There's a used bookstore in Boulder that Rocket Boy and I are quite fond of, called the Bookworm. It's always been a great place to pick up cheap paperbacks, but in the last couple of years Rocket Boy discovered that they also have a good selection of children's books in foreign languages -- including German, which is what interests him. RB's parents were both native speakers of German, though I'm not sure how much German they actually spoke to him as a child -- but he can get by in German pretty well, if he has to. And he would like our twins to know German as well.
Of course what he should be doing is speaking German to them all the time, while I speak English to them all the time. But of course he's not doing that. Instead he reads them German children's books. He also will tell them the word for various things in German, but not consistently. And sometimes I tell them the word for things in German too, and then I say "and in English we call it X." Who knows what they're learning or not learning.
Recently RB taught them the German word for foam, schaum, and now they don't know the word foam, they just know schaum. They wash their hands with soap and say "schaum!" They look up at the clouds in the sky and say "ky! coud! schaum!" (translation: sky! clouds! (look like) schaum/foam!)
OK, anyway, whatever, so we wanted to find a bookstore around here that would be as fun as the Bookworm and would have German children's books. We got on the internet and looked for used bookstores in Los Angeles and we found a lot of posts about how there aren't any good used bookstores in Los Angeles because people around here don't read. That was depressing.
But there were a few bookstores mentioned as being pretty good, though not anything like bookstores in San Francisco or Boston. And one of these was the Brand Bookshop in Glendale. So that was enough for us. We got in the car and headed for Glendale.
We of course got a late start, so we had lunch at the Denny's in Mojave, and there we nearly had a disaster. Baby B would not sit nicely in his highchair, he kept unfastening the strap and climbing out of the chair and perching on the edge. A couple of times I jumped up from my seat to grab him because I thought he was going to fall off. Finally, for about the 100th time, I said to him "Sit in your seat, you're going to fall," and whoops, over he went. Along with the highchair. Crash. Rocket Boy was out of his seat a second later, rescuing him and comforting him, and of course Baby B was wailing away, but RB and I could not stop laughing. I mean, it was actually very scary, for all we knew Baby B had broken his neck, but there was just something about that WHOOPS -- CRASH that made us both get the giggles.
We're such bad parents.
And then I realized I'd spilled ketchup on my pale pink shirt, and even scrubbing it with soap in the restroom did not remove the stain, and as we sat in the Denny's parking lot, getting ready to get on the road again, I said to Rocket Boy, "Do you want to just go to Palmdale?"
But the fact was that we didn't want to go to Palmdale, we wanted to go to Glendale. So off we went.
The Brand Bookshop is on Brand Boulevard in Glendale, which I guess is kind of the main drag, because a little further on you come to not one but two huge shopping malls. I wouldn't call Brand Boulevard charming, but it was OK, quite pleasant to walk along. The Brand Bookshop is also not exactly charming, but it's a really nice, extremely well-organized used bookstore. With not a single German children's book. Oh well. But I found 4 books for myself, and if I'd had just a little more time to browse I probably could have found 20.
Boo bears did not like the inside of the bookstore and kept saying "Bye-bye car!" and "Go way!" so eventually we left. There were some of those Japanese cats in the window, the ones that wave their arms at you, and those were the hit of the day, as far as boo bears were concerned. We walked down Brand Boulevard a bit more, but wherever we went, boo bears kept saying "Kitty! Go back kitty!"
Our next stop was Griffith Park, which is an enormous park that I guess is actually in Los Angeles proper, but borders Glendale and other cities around there. I had vaguely heard of it, but it really wasn't on my radar. What a cool park! The Los Angeles Zoo is there, and a big museum, picnic areas and places to hike, a merry-go-round and a miniature train and pony rides. Since we didn't have a lot of time, we chose one activity: the little train. Here's a rather blurry (sorry!) photo of it.
We drove straight to the train area, parked, bought our tickets, and rode the train. And then left, before anyone had a chance to get too tired, cranky, etc. It was delightful and I definitely want to go back to that park. For one thing, we didn't even SEE the merry-go-round.
On the way home we stopped in Palmdale after all, to buy food at Trader Joe's, and then we found a Hometown Buffet and had dinner there. Baby B sat very nicely in his highchair and ate his mac & cheese and made absolutely no attempt to get out, so that was a good thing.
We were home by 8:15 and boo bears went right to bed. And now I must do the same.
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