Ryder Wrong?

And the Winner is...

2009-11-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

ME!!!So I worked really hard on this pumpkin carving...mostly just to see if I could pull it off. I could point to all kinds of things that went horribly wrong, including how the whole face fell out on Sunday afternoon (bummer, I wanted to light it up again!). Plenty of things weren't quite how I'd planned, but it still turned out pretty cool.

Because one person asked and because I think it would be cool to preserve this information for posterity, I'll go into some details about this award-winning carving. I started out by choosing an online photo of "The Freak" that I thought would work for my purposes. I chose this one:I cropped it so that only Timmy's face showed and then ran it through Photoshop's "Cutout" filter that made it look something like this:I used that as my template, but it lost some detail, so I had Daddy go back and find me an appropriately sized SF logo for the cap and I added the white of his eyes, which you could see in the original photo.

I used a pin to poke the outlines into the pumpkin, through the paper. I started carving with a Dremel, with a small router bit attached. It kinda worked. At least it gave me a specific depth to carve to. After carving the brightest bits to that depth (the deepest it could go through a 1-inch+ thick rind and just scraping the skin off the things I wanted to be less thick...that taking a mere several hours...I determined that no light was going to get through that and used a plain ol' knife to cut out the thin parts entirely, then used the Dremel to drill the other parts deeper.

I cut a circle around the outside just so the cap would show up. Unfortunately, I didn't quite think that through all the way. Cutting too far was going to make the face fall out, so I only got part way and ended up with sort of a lightning bolt edge on one side. By then, the pizza had arrived for dinner, so I took a break.

I wanted to write "Beware of the Freak" around the outside, but trick-or-treaters were already starting to come to the door and I was worried that if I tried to cut too much, I'd end up breaking all the delicate stuff I'd already done. Still, I thought the "Freak" aspect was particularly apropos, considering "The Freak" is one of Tim Lincecum's nicknames and because it was Halloween. So, I settled for "Freak". And this is what I ended up with:It looks like it took a lot of work, but it hardly looks like it'd be impressive. i was pretty psyched when I first checked it out with a candle inside. Totally worth the effort!

As mentioned in the previous post, I submitted it to the San Francisco Giants pumpkin carving contest. For all I know, no one else bothered to enter. I mean, the Giants' season has been over for weeks now. I can't even tell you what I was doing poking around on their website, where I noticed the contest ad.

I enter the occasional contest here and there, but I never win. So imagine my surprise when I got this e-mail from the Giants' Marketing and Entertainment Manager:

Stacey,

Congratulations, you are the winner of our Pumpkin Carving contest! You have won a player autographed baseball. If you can please reply all to this e-mail and provide your address we can get this out to you as soon as possible.

Congratulations once again and awesome job, your “Freak” pumpkin is very impressive!

Joe

Huh. Imagine that! We'll have to see how that whole "autographed baseball" thing turns out!

Halloween - The Real Deal

2009-11-01T10:08:00.000-08:00

After having more than a week of Halloween already, it was almost a surprise to find the main event suddenly upon us like the boogey man. I'd managed to buy a couple of creepy window hangings and Daddy and I strung some cobwebs across the front of the house. That meant yesterday was a mad rush of carving pumpkins and finishing up decorations before setting off for an evening of candy collection.Oh, and soccer, of course.

We had a lazy morning at home. Since I had some undeniably ridiculous plans for pumpkin carving, that was probably a poor plan, but I was still trying to talk Mam out of the large pumpkin she'd selected weeks earlier. She'd selected two others in the meantime and I needed a really big one for my planned carving.

I set the kids to work carving their own pumpkins. Mam had carved her little pumpkin from the farm trip a couple of days earlier, but we still had two others. While I helped them out with their pumpkins, I finally got permission to start on my own. They were long done before I'd really even started.I'd only just started cutting as Daddy starting shoveling lunch at the kids in preparation for Smunch's post-lunchtime soccer game. Not to be completely distracted by my mental illness, I left the house shortly after the rest of the family to see the soccer game. Smunch's team won, 1-0, a fairly unusual event. Just their second win of the season. Smunch was playing great by the end of the game, but it took a while for him to warm up.

We went home. I spent another 45 minutes working on my pumpkin, then putting Mam's ponytails in and spraying them in place for her soccer game. I'd made only a little progress before we had to leave again. Another fun game for Mam, putting her goal total for the season at 22, I think. They also won (6-2), although they don't technically keep score.

I'd planned to make soup for dinner, but we ordered pizza instead, in the interest of my completing my pumpkin before midnight. Daddy called our favorite pizza place. They said we could pick up our pizza in 2 hours. Two hours??? We opted for some Round Table instead.

And Daddy got the kids dressed. Mam still had her ponytails in, but it turned out to be a cute addition to her costume. The knocks started coming and it soon appeared that we probably hadn't bought enough candy this year. Our neighborhood was buzzing with activity. It was great, but unexpected. Still, just because our neighborhood was buzzing, didn't mean our dark, narrow cul-de-sac was all that busy. In the end, although I came home and raided some bags of candy the kids had collected at a Cub Scout event earlier in the week, I think we probably had just enough candy in the first place.

We left a bowl of candy at the door and took the kids around the neighborhood for an hour or so...until they decided their pumpkin baskets were too heavy to carry anymore.They returned home happy with their Halloween.As I put them to bed. They both told me what a great time they'd had. Worth all that harried silliness.

Smunch was the sweetest of all. "Mom," he said. "I love your pumpkin." A boy after my own heart.

[Entered in the SF Giants Pumpkin Carving Contest]

Or was I after his?

Stretching the Spooky

2009-11-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed that celebrations for children seem to go on and on and on these days? Was it like that when we were kids? Don't get me wrong. It's really fun, but it also makes each event something to "get past" before anything else can happen. Know what I mean? In this instance, of course, I'm talking about Halloweeen.

Halloween in our house started a full week and a half before October 31st. One of the fabulous mommies from Mam's kindergarten class hosted a Halloween tea for all the little girls in the class. She has the perfect house for such things...huge, unmanicured yard and a rambling, non-upated house. Nothing to destroy. Absolutely perfect. And, of course, it was crazy cute.We had a fun couple of hours relaxing in the sunshine and it was a great way to kick of the excitement for Halloween.

A few days later, we made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch, to meet old friends and see everyone's costumes. And, of course, to take photos of the kids that actually include pumpkins. Sir Smunch was a wee bit baffled, apparently.Mam, on the other hand, was all about the posing with pumpkins, even though the bright sunlight wasn't exactly camera-friendly.My sister and I used to pose for these very same pictures in this very same pumpkin patch. Things were simpler then. It wasn't crowded. There was no $5 bounce house, no haunted house. No pony rides or petting zoo. No costumes either. I need to get hold of those photos, just for comparison. I suppose we still did plenty of wandering among the pumpkins, but we didn't look nearly this noble.And I don't recall the need to kick-test them, but maybe that's a boy thing. I'm quite sure there was plenty of this: And my mom probably even helped us pick that pumpkin up and purchase it...unlike me. I opted for the $3.99 pumpkins at CVS instead of paying $20 for this bad boy.

