Weekend of Racquetball Courts and (Artificial) Trees

You know, when you remember your childhood, if your family celebrated Christmas, you probably have one glittery, magic-tinged memory of visiting Santa's Workshop or a Winter Wonderland display of some sort. Maybe your community center, or your community theater, or perhaps your preschool even, elaborately decorated a room or a portable (trailer) filled with gauzy fake snow and empty boxes wrapped with gold and red paper and lots of bows. A miniature train choo-chooed along a track, dolls and stuffed animals were set up among the dainty fake trees and mountains of the cozy wintry scene. (I could have gotten some of this mixed up in my memory of It's a Small World at Disney World. I could.) Maybe you were only 4 and lived in Florida where it might have been 75 degrees outside and you didn't even remember snow, but Man, that was the best thing ever.

So, our Y, which does wonderful things, had a Breakfast with Santa on Saturday. They talked it up and handed out flyers at the girls' gymnastic classes, so the girls were excited. While I wasn't expecting the rosy, possibly imaginary visions from my childhood, I was at least expecting breakfast. C. says the correct interpretation for these sorts of public "breakfasts" is "pancakes." Unfortunately it was just donut holes and cartons of milk. (Like public school breakfast at Title I schools! I kid you not--I worked in two! Except some days we had deep-fried french toast sticks.) The kids dug in. I stood there, wiping powdered sugar off their clothes. Okay, maybe I ate one donut. One chocolate and one powdered sugar.

The picture with Santa is very very poor, but the Y took one (free) of every family and I just have to pick it up at the desk. I hope it's better, although I don't know what I'm going to do with it, exactly. I had to snap fast because the time with Santa was very precious.

What was more fun than all that was the racquetball courts. The old racquetball courts, which don't get used much now that the new building has nicer ones. I remember these courts from my childhood, with their tiny doors (5 feet tall, I judge, from the number of times I failed to duck enough going in and out) and open, netted roofs. The girls played This is our house, please knock and I will show you around. I only got one picture before the battery died. Of course. But it was fun.

Maybe I'll find my mystical winter wonderland again someday . . .




Emily really really wanted to get the Christmas decorating done, like, last week, and Penny was excited because Emily was excited. So after we'd come home from the "breakfast" and had some real food (Apples! Eggs!), I said, "Let's do it." Cue roaring crowd and jumping pixies, one of whom is wearing both her "princess dress" and her "princess skirt." So Daddy got down all the boxes from the top shelf of the closet, where only he can reach them.





After these blissful, if messy, scenes of children and ornaments, Daddy went on the weekly grocery run. Penny wanted to go, too, so Emily and I stayed to finish the tree trimming. Mostly this consisted of me hanging ornaments and her 1) rearranging the manger scene 2) opening bags and boxes and saying, Ooh, Mommy, look! or 3) playing a game with two little girl ornaments and one bigger Girl Scout ornament who served as the mother for her purposes, mostly telling the little girls, Yes, they could do that, but, Be careful.

I was adjusting something on the bottom branches, kneeling on the ground, while simultaneously talking to my sister on the phone. So my head was basically tipped to my shoulder, holding the phone, when I heard a crack and the tree began to tip.

"Yikes!" I said, or perhaps some less polite word, and told my sister I'd have to call her back. Emily tried to help me hold up the tree, while I tried to snap one of the cheap-o plastic base pieces back into the base. Of course, the cheap-o plastic piece was cracked, and then another one cracked and the whole tree came crashing down, to more impolite words about the world ending and no-way-am-I doing-this-all-over-again. Emily ran to her room, crying, convinced by my irrational ravings that there would be no tree this year. And probably no Christmas.

I had to lure her out with a snack of buttered bagels. Yum.

If I had been thinking like a blogger, I would have taken a picture of the destruction; instead I just de-strung the lights, un-hung the ornaments, discarded half of the cheap-o garlands I'd been keeping year after year for no discernible reason, and pulled the dadblasted tree into sections small enough to fit into plastic garbage bags.

When Daddy got home from the grocery store, I sent him back out to Lowe's, where we scored a not-quite-as-cheap tree (half off!). Then I went out for an exercise walk with my iPod and let him redo the trimming.

