Walk Around the Rose Bowl

Here is Astrid all dressed up and ready for our walk around the Rose Bowl today. Even though it was a hot summer afternoon I dressed Astrid in pants and matching socks (check them out...instead of polka dots, they have polka squares...total baby socks. When she gets older she's going to say, "I can't believe my mom dressed me up in those funky clown socks." But hey, when can she ever wear socks like these? Or ever let me dress her up in them? So take advantage while we can!), so that she won't get a sunburn.

I was aghast in seeing that she already has tan lines. (Although I can't show them to you with out posting a photo of her cute, white, baby bottom. Maybe I'll take a few just for family consumption.) We're so good about staying out of the sun but she must have gotten them while sitting in her car seat with the sun streaming through the backseat window.

The window is tinted but I have been wanting to get one of those sun screens to attach to the window for extra sun protection. The ones we've seen so far have had kooky kid prints on them and Uwe refuses to drive around with Elmo or Barney attached to his car. Very uncool, even if you are a new dad. (We keep all the ugly, gaudy kid print stuff hidden inside the house. We try our best to buy stuff with out the gaudy print but it seems almost all the "kid/baby" stuff has it. Have you checked out Graco baby products? They have great products but everything is covered with this gawd awful kitschy print. It gives you a headache just looking at all that plaid or country kitsch. Then there are the other companies that think "baby" means putting every color imaginable and covering every inch with pictures of characters/animals, etc. Uwe and I discussed that baby companies should invest in providing a "cool" line of prints. Monochromatic, modern, minimalistic. I'm sure there's a huge demand for it but because currently we don't have that option, parents just buy what's available.) For now I just put a receiving blanket over Astrid's legs when she's riding in her car seat.

The Rose Bowl is located in Pasadena, California. Although it's known mainly for the New Year's Day football game, it's also the home to UCLA football and has also hosted five NFL Super Bowl Games, the 1994 Men's World Cup, and the 1999 Women's World Cup, and has a Fourth of July fireworks celebration each year, and a bi-monthly flea market. There's also a country club located adjacent to it with an exclusive golf course. The 3 mile plus walking path around the bowl and golf course is always bustling with people walking, running, rollerblading, and bicycling.

During our walk Astrid kept pulling on her left sock. If you look at this photo you can see her left sock is a lot bigger than her right sock. That's because her sock is all stretched out. She ate her lunch on the golf course across from the 16th hole, in the shade, under a large sycamore tree.
The golf course has a fence around it but has lots of gates that are open for golf carts to zoom in and out. One open gate had two benches next to a tree in the shade. That's the spot I picked to feed Astrid. She ate while I watched the golfers.

Uwe and I took golf lessons and played for a bit but I never really caught the golf bug. I mean it can be fun but you have to walk in the hot sun and chase this little ball around and just keep hitting it. I always feel like, "How many holes are left? Let's hurry up so we can go." But today as I was watching those golf carts zoom by I thought to myself, "Now there's a way to play a game of golf." One old guy had a large cooler attached to the back of his cart. It was one of those coolers you see the football players pour onto their coaches, loaded with Gaterade, after winning a Superbowl championship. Nice. He saw me feeding Astrid and stopped to asked me, "Would you like a glass of ice water?" And then there were the 2 couples each driving around in their own golf cart laughing and drinking cocktails between holes. I may have to try that and see if that makes the game of golf a lot more enjoyable.

The squirrels were also out in full force today. It was sweet to see them chasing one another and barking. I kept pointing them out to Astrid and saying "squirrel." But of course she was preoccupied with pulling on her polka square clown sock, so she may not have been paying attention.

Speaking of squirrels...

When I was 5 months pregnant Uwe and I went to New York. We both wanted to be in a city where it snowed for Christmas and what better place than New York? So one day we went to Central Park and it was the first time I had seen the lake frozen into ice and there was an ice rink. I had visions of "Love Story" in my mind and I really wanted to go ice skating but the line was ridiculous. It was like a 2 hour wait. So instead we walked around the park and I got a pretzel and started feeding the squirrels. They are so friendly and all you have to do is hold out food and they come to you and eat right out of your hand. I had a big chunk of pretzel left and it became the running joke. Uwe kept trying to get me to throw it away but I kept it in case I saw another squirrel. Well wouldn't you know that after our trip and flight back to LA I reached in my jacket pocket and guess what I felt? Yep, that pretzel piece. It was hard as a rock. I couldn't resist. I turned to Uwe and held it out to him and asked, "Would you like a piece of pretzel?"

Getting back to our walk around the Rose Bowl...

Astrid enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells and of course pulling on her sock, while I broke a sweat and got a nice workout pushing the stroller arond the Bowl for 3 miles.