The pumpkin patch trip (followed by the annual pilgrammage to Jake's Pizza) was a whole week before the big event, giving us time to work up some eager anticipation for the Halloween parties and parades at school on Friday. As usual, I overvolunteered my time, not realizing that Smunch's Halloween party was at the very same time as the kindergarten parade and party. Fortunately, the front of his classroom is directly opposite the back door to Mam's kindergarten room and I managed to go back and forth and not miss much.

However, I was in charge of one of two crafts for the second graders. And all 80 second graders would be rotating through Smunch's classroom, so it wasn't a small job. The craft had to be explained three times and I'd failed to cut streamers to length, which turned out to be a fatal flaw in my plans. There were always at least two of us busily cutting streamers as fast as we could. The projects turned out cute though and the kids seemed to like them.I loved seeing all the kids' ghost wind socks together on the table. They're way cuter as a "flock" than they are flying solo. I wished I could've taken them all home myself!In mid-craft, I ran over to the kindergarten yard to watch Mam's parade. It was small and low-key, but obviously, it was important that I made it. She was already dressed when I got there. After the grand march, the kids were treated to Frankenstein hands (gloves filled with popcorn with candy corn "fingernails") and pudding with chocolate crumbs on top...in addition to cheese pizza. Spoiled any?I ended up having to drag Mam back to the second grade room, where she made her own ghost, we cleaned up and hightailed it home for lunch before going back to school to help Smunch get dressed for the whole-school parade.
The parade was fun, but very long and too hot for so many kids sitting out on the blacktop. Mam only begrudgingly participated in this second parade, even though most of her class had returned for the event. For Smunch, it was the main event. But he didn't see me in the sea of parents, so I didn't get much of a photo.His mask was always falling down, so his chin was pointing up towards the sky trying to keep it on.

After the parade, the second graders (and many younger siblings) headed to the multipurpose room for a 20-minute viewing of It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, complete with their own Frankenstein hands (their other craft from the morning) for munching.Then all the little monsters and goblins went home for the weekend, completely hopped up on sugar and excitement...thinking the next 24 hours couldn't pass fast enough.

Fall at the Farm

2009-10-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

A while back...I can't even remember quite when. Maybe three weeks ago?...I accompanied Mam's class on a field trip to a local working farm. This was Mam's first kindergarten field trip and her first time on a school bus. For whatever reason, ancient, yellow buses are a lot more exciting than, say, the shuttle to the water park at Disney World.She was thrilled just to be boarding the bus. But it was a really fun visit to the farm too.

This particular farm is hidden away in a little valley, so despite the fact that it's not far from home, it still feels very pastoral. They have amazing docents who lead the kids in songs, let them sample produce from the beautiful, big vegetable garden...teach them about compost and take them to visit the animals.Since tasting wonderful, new, fresh foods is not Mam's forté, you won't be surprised to hear that her favorite part was visiting the animals. It's been a long time since she had such a good opportunity to get up close and personal with animals. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to watch her. I don't know any child more enthusiastic about animals than she is. To witness her interaction with a rhinoceros when she was just two and a half, was to be just about rolling on the ground with laughter. Given the opportunity, in a group visiting animals, she'll hog all the animals' attention for herself. This trip was no different.Fortunately, one of her classmates was scared to death of animals and refused to come in the pens and another was just slightly afraid, coming in the pens, but keeping her distance. That gave Mam plenty of time and space to get all the animal love she could. She listened raptly to the docent too.It's just so cute to see her so interested in something. It's sort of like taking Smunch to a baseball game. And this...this is Mam's equivalent of witnessing a home run and possibly the very closest she's gotten to a goat.At the end of the trip, each kindergartner got to take a pumpkin back to class where they weighed it and learned about concepts of less and more before taking it home.Although she was excited to go on a fun trip with Mommy and meet lots of animals. A pumpkin of her own was the icing on the cake.

Smunchism #161

2009-10-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Smunch: "Sometimes Mam is still pesterous to me."

Where did she go?

2009-10-26T19:44:00.001-07:00

I'm painfully aware that I haven't written a single bloggity word in three weeks now. It's not because nothing's going on. There's always something going on around here, but it hasn't been very inspiring. It's been a lot of parenting and practicing patience, for the most part. Despite the fact that I knew it was coming, I'm struggling a little with the decline in Smunch's ability to speak. The stuttering was so mild at the beginning of the school year that it was easy to forget it was even there. Now, it takes every fiber of patience just to let him get through whatever he needs to say without finishing his sentence or pretending to listen instead of actually listening. I have to remind myself that as hard work as it is for me, there are children with much greater "issues" and their parents are working that much harder. How much I admire them. They look so patient and strong on the outside. Perhaps they're just as impatient and wimpy on the inside. It's hard to tell.

On a different note, before I went AWOL, my father-in-law generously gave me a new lens for my camera. That means I've taken some beautiful photos of late, even if they're fairly meaningless. Or brainless, as the case may be...Somewhere between the last post and this one, it magically turned into Fall.Ah, Fall. Probably one of my favorite times of year. I love how it cools off, but it's still sunny and beautiful when it's not rainy and wet, and the yard is populated by a herd (a flock, a coven??) of garden spiders hanging out in some really spectacular webs.Daddy doesn't like that last part so much.

It's also soccer season, so most of each Saturday is taken up with wedging legs through shin guards and securing cleats to little feet. And cheering of course. There's always cheering. I have lots of pictures of soccer, but really? You want more soccer? I thought not. Mam is now up to 19 goals for the season, but her peers have rapidly caught onto the game and she isn't nearly the prolific scorer that she was in the first couple of games.

And it's coming up to Halloween already, which is scary in and of itself. What do you suppose this guy is going to be for Halloween?The kids have already donned their costumes at least once. Mam, this year, is a witch, while Smunch is some sort of evil knight. The package actually said "Dark Knight", but that sounded all wrong with the latest Batman.

The compost bin is looking particularly rich at this time of year and its full of all kinds of bugs. I looked in there the other day to find this flower, left over (sorta) from Daddy's party. I think maybe the decomposition process actually made it more beautiful than it was to begin with. I love what's left of the leaves, all vein-y and skeletal.After a couple of significant rain storms, I started getting a little cabin fever an actually went out letterboxing...solo...at this lovely place. It was a great day for a walk, even if I got showered on quite a bit.And I accompanied Mam on a lovely little kindergarten field trip to a local working farm. I think that's another blog post and has nothing to do with my new camera lens, which I didn't bring. I didn't even bring the big camera for that one.

For now, it's Fall at home, at school and on the soccer field. And that'll be just fine for a while...

Mamism #247 Expectations

2009-10-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

Mam: Mamma, next time, put water in my lunchbox!

Me: What? Oh, there was no water in your lunchbox?

Mam: No. Next time put water in there.

Me: Well, Daddy packed your lunch, so you should talk to him about it.

Mam: Oh...well, he did a pretty good job.