And finally, who likes the tree? Kitty likes the tree!



He's been sleeping under it every night since, like, 2 days ago when all this happened.

Getting some sunshine

On Saturday, we took a trip to the nearest state park--really near, only about 20 minutes away. My sister and her husband have a motor home (snazzily appointed in original 70's design, wood panels and fuzzy orange chairs and all). It was just me, my kids, my brother-in-law and their kids. My sister was still recuperating from the Great November Cold and Flu and hoping to catch some sleep with the baby. My husband was hoping to watch Virginia lose another football game. So I packed some food, my brother-in-law brought a little grill, and we set out for the park.

The park provided lots of space to run around, multiple picnic areas, and miles of walking trails. The weather was warm and sunny, but not hot--70's probably. (Admittedly, sometimes we Floridians refer to that as "cool" rather than "warm"--it's all perspective.) Our enthusiastic after-lunch hike didn't get too far, as--what do you know?--two and three year olds have short legs, like to look at stuff on the ground, and are too heavy to carry very far when they inevitably ask you to pick them up. The kids had a blast, though. Outdoors is good.






When nature just isn't enough, find a playground. There were two of them within our short-legged walking route. The older kids even found another couple of kids with whom to play race-to-the-tree. It's so neat to watch them effortlessly, instantly connecting with other kids.






Two days before, we had a low key Thanksgiving at my parents' house. My brother and his girlfriend Emily were visiting, along with Emily's mom, Susan. I don't have any pictures of them, though, but I do have pictures of the new niece, though, being held by my dad. (See why I have to get my eyebrows waxed . . . it's genetic!)



I was even there . . . rare photo of Mommy . . . like my new highlights?



Many toys were played with . . . and spread out all over the floor.




Penny loves Daddy. And TV.




Penny and her cousin continued their piano duet tradition, sometimes accompanied by dancing and/or singing of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"--at least the first two lines.





I'll leave you with another look at the beautiful new niece. She smiled either right before or right after this picture, and every other one I tried to take. Can you tell?

Niece Update

She's over ten pounds and two months of cute. This was not the best picture of her, but my camera's battery failed and by the time I got back, the baby had been moved. (I did leave some other adult watching her on the couch while I ran for the batteries.) Doesn't Penny look huge?



Penny just put my socks and sneakers on. Yes, mine. She thinks it's pretty freaking hilarious. Should I take a picture? We're having a good week at home. Crisp, cool (but no ridiculousness, it's 60s during the day) and sunny. More pictures after tomorrow.

A Week (or two days) in Pictures

Ah, the annual making of Thanksgiving costumes, a time-honored tradition since at least my late-70's era kindergarten. I (of course) forgot my camera at the kindergarten Thanksgiving party on Friday, but take my word that half the kids wore Pilgrim hats and the others wore Indian headdresses. Although their teacher told them they were supposed to sit like good little Puritan children and not speak unless spoken to, the minute her back was turned, it was all-out war, with updated (imaginary) automatic weaponry. Since we all know how the Native American-European friendship thing worked out, I guess it wasn't all that inappropriate.

The only picture we got was after dinner, when the girls tried on the various costumes Emily made during the week. Penny is wearing a turkey hat made by Emily during the party out of that craft foam stuff from which every preschool craft these days seems to engineered. What did we do before that stuff? I know! Construction paper!



Emily had her last soccer game on Saturday. Daddy said it was challenging to get an action shot, since Emily has a casual, observational relationship with soccer, even when she's technically on the field. That's okay--she's five and she's having fun. Carlyle plans to coach next season, so we'll see what effect that has on her, um, game.

Photo Round-up

Earlier this week, Emily went on a field trip with her kindergarten class. I got to drive in my van, a privilege which is highly overrated. If two 5-6-year-olds are noisy, then five of them are up there with, I don't know, someone cutting down a tree with an electric saw next door at 6 am. (This seems to happen fairly regularly in our neighborhood, peopled with retired gentlemen who can't sleep and are obsessed with their lawns.)

