Arts and Culture.

Thursday night Adam's school had their annual art show, which is a fundraiser for a scholarship fund at the school. It's a cute evening - each kid has three pieces of art around the play ground area, and each class makes a canvas of art that they put in a silent auction. Plus there were sno-cones. We met Tim for dinner out beforehand and made a little date of it.

His commentary is about the best part of his art, the little nut.

Friday night after gymnastics we went to the Feista fundraiser at Lexi and Juddy's school - all the carny rides in the church/school parking lot with our friends, what more could you want?

Hard to tell, but the middle swing is Ellie and Olivia, the third is Laura and Lexi - the other three girls totally peer-pressured her into it.

All of the other parents and kids were scared of the Zipper ride, but I've never been one to back down from dying needlessly in a carnival accident, just not how I was raised. So after dinner, Ellie asked if we could ride it and I said sure. We got in line behind this big group of teenagers, who kept inviting their friends to line jump with them. Ellie noticed them cutting, and I said "that's fine, we can sneak ahead" and so we did, and then later, when a couple of teens tried to cut in front of them, I told them to stand back, she was a little kid and I'd seen them inviting a half dozen friends already. It was frustrating to be standing there, watching the line move nowhere despite the ride emptying on a regular basis, with a little kid who didn't have a phone to look into or friends to gossip with - she just wanted to ride the dang ride. Directly in front of us were a younger brother and sister pair, who were also getting bored waiting. I got the ride operator's attention and pointed at all three littles and put my hands up in frustration, and he told us to come around to the front. I told the other two kids to follow me, and when they looked confused, I said "I'm a mom, I can do whatever I want, come with me." And lo, we got to ride right away. I showed Ellie how fun it is to make a rickety cage flip a solid half dozen times. No one barfed, no one cried, I got to yell at some teenagers, so everyone wins!

And yesterday, the best of arts and culture, taking Ellie to see Hamilton at the Segerstrom Center.

Moments from Hamilton with a 7 year old

Ellie: wait, all the actors have brown skin? 
Me: Yes. Because even though people think America was built and owned by people with white skin, America was built by and belongs to everyone.

Ellie: This doesn't sound like the real Hamilton. This isn't the CD. 

Me: They're singing live, that's part of the fun.

Anytime she caught someone saying a swear (most noticeably shit) Ellie: That's RUDE!

When Alexander and Eliza are cradling their son as he dies, Ellie: Mom, stop crying, he's not really dead. 

During Quiet Uptown, Ellie: stop crying. 

During the finale, Ellie: Mom, are you crying? Stop crying.

Overall, she did great. She hung in through the three hour show with less fidgeting than some of the adults near us. She clapped with genuine glee at the end of the big numbers, she laughed uproariously at King George, she danced a little in her seat from time to time. It was a totally self indulgent thing for me to take her, mostly for my own benefit, but I guess there's worse passions to try to share with your kids.

Mother's Day

Belated, but we had a really lovely Mother's Day weekend. The kids had their aforementioned performances and t-ball practices, but then we took it early Saturday night, watched a movie and lazed around. And then on Sunday Tim and the kids made me breakfast in bed, brought me my coffee and showered me with cards and affection. I must also say, I love having a preschooler, because preschool teachers really turn it out when it comes to cards and crafty stuff.

When I look at this picture, I think of my dad telling my mom "I could have had Meg with anyone woman in the world, and she'd look just the same." It's like he stole my face, except with a new hair cut.

Ellie also made a little book about why she likes her mom at school. My favorite part is how she captured my true essence - a cat lady who is happiest when being left alone to read in bed.

Also for Mother's Day, Tim ordered me a hammock.

I even let my family lounge in it sometimes! On Sunday, Tim then took the kids out to his mom's house for brunch, and my mom and I went to the swap meet, and then out to the Hat for a high quality lunch of pastrami and chili cheese fries. What mama wants, mama gets! Then he even brought me a drink out in the hammock, where I read a book until we went to have dinner with Gigi and Grizz and Auntie Sara (who does the best mothering of pretty much anyone.) We are lucky to have such nice Gigis and Mimis and Aunties, and I am lucky to have such wonderful kids, and such a supportive partner as their dad. The other day I was hugging Ellie and I couldn't believe how tall she was. It blows my mind that this big beautiful girl once was my teeny tiny baby, small enough to live inside my actual body! I wonder how much longer I have before both of my children tower over me.

Music Recital

In the fall, we signed up for Let's Play Music's first year of music lessons - it's a three year course designed to teach children basically musical concepts and how to read music so that when complete the course they're ready to hit the piano running. I have been super impressed with the course and what the kids have picked up. Adam's going to continue with year two, but since Ellie will be eight in the fall, she's going straight to piano lessons, because she has the maturity, the patience and the hand span to take it on.