Out of the mouths of babes

2009-09-29T17:01:00.000-07:00

Mam had a playdate this afternoon. And, as usual, it was a delightful playdate, producing two happy little girls who didn't really want to part company...and who were now dressed in matching outfits, including matching headbands, just because our guest was wearing that stuff and Mam owned all the same things.

But one of the funnier parts of the afternoon came during lunch. Our guest had noticed that I'm easily distracted by my computer and kept reminding me of things. "Weren't you going to make us lunch?" "Weren't you going to take our picture?" Well, why, yes, I was, but I was distracted by that blinky thing over there.

"Why do you have a computer on your kitchen counter?"

"Um, well, that is kind of strange, isn't it?"

"We have an office."

"Yes, well, so do we, but it's upstairs."

And, I'm a crazy lady who likes to get her e-mail the instant it appears. Because that's oh-so-much more interesting than fixing lunch!

A Happy Birthday

2009-09-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

With life largely revolving around school, soccer and other kid activities, it's sometimes hard to recognize any kind of milestones Daddy and I make ourselves. Then, of course, there's the fact that some milestones are better off ignored. That was Daddy's goal for his 40th birthday...pretend it never happened. As he likes to mention, however, turning 40 (or any milestone age) is better than the alternative.

In my typical fashion, I agonized over whether I should try and throw a party. See, I'm not the greatest party-thrower. I feel a strong need to have everything "just so". It's never "just so", so I get really stressed out and make other people miserable. I'm getting better though and I found that when I'm really motivated...and not out at Starbucks sipping lattes with my friends...I can get a heck of a lot done during the three hours Mam is at school on the weekdays. I chose to have most of the food catered at Whole Foods and managed to keep myself down to cakes, veggies, fruit and cheese...oh, and cheese sandwiches and those little cocktail weiners wrapped in crescent rolls for the kids.

I made Daddy's very favorite cake from a recipe I picked up from Epicurious.com last year. This Lemon Lattice White Chocolate Cake is awesome. I made three batches, with each one being good for a layer of sheet cake and one 9" round. That made for two cakes, but I figured that was O.K. Either we'd need more than just the sheet cake and we'd cut into the round one too, or I'd save it for his real birthday the next day (which happily turned out to be the case).The weather was supposed to be hot, so we had plenty of beer and soda. I picked up a couple big boxes of popsicles for the kids. It didn't turn out to be quite as horrible as advertised, so it was a lovely afternoon in the backyard...and the popsicles were entirely forgotten.That was especially important because I'd flogged Daddy and myself to make up for years of neglect out in the yard. He dug and overhauled while I planted flowers and ornamental cabbages. Many of the guests probably didn't know the difference, but the general lack of child-related garbage and plethora of living plants, with FLOWERS! was a huge improvement.

There was food. There was LOTS of food and I was pleased that I'd lied to the catering guy and told him I only expected 30. I didn't love all the things I'd ordered either, but there was so much, it really didn't matter. I'd spent an entire couple of weeks worrying about plates, utensils, food, guests, balloons, cakes and I managed not to get totally stressed out. I was pretty proud of myself for that alone.

Most importantly, of course, the guest of honor seemed pleased.Good cake, good company, beer. Friends from work came, friends from high school, his dad, my parents, old family friends, most of our neighbors. What more could a dad ask for from a family-themed birthday party? Happy birthday to my awesome husband who proves that some guys really do get better and better as they age.

The neighborly thing to do...

2009-09-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

Know that saying, "Good fences make good neighbors"? Our next door neighbors don't subscribe to that philosophy. They like ivy. As a result, there's lots and lots of ivy (containing plenty of rats' nests) and one old broken down fence between our houses. If we had a dog, it'd be in their yard all the time. It's a bone of contention, as you might imagine. We also have issues with our big old oak tree that overhangs their chimney. None of those things give me warm fuzzy feelings about our neighbors. Neither does the owl box they strapped to their chimney. If any owl decides to take up residence there, it'll be right next to our bedroom and will doubtlessly drive us insane.

Still, as a granola-y kind of girl myself, I understand a lot of our neighbor's motivations, even if they conflict with my own. And Mr. Neighbor is a nice guy who makes a point of organizing the annual block parties and getting to know all the kids. The other weekend, he came over because he wanted to show the kids what he'd found in his backyard. I think perhaps Mrs. Neighbor was not as enthralled as he knew the kids would be and he was pretty excited himself.Mam looks pretty excited, doesn't she? You can't really tell what this is until you see it close up, but this is one of the neatest insects around and I didn't even know that they lived around here.Do we have some cool neighbors, or what?

Lighting and Blue Butterflies

2009-09-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

Well, that's quite a title there, isn't it? It's all about soccer, the Fall sport of choice in our household. Mam is playing for the first time this year since she's finally old enough to be eligible here.

Smunch, of course, is also playing soccer...for his third year in a row. Although there are two full teams of second graders from Smunch's school, he ended up on a team with just two kids from his school, neither of whom are friends, particularly. Most of the kids are from another school entirely. Fortunately, they and their parents seem to be really nice and we're having a good time. At the first practice, they were given their uniforms. I'm always excited to find out what color they are...possibly more excited than Smunch is. This year's jersey:What color is that? Seriously though, if they had to ge the weird pixelated jersey, those are a pretty cool combination of colors. And they've named themselves The Lightning (or Lightening, if you ask the coach's wife to spell it. I think that's a hair product.) Now that I look at it again, I think The Plague might've been an appropriate name.His season is well underway. The Lightning's record is 0-1-1 so far. Smunch seems happy enough with that. For my part, I can barely watch the games. They've become so competitive that I get all tense. And this year one kid is goalie in each quarter. So far, they haven't scored while Smunch has been goalie. Thank goodness...although it'll be interesting to see how he deals with that.Do you think it looks like he's singing "The Wheels on the Bus"? I do. He didn't think that was funny when I pointed it out to him, however.

And then, there are the Blue Butterflies.Do you suppose that's a team of kindergarten girls? How would you ever guess?

Mam is so ridiculously, almost embarrassingly in her element that although her team has played the same two games as Smuch's team, she has scored 11 goals. The Blue Butterflies are so far 2-0-0. Go figure. She's feisty, she knows what she's up to and she's got a big brother who's been dominating her with the soccer ball for at least two years now. Think she's proud of herself?You bet she is. And I'm sure she's just itching to get back out on the field this Saturday too.

During the last game, after she'd scored 4 or 5 goals, her daddy dutifully directed her not to score anymore and to pass the ball to teammates instead. She said "O.K." and ran back out there. The result was hysterical. Her MO was almost unchanged except that when she got to the goal, she stood there and looked around, with no one to pass to. The first time, she tried to pass, but her teammates missed it. After that, she just stood there, inches from the goal, not sure what to do. She scored two or three more times while trying her very best not to. It was painfully funny. Because there's just no stopping this girl. Really.

Summer's Last Gasp

2009-09-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

It's been weeks since I've posted and summer was officially over two days ago. The blog posts are piling up in my head, but that's not a very reliable place to keep them, especially these days.