At any rate, the field trip was fun. It was Slim Goodbody. Yes, the same guy you might remember from PBS when you were a kid. He looks pretty good for 60, keeps it short, and even lets kids from the audience get a chance to come up on the stage. Of course, that also presents the developmental issue that children this age don't understand odds and all think they should get picked if anyone get picked. At least that's what Emily seemed to be saying when she briefly broke down after not being picked.

So here are photos from outside the building and in their seats before the show started (no flash photography or video cameras permitted during the show, natch). Emily and her cousin making silly faces.






I have to say, though, that I really do reconsider this private school thing when I hear behind me, one kid say to another, as another school files down the aisle to their seats, "Hey, look at the brown kids!" I can talk to her about how we all have different skin colors, and read books to her about slavery and discrimination and immigration, but if every day at school she's surrounded by white people . . .

And I don't blame the kid behind me, who was probably only 6 or 7 himself. He's just saying what he observes. It's not his fault that white people tend to whisper about race, as if it's impolite to acknowledge or might embarrass a minority who may not be aware that his skin is so dark. I think there are some things that can only be learned by actual association and conversation with children of other races, teachers of other races. Of course, there are lots of good things about her school, or else she wouldn't be going there. But it does make me think, and I will probably keep thinking.

Next up was Emily's Thanksgiving program, which substitutes for the annual Christmas program this year due to the difficulty of renting church space during the Christmas season. Seems that churches like to do Christmas shows, too. The program was cute, but only a few pictures of Emily made the cut. Turns out my camera doesn't do distance too well. Guess I knew that.





Huh. In that middle photo, it looks like she's wearing make-up, but SHE IS NOT. No way, no how.

Missing are today's soccer pictures from her second-to-last soccer game. Daddy had the camera (thanks to me) but forgot to use it. I can't blame him because I didn't remember for the first 6 games and 8 practices either. We get to keep the uniforms, so I guess we could even stage it later.

This week we've also been mired in snotty noses, sneezing, coughing, and the occasional upchuck by the smallest member of the family (not including the cat) who apparently responds to all viruses by throwing up. Also, the cat got fixed, and we had the carpet treated for the fleas with which we are apparently infested. (So that's what those little red bites on my ankles were!)

And Carlyle turned 33! Happy Birthday! We're going out to dinner tonight, sans kids. Yay!

The Things Kids Say

Emily (on the way home from school in the car): Mommy? What happens when we stop counting?

Me (listening to NPR): What do you mean? Counting what?

Emily: Mommy! No! I mean, when the numbers stop? What happens when the numbers stop?

Me (recalling an earlier conversation about infinite sets): Oh! You mean how the numbers keep going and you could just keep counting forever.

Emily: But even if you kept counting forever you couldn't get to the end.

Me: Right. They just keep going.

Emily: But how do you know what number is next?

Me (back to NPR again): Um?

Emily: How do you know what number comes next when you keep counting and counting?

Me: Well, the numbers always happen one after another, like 16 thousand, four hundred and four and then 16 thousand, four hundred and five.

Emily: But you couldn't ever count them all?

Me: Nope. Even if you counted all the time your whole life. They even have computers that count numbers really fast and the computers haven't gotten to the end. Because there's no end.

Emily: This is the computer counting (robot voice): 1234567891011121314


Later, when tucking them in for bed (at 7:45 pm, hee hee):

Penny: No hug! No kiss! (throwing covers over her head dramatically)

Daddy: Okay, Good night then!

Penny: No! No! Huggy! Kissy!

Me (hugging Penny first because I was closer): Good night, Penny!

Penny (after kissing me somberly on the lips): I will miss you, too, Mommy.

Trick or Treat

I accidentally deleted a portrait of Emily in her cat costume by the window in my parents' house. Bummer. I wish digital cameras came with an undo button. Halloween was fun, even if Penny fell asleep on the way home and still hasn't brushed her teeth! We're going to go do that now . . . Enjoy the pictures that remain . . .


After dinner at my parents' house, Penny has already started on the candy.


Emily is an experienced trick or treater.


Penny loves to trick or treat, too!


On to the next house!


At aunt and uncle's . . . time to dig in!


"That's mine, Emily!"


The cousins compare loot.


Her newly 3-year-old cousin helps Penny adjust her crown.