically different from other moms in my area.  (You think with all of the data I process on a regular basis confirming this fact, I would just accept this, but alas I still find it mind-boggling.)    Sofia mentioned a gymnastic party.  Unfortunately, the gym I used for one of Emma's party's closed over a year ago.  Today, 2 months before the date, I called the other gym in town to find my prospective date booked, as well as the week before and the week after.  How do these moms do it?  Do they really manage parenting, work, home, marriage, health, etc., etc., etc. and find time to book their kid's parties more than 2 months in advance?  I think this happens to me at least once a year with each child, which may also be why we tend to have a lot of parties at home.   I do dream of having the "outside the home" birthday party every year.  You know, the fantasy of planning a party for your child where they have a fabulous time and you do nothing?  Perhaps snap a few pictures, and bask in the glory of the perfect party?  Somehow I have never achieved that goal.  Even when I have attempted such a feat, I mess it up by adding on some drama and craziness.  Remember the previously-mentioned gym party for my older daughter?  Just show up with a cake and snacks and they do the rest?  I invited everyone and even more guests to the house after for a huge BBQ.  Actually, I think that was the only time I ever had a chance at a work-free or work-limited party.  The only other time we had a party away from home was a party in August in the park.  Emma had a great time, but carting party stuff to the hot park was a stupid stupid idea (especially when we had a pool at home and could have been swimming rather than sweating).   Okay, I have meandered around in this post and really am not sure what has been resolved at this point.  I know I should KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid.  I should come up with an easy way to celebrate my daughter and help her feel special and enjoy her family and friends.  I know I usually make it much harder than I have to.  I have learned that no matter how much I worry over tiny details and party faux pas, my daughters have rarely noticed.  I know no matter how much I aspire to be on top of the details in my life, like birthdays and parties, I should just be happy with the details I do stay on top of which I know I must have some, right?  Okay, clearly still not resolved about anything as yet.  What about you?  Are you happy with your party planning solutions?  Do you have any suggestions on the best way to celebrate birthdays for kids?