It was another summer with a bountiful harvest, especially of tomatoes. Early in the season, I lamented that they looked like they had blossom end rot. Some of them did, but even those were salvageable.I love to take pictures of my vegetables just because it somehow makes life seem so colorful and serene...even when it's kind of bland and decidedly not serene at all.

To finish up our summer, we headed out to the ballpark one more time on Labor Day. We got to see the Giants' new pitcher, Brad Penny. We got to see him pretty up close and personal, actually since our seats were about 20 rows up from the bullpen.He's one intimidating-looking dude. The kids came prepared. Although Mam refused to wear her new Giants hat, both of them had insisted on painting their own signs for the event. Not necessarily pretty, but they did the job and how could they be that unattractive with such ethusiastic fans under them?It was a good game. I hadn't wanted to bring Mam because she was predictably pretty annoying. But she was pretty cute for an hour or so. By the end, she only wanted to go home. And home was brought to us by this guy, the Giants' closer, Brian Wilson.We're not always so generous in our praise of Mr. Wilson in our household, but he did a fine job on Labor Day and made the whole trip worthwhile. Thanks, Brian!

I would have loved to take Smunch to see the Giants play the Cubs (one of his other favorite teams) this weekend, but with so many other potential activities and invites, it just wasn't in the cards for us. Maybe next year...

Just Short of a Miracle

2009-09-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday. School has been in session for 2-1/2 weeks now and things are humming along. I even got some contract work. And the Giants are still in the running to make the playoffs this year. That means we're all happy, even if the first colds of the season have already started.

So, today, we went out to breakfast, stopped by the pottery painting store to add Mam's artwork to a platter for her teacher (Yes, already. Her teacher decided to get married in September and then take two weeks off for a honeymoon. Whatever.), then headed home where Smunch patiently bided his time until the Giants' 1:05pm start time for today.

Wait, actually it wasn't so patient because I decided to use that time to teach Smunch how to tie shoes. And we practiced and practiced and practiced. Naturally, the pesky younger sister had to butt in and learn too. And naturally, she was a quicker study than he was. And that was awfully annoying. I succeeded to some degree, but more practicing and coaching is clearly in order.

As soon as Smunch could show me that he could tie a shoe by himself, I let him turn on the game. The TV, as usual, was tuned to PBS. And that's when something miraculous happened. Smunch was distracted from changing the channel by a Nova show about black holes. Not only was he distracted, but he watched an entire 45 minutes of the show. Now, admittedly, it was a pretty darned interesting Nova episode. But there was BASEBALL. He missed a whole 45 minutes of his favorite team playing to learn about physics and space! Oh. My. Gosh.

Fortunately, he's still completely jazzed to go to the game we've got tickets for on Monday...to the point where he says, "I just can't wait 'til Monday" several times a day. But there was a light in that tunnel today, a chink in the baseball armor. He really is interested in other things too. Yay.

The Giant's win today was also just short of a miracle. Gack. They don't do anything the easy way.

Another Year, Another Kindergartner

2009-08-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

Scrolling back through the posts I've written this summer, it's painfully obvious just how busy we were. I try not to write much when there's nothing much going on, but that was rarely the case. This is perhaps the first year both kids will really remember the summer...based on how old they are. I hope they remember it fondly and not as a mishmash of dizzying, but fun experiences.

School started so early this year. It wasn't even late August yet. But then, something had to curb my need for overscheduling, I guess. And I was so excited to see Mam off to kindergarten, with the expectations that she'd be very, very happy there and I'd be happy to have the kids in the same place.

Before the big Wednesday first day of school, Mam had a lemonade social at the kindergarten where she got together with her future classmates and got to meet her new teacher. After all that posing at Disney World, Mam was happy as a clam to pose with her latest princess. Looks familiar, doesn't it?This one, she gets to keep visiting for the rest of the year. And she'll only have to compete for attention with 19 other kids rather than a whole theme park full.

The teachers took all the kids in the classroom to read a story and left the parents out on the playground. Since we were a couple of minutes late, Mam wasn't sure what to make of that, but I got away with escorting her halfway into the classroom...just enough that she could see that she knew other kids in there...and then quickly making my way back out.

Tuesday, I took the kids to my hairdresser for haircuts. Smunch's hair had been cropped so short during the summer, that I just had her tidy it up so it would grow out nicely. Mam, on the other hand, said emphatically that she wanted her hair cropped up to HERE! (with her hand up above her ear). I refused, but she had it cut as short as I was willing to go. I really prefer the long hair, but not the long hair-combing battles, so she gets her way.

Wednesday finally came and I had the kids dressed 'just so' and ready for their first day. Cute clothes, new backpacks, new lunch bags, combed hair, brushed teeth. Mam was excited. Smunch seemed happy, but very slightly apprehensive.The whole family took the short walk to the kindergarten yard, where Mam immediately ran off to play with her friends, including her Sarah who is in her class for the first time this year. After a few minutes, the bell rang and Mam flew past me, "Bye, Mommy!" she waved as she joined the line.So very, very different from her brother. She trotted happily off into the classroom with barely a glance behind her.

We wandered over to the "big kid playground" where Smunch quickly found his line and stood in it, still looking slightly anxious.But it all went away when he met his nice, new teacher. She's quite fabulous, I hear. My interactions with her to date would certainly suggest that's true. Very, very nice with a great reputation.I'm happy about his teacher and about the kids (and parents!) in his class. It's shaping up to be a really good year and in the end, he seemed happy to be off to second grade.Second grade. That used to sound so very old!

And I went off to the Welcome Back Coffee to overvolunteer myself for yet another year. I avoided becoming anyone's room mom, but signed up to help the room mom in both classrooms. I'll be in Mam's room weekly to help out and may be taking both classes to the library from time to time. I'm looking forward to it.

What I didn't realize is that while everything is new and different for the kids, it's really kind of new and different for me too. The volunteering hasn't really kicked into gear yet, so I'm feeling a little adrift in a big sea of parents and kids. All the same friends are still there, but we're all doing different things with different routines than we had last year. I'm hoping that as soon as things firm up a little and I'm getting into the classroom again, I'll feel like I've got a "place" there. Until then, at least my blog is up to date.

It's now Monday and the fourth day of school for both kids. To my great relief, they seem to be getting happier and happier with school. They're both happy to go and happy to stay. I don't know how it could be going better. This is the first year it's actually been easy!

Lazy Days at the Lake

2009-08-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

Well, it's nice to think it could have been lazy days at the lake, but with three kids under the age of 8, lazy is hard to come by.

I had promised myself that I wouldn't try to leave town more than twice this summer. In fact, I even combined our camping trip with our San Diego trip for that express purpose. In the end, of course, it served more to leave time to schedule something else entirely.

After the nostalgia I experienced during our winter trip to Lake Tahoe, I felt the urge to see if I could get my family together for an even more nostalgic summer trip. After all, we didn't spend a lot of time there in the winter when I was a kid. And look, it worked! We even had a big family breakfast at the Old Post Office Cafe.Of course, this added trip was largely squished in there right before the start of school. Aunt Karen and SPENCER! were visiting and my parents joined us too. It took a little doing to find a cabin that we could rent for just three nights, would fit all of us (sort of), had wireless internet (for Daddy) and took dogs (for my parents, who ultimately decided to leave the dog at home.) But I found this little place, in just the neighborhood we were hoping for.It's in the same neighborhood we used to stay in. If you rent the right cabin, you get access to the neighborhood pool and the private pier. This cabin had it all. Turns out it also had a broken internet connection and at least one resident mouse, but I digress.