During our Wednesday class this week, Adam was being a regular old turd, and thinking about the upcoming recital, I decided to bail. I mean, he was going to get up there, he was probably going to cry and refuse to do it and I'd have to go get him and then listen to him cry about how he didn't get to perform their song and you know, I've got other things to fight with him about. Plus today would have been his first actual tball game, and since Tim's the coach, it just made more sense for Adam to stay and do his sports ball, for Tim to use all of the new coaching equipment he bought, and for them to meet us after the show for the cake reception.

Thus, Ellie had plenty of time to shine.

For Ellie, the best part of the recital was that Lexi came to support her, and got to come participate in the puppet show.

Mimi and Poppy also came and so we got to go out to lunch afterwards too (after we ate cake!) Pizza, beer and cake, a perfect Saturday before Mother's Day. And now I don't have to listen to little kid music for a few months.

Famous Internet Dork.

End of April

It's been a busy couple of weeks around here!

Adam started t-ball this week through the local rec league. The nice thing about it is that it's only an hour a week, same bat time, same bat place. The tough thing is that the city doesn't assign coaches, so the parents have to cobble it together, and as we all know, the worst part about youth sports is other parents. Thankfully, his team is nice kids with helpful parents who want them all to have fun. Disconcertingly, Tim is the head coach, because he's the only one who played baseball as a kid.

Good news, there wasn't any crying! We did some fielding with the kids, let them do some batting practice and then had them hit and run the bases, and also encouraged a lot of cheering for each other and high fives. It was a fairly productive use of a Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, Ellie is killing it at gymnastics. After four months of Friday classes, she's now a better gymnast than I ever was, and I think I did it from third grade to sixth grade? Maybe seventh? She can do the splits all ways, and has figured out the back walk over.

That turf is really paying dividends as a gymnastics mat.

I thought we'd made it to spring without any gross health melt downs, but the season wasn't quite done with us - Monday night Adam got sick right around bed time, and ran a fever most of the day Tuesday. He and I went for a walk down on the trail, and he LOVED seeing all of the fairy houses that are currently in residence.

It was also probably his last ride in my trusty single BOB stroller - I'm giving it to a friend at her baby shower next weekend, and as it stands, Adam barely fits in it with his long, tall body. But it's been a good companion, and was worth every penny of its 2012 purchase price. We'll miss you, old friend!

ENOUGH ABOUT THE KIDS THOUGH, RIGHT? Last Saturday night Tim and I went to the Special Olympics 50th anniversary gala with eight of our friends, which was awesome.

The dress code is was red, black and gold, and I think we did an adequate job. It was so fun to be there with everyone and support Sara - all of our table mates love her too and had a great time seeing what Special Olympics is all about. We donated, we drank, we danced, we had a blast.

So, of these girls, I'm the second to smallest. But I wore flats that night, and all of the nearly 6 foot tall gals wore towering heels. I basically had to run to keep up, like a tiny, glittery Hobbit. But it was worth it!

ENOUGH ABOUT MY OUTFITS THOUGH, RIGHT?

Lucky-Lou, doing some snuggling

Taco Tuesday's Tutoring Service: caring instructors available seven days a week.

Shark Bait, Hoo-Ha-Ha.

So, our daughter is a shark.

She has been waiting to lose a tooth FOREVER. I mean, a year ago she'd come and tell me she had a wiggly tooth, and I'd try the tooth to find it was about as wiggly as one of my permanent adult teeth. Most of her classmates have the majority of their new front teeth in, but there's Ellie, still milking those baby teeth. And while we were waiting, her adult teeth started coming in behind the baby teeth, thus making her a ferocious land shark lady.

The teeth finally started getting wiggly, but showed no interest in going anywhere. I've wiggled them, I've tried to yank them out, I've sent Tim and other adults to do the job, but those babies were hanging in, and I just kept telling Ellie, you have a dentist appointment on the 12th, and if they're not out by then I bet Dr. Michelle will want to pull them.

And lo, yesterday was the 12th, and Dr. Michelle did indeed think they needed to come out so that her permanent teeth wouldn't be further jacked up by their predecessors overstaying their welcome. Ellie LOVES the dentist, and even having two teeth extracted didn't dampen her excitement (probably because of the laughing gas.) She actually laughed after they yanked out the second one! And thankfully, this time Adam actually sat and let them clean and x-ray his teeth. Six months ago he let Dr. Michelle look in his mouth and then screamed about the rest. Also thankfully, I was worried that one of his front teeth was going to die after he fell flat on his face in Chicago last summer, but the damage wasn't too terrible and though it went gray for a bit, it's healed and looks almost completely normal now.