We arrived just before dinnertime on Thursday, so we had that evening and two full days to spend by the lake, Karen and I trying to relive our childhood, the kids excited by all the possibilities for getting in trouble and my parents just trying to put up with it all. I think Daddy found it relaxing.After a relatively long walk to breakfast on Friday morning, we lazed around the cabin for a little while, then made ourselves a picnic lunch to take to Sugar Pine Point State Park. It was a lovely spot with a historic mansion, a pier, beaches, forest and picnic areas. We never quite made it on the hike we'd intended to take since the rocky beach took up an awful lot of time, but everyone had fun and it was a lovely day. The kids got pretty wet trying to keep their balance while wading in the slippery rocks. We managed to take a short hike out to the "lighthouse", which turned out to be more of a "light beacon" than a lighthouse. I should have taken a picture, just so you could appreciate how unimpressive it was! Still, there were some beautiful views of the lake along the way.The kids and grandpa all jumped in the hot tub out on the deck when we got back to the cabin. All in all, the hot tub was probably one of the most recommendable parts about the cabin, which had sleeping space for 10 people, but not nearly enough living space. And Aunt Karen should probably be recommended for sainthood for being willing to sleep in the loft with the three kids.

On Saturday, we tried to fit in everything we hadn't managed to do on Friday. That meant that, after a brief, but exciting, bear sighting in the street, we had a quick breakfast and zoomed out to the pier to teach the kids how to catch crayfish. Another beautiful day, but it was breezy and kind of cold. Even though we had no intention of going in the water, we wore our swim suits because our next planned stop was a beach north of there.The kids were thrilled by the idea they could catch crayfish just by lowering bacon on a string into the water. They spent a lot of time doing that, with Cassie probably being the most enthralled, as our resident animal lover.The three kids caught 25 crayfish in all. Not a bad catch for a first time. Not being big fans of steamed crayfish, we threw them all back at the end. But before that, see this?This is my family (including me) fishing off the pier. See anything wrong with this? Well, no, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this. Now, a friend of mine recently wrote a blog post espousing the lameness of swim lessons. I was inclined to agree. It seems like neither of my kids have made much progress. But this little incident changed my mind.

You'll notice that everyone's leaning over the side. It's not because anyone's down there. No one is. We're all just scouring the bottom, looking for crayfish. But if you lean too far over, it turns out you fall off. And the water's cold. One particular Smunch discovered that for himself...falling from that height where we're standing, right into the water. And he could swim well enough to get to a pillar and hold on until Daddy jumped in and got him. I, being ever so concerned and helpful, just yelled "Don't forget to get his shoes!" (His Crocs were floating away). According to Daddy, that suggestion was met with "I don't care about my shoes. I care about my life!"

Smunch was rather proud of himself for getting to go swimming in the lake, but said he wouldn't be getting in again at the beach. You can see how well that worked out.We actually missed the beach we'd intended to stop at and ended up at a beach we'd wanted to go to but had decided it was too far away. Oh well. It was lovely and sandy. And how often do you find yourself sitting on a sandy beach with forest and a giant granite mountain behind you?It turned out to be pretty hot sitting on the beach, but too cold for many of us in the water. Daddy went for a little swim, but I wasn't so tempted. The kids waded and dug in the sand. We had a picnic and headed back. We went to the community pool...which was also cold...and got the kids ice cream, while they shivered. Getting ice cream at the snack bar was another childhood favorite of mine and Aunt Karen's. I doubt we were ever quite so cold while we ate it though. All the more reason to jump in the hot tub when we got back!

And that was it. The trip was short and sweet. It was really much too short. It would have been great to have a whole week up there to unwind and let the kids run around the cabin while we all drank margaritas on the deck. Instead, we battled traffic to get back on Sunday...the Sunday before the Wednesday when school started. Aunt Karen and SPENCER! stayed until Tuesday...and then it was another bittersweet goodbye. Good thing we'll be seeing them again at Thanksgiving!

Baseball Why?

2009-08-20T16:36:00.000-07:00

I know. You were probably thinking you'd seen the last of my baseball posts for the year, what with Smunch's baseball camp and a visit to the Tampa Bay Rays. But much like a baseball game, Smunch's love of the sport is kinda endless and his enthusiasm is boundless...as evidenced in this video.I got interested in baseball back in high school. If you give a little thought to why a teenage girl would suddenly develop an interest in baseball, the answer will come to you...quickly, probably. It starts with, there was this guy who liked baseball... And then there were a couple of other guys who liked baseball later in high school and in college. Although I'd largely stopped paying attention to The Game by the time I went to grad school, I still managed to impress one of my Boston University classmates on a school-sponsored trip to Fenway with my general baseball knowledge. But after grad school, I met and married a man who was decidedly NOT a sports fan. No problem. I'd mostly forgotten about baseball anyhow.

But a few years later, a new guy came into my life. And now that he's seven, every one of my blog readers knows that this boy lives and breathes baseball. (Oddly, he's currently out in the backyard spraying plants with water instead of in here watching video replays, but I digress.) And I admit that his unbridled enthusiasm has reignited my own. Funny thing is, Daddy? He's become something of a baseball fan too. Maybe it's just a defensive mechanism. A version of "If you can't beat them..."

We've gradually become a "baseball family". That's something I never thought I'd say in a million years. It never even crossed my mind.But no sooner had we returned from Florida than we were buying tickets to see the Giants play the Reds at AT&T park on Sunday afternoon.

It was Mam's first experience of AT&T Park...which I can say with a little authority, is a beautiful place, as ballparks go...although I have it on good authority that PETCO park, home of the Padres, is also very nice.

We thought it would be nice to have Smunch present her with a little inaugural Giants ballpark gift. And so he did. And it was adorable.On the whole, it's been a bear to have Smunch home this summer. He and Mam fought constantly when they were together. There were enough interesting things to keep them otherwise engaged while we were traveling, but being at home with no camp during the week was really painful. So, it was great to see Smunch being nice to his sister and to see his sister being appreciative and excited about her gift. Yes. It's pink. Of course it is.These days, I look at the sports page first when I pick up the paper in the morning...that is if Smunch hasn't beaten me to it. I'm obsessed with statistics and standings and game scores. I realize, of course, that I have a problem. I don't care. It's not interfering with my duties as a mother. (Yeah, I dropped a note in Smunch's lunchbox today when I picked Mam up at school and yeah, it contained the score of a game being played this morning. What's your point?)

My point is this. If you ever find something that consistently makes your child look like this:Something that makes them want to be nice to their sibling(s), something that not only makes bad behavior evaporate instantly, but can successfully be used as a bribe, or a threat, depending on the situation.

Then run. Run with that as fast and far as you can. Because there is nothing in the world like watching my son watch baseball. He's thrilled, he's riveted,he's cooperative and he doesn't even want to go to the bathroom (oh, wait, that's a minus). But this kid is never happier than when he's at a ballpark. If this enthusiasm for The Game doesn't last, I sure hope it's replaced by something just as awesome.Yeah. Gotta go check some box scores now. Catch you later!

Dregs of Summer, Dregs of Camp

2009-08-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to imply that this week's camps weren't as good as other weeks...only that it was the last week of camps for the summer. Having spent much of the weekend doing laundry from the Florida trip and with the cold I contracted from Smunch coming on strong, I was more than happy to truck the kids off to camp for another week, even though I've vowed not to sign them up for so much next year.

This week, Mam was a Princess Camp. Yes. Princess Camp. What she needed that for after a trip to Disney World, I really don't know. And you might rightly wonder, just what does one do in Princess Camp anyway? Well, I wasn't there, but this much I know. You get your fingernails painted. You get to have someone paint a butterfly on your face.You get to make crowns and hats and color pictures. You meet Jasmine ("But she was just a person dressed up.") You get to listen to princessy music and learn a sashaying, curtsying kind of dance.
You get to do that for just two hours a day. Oh, and I forgot the part about making a castle out of marshmallows. Making it in such a way that you really, really want to eat it, but it's covered in glitter glue and your mom keeps telling you not to.

You might glean that I wasn't a big fan of princess camp. Since it was billed as camp for 3-5-year-olds, it was awfully, awfully cute, but I wasn't particularly impressed with anything they did and not at all impressed with how little time Mam got to spend away from me. Fortunately, she knew four other girls in the class. She had a grand time and it was just on the other side of a Starbucks from where I was dropping Smunch off, so that made it a little more worthwhile.

Smunch, in keeping with his sports camp theme, went to soccer camp this week.Much like baseball camp, it was really hard to tell how much he liked it. He looked good out there and I thought he coach was a nice, really personable guy. And I know that Smunch improved because, check this out:He's going after the ball. He's actually fighting for it instead of letting the other players do that while he runs back to defend the goal. Don't me wrong, he's still a very defensive little Smunch and his aim could use some improvement,but I liked what I saw him doing at the end of the day each day.

Like baseball camp, this one also had a sort of "camper of the day" award, but they called it the MVP award. Smunch was awarded the MVP for his work on Wednesday. I'm way more proud of those little awards than I am of his athletic performance. He's engaged, he's listening and people like him. I love that.

Unlike baseball camp, this camp had a bunch of little extracurricular things the kids could do to earn their team points. There were four teams and on the last day, I learned that Smunch was a member of the Astros. He didn't manage to communicate much about the activities he was supposed to do to earn points...at least not until it came to crazy hair day. And as luck would have it, Daddy and I were out the night before crazy hair day, so I picked up a few things to make it more fun.It was a lot of fun and the Astros won the competition of points...earning them a gold bracelet (really nothing more special than the other kids got, but they made it sound like it was, so it was).

And here was another great success: This is Smunch, having raised his hand and been called on. And he's not hesitating in the least to give an answer. Too bad he seemed to hesitate so much about asking to go to the bathroom. Nothing quite like loading your kid in the car, just to be overpowered by the smell of pee!

Mam took our extra time at the soccer field in stride. She proved to be a power monkey bar maneuverer and was thrilled with any opportunity to play on the playground at the school where the camp was held. Kindergarten can't come too soon.Lastly, I think Smunch has a real future in the film industry. I know I'm his mom and all, but wouldn't this kid be perfect for some Twilight sequel down the road?

Florida Epilogue

2009-08-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

So, we're back. Now the cold Smunch picked up in Florida has arrived home with us. With all of us. It's August and we're all sniffly and coughing. Then again, it's August and it's been rainy all day. Perhaps it's all sort of fitting. Better to be a little under the weather at a time like this than in 90 degree heat with 90 percent humidity.

Our trip from St. Petersburg to Tampa International was eventless. Well...I shouldn't say that. There was a small event in there.First one we'd stopped at since we'd been in Florida..and ostensibly, we only stopped to pick up a paper with a story about the game from the night before. But Daddy thought the coffee at the hotel was vile, so...

And here's the beautiful town of St. Pete on our way out. It really is quite lovely. See all the busy people milling around? Yeah. Me neither. Lovely, but terminally strange as cities go.We made it to the airport with time to spare and although we were told that we'd be late arriving in Dallas, we were early and had to sit on the tarmac for 30 minutes while another plane left from our intended gate. Then we found out our connecting flight was also delayed. We had plenty of time for a decent airport lunch. Turns out, we nearly had time for dinner too. Our flight was delayed two and a half hours and we'd gotten in two hours before it was supposed to leave, so we spent almost 5 hours at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport. Did you know they have Starbucks there? (I digress).

The kids were bored, but all things considered, the waiting wasn't all that bad. Daddy declared DFW a "very nice shopping mall".

We arrived home mid-evening, to all of our relief. Our luggage made it and we called my parents, who were sitting in the cell phone lot, to say we were ready for pickup. They'd driven the mommymobile to be sure everything fit. Only one problem. The battery of said mommymobile had died while they were sitting there. We sat on the curb with our mountain of luggage while they got it jump started.

Smunch had turned into a pint-sized smoking crater by that point, incapable of speaking in a normal voice or putting two words together. Hungry. Tired. Grouchy. Just like me, but hopefully, I hid it better.Mam, in her regular Mammish way, was fine. Cute. Friendly. Happy to be home.We'd planned to go out to dinner, but it's Saturday night in Silicon Valley and Chili's has a half hour wait, another nearby favorite closed at 8...it's now 8:05 (or 11:05 in Tampa). We opted to call ahead for pizza at our favorite place. I love them. When I placed the order, they already knew who it was for. Good to be home.

Our cats had missed us so much that they wouldn't leave us alone. And they needed to let us know what they thought about how well our housesitter had cleaned out their litter box. Litter box. Open suitcase full of clothes. Hmmm... Those slightly damp, disgusting clothes clearly don't smell nearly bad enough. They fixed that.

Welcome back to our real life.

Florida Grand Finale

2009-08-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

I don't know how much it dawned on Smunch that this "family" vacation was designed largely around him. Disney World was about both kids, but we would never have gone there if it wasn't for the Friends convention. I certainly don't think Smunch appreciated our taking time to focus on him and his needs, not until the very last day of our vacation, at least.

On our last day, we said our fond farewells to the folks at Longboat Key and headed north to St. Petersburg. Why? Well because we had a not-so-fancy room booked at the Hampton Inn & Suites there. Why? It's not because St. Pete is a hip and happenin' kind of town. In fact, it was one of the most bizarre cities I think I've ever been to.

There were so few people out and about that Daddy joked it would be a great city in which to film a zombie flick. The people who were out on Friday night in St. Pete's, however, all seemed to have one thing in common. They were all there for the same reason we were...only they advertised it more boldly than we did. They were obviously natives who'd had time to buy the appropriate apparel.