After the dentist, we got a Frosty and then went out to Tip A Cop dinner with Gigi and Grizz, where I warned Ellie that she wouldn't be able to show her teeth around at the table. But she was able to put them under her pillow, and this morning woke up to find two gold dollars, which I think would make Grandpa Howie happy. I love thinking about how much he enjoyed the gold coins. Quote "I like to leave them as tips, because the waitress thinks she's only getting seventy five cents, but she's really getting three dollars!" Also funny - when I went to the bank to get said gold dollars, the banker only had 19 in his drawer, which was fine. But he did offer I could order them in a box of 1,000. First of all, how many teeth do you think my children have? (maybe more, if Ellie really does turn out to be a shark) and second of all, who needs a thousand dollars in gold coins? How do you even put them in your car? Where do you store them? I imagine it's beyond heavy. Nineteen should do me well for quite a long while.

Spring Break! (and other stuff)

Man, a lot has happened since the week of Adam's birthday!

First of all, our cousins came into town for their spring break, which was awesome. It's so fun to see the four kids and how they get along and how they play or how they don't get along. Basically, everyone loves Ellie and wants her full attention, and with Adam starting to drop his naps, he was a real pisser to everyone. But he was slightly less of a turd to James than he's been in years past? So that was good.

They had a good parade in preparation for Olde Ellison Bay Days, and they did a lot of Easter egg hunting. We also had a party for Jackie's grandson over at her house, which resulted in my kids swimming in the hot tub in their skivvies, and ended with an enormous dance party. Two thumbs way up.

Then we went to bed early on Sunday night, because the car arrived to pick us up before six am on Monday morning, for our big spring break family vacation to Hawaii. There were twelve of us in total going, on three different flights (so much for coordinating!) Twelve of us in total, including Auntie Sara. We had an uneventful flight, and then a fairly quick shuttle ride out to the Disney Aulani resort.

We spent five days without really ever leaving the resort. They had tons of pools, and a beautiful beach in a quiet cove. We were sharing a suite with Kristen, Jeff, Lexi and Judd, and our friends Todd, Sara Jo and Whitney were four doors down the hall. It worked out well! Three of the kids slept in our living room on pull outs, Kristen and Jeff had their own room, and then in the room with two queens, Tim slept with whichever one of our kids was not in the living room (the boys and girls traded off on sleepovers) and since it was a family vacation, I slept with my sister, like it was 1988. It worked out pretty great. The kids would get up early-ish, since they don't understand time zones, but then we would plug them into a movie on the iPad using Jeff's five way splitter (amazing!) and they'd eat cereal and relax until the parents got up, hunter-gathered coffee and breakfast, and then every day we were down at the pools before 10am. The boys swam until after lunch (and then had to nap or die) and the girls stayed in the water for up to six hours at a time. They were FISH. The great thing is that we had so many adults that we could do shifts taking them down the lazy river or slides, and other than the one big pool (which we only went in once) they could touch pretty much everywhere we went. The beach was also fairly placid and calm, though on day one Ellie and Adam did swim out to the bouys and back with us (Adam rode on my back on the way in, which was the toughest workout I've had in awhile.)

Then most days we'd be back and showering around four. The kids had a couple of engagements in the daycare, which allowed the adults to have a cocktail or two (without kids, don't get us wrong, we were definitely ordering booze by 11 most days. SPRING BREAK!!!) One night they were able to stay through supper, and we went to the Four Seasons next door and had an excellent meal in their fish restaurant.

We couldn't have asked for better company or more fun as a group. However, the resort itself left a ton to be desired. We paid a premium to be there during a peak time, and the service was subpar at best. I had more than one person tell me something wasn't available or working because "it's spring break." Oh really? I wondered why my kids were here with me. We just weren't able to take advantage of everything we paid for, which was a big disappointment. Not to mention, all five kids broke out in rashes from the chemicals and pee in the pools. I was glad we hadn't come before Easter or stayed another day longer - they'd wrung just about all of the fun out of the resort that they could.

I also wish we might have done more touring around, but we were out at the resort, not really close to anything. We did manage to walk a few doors down to a really fun luau on Wednesday night, and all of the kids got to go up on stage and dance, which they thought was awesome. It was a super fun night, and a nice change of pace. And thankfully across the street was a grocery store and an ice cream place, so we could feed the kids a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches and ice cream.

In the end, a great trip with great friends and a great family. I was so proud of what great travelers the kids were, and definitely loved the few moments they'd leave their friends alone and snuggle with me on a tube down the lazy river. And of course, if the kids' spring breaks match up again next year, we'll get some good commune living spring break going!

Aloha Aulani!

Character breakfast, morning 1

Breakfast the rest of the week

Lazy River

Auntie and Adam after a tube slide

Many fierce tic tac toe battles

The Beans admiring their hair and make up pre-luau. I can only imagine what they're going to be like before attending prom in 10 years

Luau silly faces!

Ohana means family

Dance Break! (Jeff in the plaid, Ellie and Whitney)

Beach time building Todd Town

Beautiful dinner with beautiful friends

Sisterly cocktails

Sisterly facials. Don't we look young?

Final ice creams

Aloha Hawaii!