I thought a series of photos would probably describe our night in St. Petersburg better than I could ever do. Starting with our drive in...

And at that moment, I imagine he knew. It was all about him.

Winding Down

2009-08-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

One thing I can say about our stay in Florida before we left Disney is that it never felt like we saw any of the state itself. The conference was almost entirely indoors and Disney, well, that's almost another planet. Does it even qualify as part of Florida? And if you read the last three posts, you'll have noticed the frenetic pace. The posts are paced about the same way each day was.

For the most part, there wasn't anything harried about our visit, but it wasn't exactly slow and restful either. And then we left Orlando and drove a couple of hours through some nasty thunderstorms and traffic to Longboat Key, near Sarasota. Ahhhh! Now that's better!Some family friends of Daddy's live there and since he hadn't seen them in many, many years we went for a visit. What a great idea it was! I might not have thought to come here, but I wouldn't hesitate to go back.

Portions of the key are barely wider than the road that runs down its middle, so there is beach everywhere. And we were delighted to arrive just in time for a delicious dinner and a beautiful sunset on the bayou that serves as their backyard.It was so nice to have great company in someone's home. It's a fantastic house, full of amazing artwork and unbelievably kid-friendly...unbelievable until you know the hostess is a retired kindergarten teacher with four grandkids of her own anyway.

We spent the evening catching up and telling stories, then got up in the morning and our hostess guided us out to the beach where she taught the kids a little about different kinds of shells.There are so many things to recommend the beaches on the west coast of Florida over the beaches on the west coast of the United States. For starters, they're on the Gulf of Mexico, so the water is actually warm and fun to swim in. This particular beach also serves as a sea turtle hatchery. So you can spot little roped-off areas where nests are buried in the sand.How cool is that?

Then there are the shells.If you've walked the beaches in California or points northward, you've probably never found the volume or variety of shells the kids picked up on this beach. And I mean VOLUME. I was a little worried about exceeding the weight limit on our suitcases trying to transport all the shells Mam found completely indispensable. The shell collecting was far less annoying than the confetti collecting at the theme parks, but confetti is a whole lot less cumbersome to carry.When we arrived back at the house, we hosed off and jumped in the pool before lunch. This guy came to visit the pool a short time later. Cool little heron.While daddy and I packed for the very last leg of the trip, the kids had a grand time playing games with our host and hostess in their downstairs room. It's so very refreshing to visit people who take an interest in the kids and don't have kids themselves! Both Smunch and Mam had many kind words for them after we left.Really. Why does it have to be after we leave, kids?

One last photo of daddy with our gracious hosts. Having never met these people I didn't want to take too much advantage of their hospitality, but now I wish we'd been able to stay longer. The visit was much too short, but I guess that leaves everyone hoping to see each other again before too long. And that's a good thing.

Soarin' at Epcot

2009-08-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

Everyone recognizes Epcot, don't they? Something about that big white geodesic ball made it our choice for the last day of theme parks for us. Yet again, we got lost in the parking lot. I'm not going to blame Disney for this one. They tried really hard to make it easy for us. We're just not easy sort of people, it appears. We made it on our second go around.

And then another go around because after we sent the kids through the turnstyles and I had joined them, Daddy's pass suddenly didn't work. And he had to go visit Guest Services. We'd already arrived at the park ridiculously late because we'd wanted to use up some last meal credits and had a sit-down breakfast and then had to pack everything and search our cavernous room for bits we'd left. And Epcot really isn't so close to the Magic Kingdom. So, it was 11 o'clock. What a hassle.

At Disney, everything about your trip is stored on your room key and the Contemporary had done such a fine job of botching our keys that things often ended up in the air, including whether or not we could get into our room or use the elevators to get there. Fortunately, they also screwed up the part where they'd offered to comp half our first night's stay. They comp-ed the whole room for that night. I'll shut up now.

Daddy finally joined us on the park side of the turnstyles and had been granted not only access to the park, but at free FastPass good for any ride at any time. Nice. We had an agenda to go on two rides in particular, which had good reviews - Test Track and Soarin'. Since we already had one FastPass, which was not on our card, but just in our hand, we were able to go get a second one. Daddy got one for Test Track. It wasn't good until 2:30, which meant we'd be at the park longer than planned, but also that we had plenty of time.We started at Space Ship Earth, which is the ride inside the geodesic sphere. It had been described as a trip through the history of invention on the planet. It sounded O.K. Not thrilling, but who goes to Epcot and doesn't take a trip inside the sphere?? So we stood in line for about 20 minutes to get on the ride and it was a lot more fun than I'd thought. Really interesting and educational...and there was a robotic replica of Woz inventing the first personal computer! I almost felt like we'd participated in that bit of history, just by knowing who the guy is. I wouldn't be exaggerating to say I really loved this ride, even if it was hardly a thrill ride. At the end, they had us take a little quiz about what we'd like our future to look like. Mam and I were riding together and did the quiz together. From your answers, they put together a hysterical little video that you can later e-mail to yourself. (Here's Daddy's with Smunch) Awesome! Here are Mam and me in our eco-friendly treehouse where we grow flowers and eat organic foods or something.And here are the kids at the end of the ride playing some sort of shuffleboard-related game where they have to move different types of power around to "feed" a city.Obviously, they didn't stop with the invention theme when they got to present day. There was lots of cool stuff to play with at the end of the ride too.

From there, we went on to see the 3D movie, "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience". It's based on that old cheesy movie about shrinking the kids and even stars Rick Moranis (remember him?). It was fine, but I sort of wish we'd stood in line for something else. One thing I noticed is that the rides at Epcot seem to all have this goofy trait of making riders line up to get into some kind of staging area or briefing area or whatever. It makes each ride take that much longer, which is a bummer when you've got limited time.

We had lunch at "The Land", where they had these pretty decorations to look at. They made for a pretty photo, so I'm posting it even though it's not that interesting.As was often the case, Smunch was bored during much of the waiting for lunch to arrive. Smunch was bored a lot during our visit to Disney and there was just one solution. Baseball.Golly gee. How fortunate that Daddy has this great little app on his iPhone that delivers not only real-time game updates, but videos and highlights too! (Can you smell the sarcasm?) Still, I wonder what we would have done without this. Does he get bored only because he knows it exists?

The highlight of our visit for me was a ride on Soarin'.It was right next to our lunch spot, so we did that next. The idea is that it makes you feel like you're taking a hang glider flight over California.California? That's sort of strange, isn't it? Aren't we in Florida? I hear rumor that the idea for this ride was borrowed from California Adventure at Disneyland. And despite the fact that I think it would have been better to hover over the Everglades and other points of interest in Florida, this ride was AWESOME. It really did feel like you were flying over the state. Not a thrill ride either. Just really, really fun.

By the time we were done, it was time to use our FastPass for Test Track...a ride where they put you (and five of your closest friends) in a car and simulate the road tests (only the thrilling ones) they do at GM before a car is ready for production. Daddy and the kids loved this ride the best.They take the car through heat and cold, test the "handling" around corners and finally take it out to see how fast it can go. You can actually see the speed track in the photo above if you look carefully. It's silver from the bottom.

After that last ride, it was about 3:30 and we needed to get going. I looked a bit longingly at Mission:SPACE because how cool is this building?But we didn't have time to wait in line. We had one set of "snacks" left on our dining plan and treated ourselves to ice cream before the kids both got drenched, yet again, in the big fountain by the ice cream stand.And finally, our adventures at Disney World at a close, we trudged through the heat and humidity back to our car for the trip to Longboat Key to see some of Scott's old family friends...not without a mouse or two on the way out, of course!

The Mad World of Disney

2009-08-03T21:04:00.000-07:00

Fortunately for anyone brave enough to read through my vacation posts, I don't remember a whole lot about everything that happened at the Magic Kingdom. It was a dizzying array of rides, parades, fireworks and photographs...with temperatures in the 90s and the humidity in the same range. It was HOT, folks.

We moved hotels to Disney's Contemporary Resort, which is much closer to the Magic Kingdom than the Animal Kingdom Lodge is. It's just one stop away on the park's free monorail. In fact, the monorail goes right through the center of the hotel. I think that fact alone made it a childhood dream of Daddy's to stay here. Dream achieved.But let's back up. The morning we were to check out of the Animal Kingdom Lodge, the kids were booked to go on a Pirate Cruise around the lagoon. Sounded like a lot of fun, but we were hardly packed. Armed with a map, a GPS and an iPhone, we decided to take the kids to their cruise, then head back to our hotel and pack while they were away...thus defeating the purpose of booking them on a cruise, really.

Thing is, it's really, really hard to navigate Disney World with a map. The exits aren't where you expect them and there are no street names on the signs, just confusing arrows and destinations. We ended up in a backed up line to get into the Magic Kingdom when we were trying to get to the Grand Floridian Resort (not in the Magic Kingdom, but close to it). We did this twice, with the effect of making me near hysterical before we cut across a parking lot and landed on a street leading to the resort. The Floridian is at least as big as the Animal Kingdom Lodge and just finding the marina was a chore. We were often lost and so concerned that they wouldn't make it before launch that I doubt I was using any positive parenting techniques with the kids either.

We finally made it. The boat was just sailing off around the corner, but if Disney does one thing well it's making kids happy. The kids were given their pirate garb and a free ferry out to the first port of call where their pirate brethren were searching for treasure. And we hightailed it back to the hotel and packed as fast as possible, making it back to the Floridian just in time to pick them up. The day was half gone with the pirate cruise, so we stayed at the Floridian for lunch, then decided to beat the heat by heading to Blizzard Beach, a water park with a snow theme. We all had a fantastic time on all the waterslides. The kids could swim well enough not to need rescuing. Daddy and I got a workout heaving tubes and toboggans up long cement staircases. It was an afternoon well spent...even if we didn't use our park tickets that day.

The real fun began when we arrived to check in at the Contemporary. The woman at the desk took forever and then told us our room wasn't ready yet. She couldn't even tell us our room number. The room was an important one. Daddy had booked it specially so we could see the Magic Kingdom and the nightly fireworks from our balcony. But the desk clerk sent us off to our pre-arranged dinner at Chef Mickey's, telling us to come back for our room assignment when we were done.Yes, there were Mickey-shaped raviolis.

I had some reservations about dinner, but it was really fun. I'm not a big fan of people dressed up in big fuzzy costumes, but the kids had such a blast that it didn't really matter. They don't even know who all the classic Disney characters are...at least they didn't, but that didn't matter either. They posed with each one.And Mam fell in love with Minnie Mouse. She was so sad when Minnie abruptly left the room before getting to our table (turns out she'd skipped a room and had to go back), but was thrilled when she finally came back at the end of dessert. Ahh, dessert. Who knew there could be so many mouse-themed items on a tray?We returned to the lobby for another go around with the staff there. They'd given us a second floor room, which was pretty unacceptable considering the reason we'd booked a room there...on the 12th floor. So, they ended up giving us a nice room on the 9th floor for the night. It still had a view of the fireworks and we had a nice time watching them before bed. This room wasn't going to be available the following night, so we were going to have to switch and no more "kingdom view" rooms were available. I was annoyed, but we were promised a very nice room looking the other direction, so I figured I'd suck it up and go to the lounge for fireworks (tough life, huh?).

Despite all the time we spent at the water park, the kids insisted on going in the pool after dinner. See a theme here? Who really needs rides and funny characters when you have pools and water parks? This hotel also had a water slide and Smunch negotiated it without much trouble, but as soon as Mam tried it out, the rushing water at the bottom swept her into the middle of the pool where she panicked and a heroic, alert lifeguard quickly came to her rescue and very politely let me know that they had lifejackets if we'd like to use them. Ugh. The kid can swim. Really. But it's a whole lot more relaxing, it turns out, to be at the pool with the kids in lifejackets. Once Mam got one, Smunch felt the need to have one too, of course.We spent the entire next day at the Magic Kingdom. Did you know they make Mickey Mouse confetti? I didn't either, but apparently they use it a lot at the park and it was impossible to get Mam to go anywhere without picking up at least a dozen shiny pieces of confetti along the way.

The kids finally got their roller coaster in Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Smunch decided it was too fast and too bumpy for him. Mam seemed to enjoy it.They both enjoyed Pirates of the Carribean and the Dumbo ride. We had lunch with the princesses at Cinderella's Castle. Smunch didn't care for it all that much, but Mam had a blast. Snow White is her favorite.We met up with Brian and Jill again for the afternoon where we went on more rides, including It's a Small World, the Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain.We headed back to the hotel a little early, with the idea that Daddy and I had a reservation at the upscale restaurant atop the Contemporary and that the kids had a spot booked at the Neverland Club (daycare) for a few hours. We checked into our new room, which turned out to be the Vice Presidential Suite on the 14th floor. It was far more space than we ever could have needed and the view was all wrong...but it sure was nice. By the last day, we realized we could all take a shower at the same time, in different showers and have one left over. The kids each got a queen bed (in the same room) and each one had a bathroom, one bathroom even included a TV.There was a huge living area and another bedroom on the other side of that with a king-size bed in it. Sweet. It was so very comfortable and quiet. Obviously, we need to get rich so we can afford these things rather than getting them just because someone else screwed up.

Daddy took the kids over to the club while I got ready for dinner. He didn't mention that they had no record of our reservation at the Neverland club until much later...when we realized that both those reservations were for the next night. So, we didn't have dinner reservations either. But figuring that we had the kids appropriately stashed already, we decided to give the restaurant a shot without reservations. It worked out perfectly. We were seated before we'd even gotten the cocktails we'd ordered to pass the time. It was a really nice, if seriously overpriced, dinner. The view from our table, mostly of the Floridian across the lake, was lovely.And the kids had a great time at the Neverland Club with the four other kids who showed up that evening. And it meant that we had nothing pressing on our time the next day. We went past the park on the way back to the hotel and stopped to watch the SpectraMagic parade, which was a lot of fun.Feeling that we hadn't quite done it all, we returned to the Magic Kingdom the next day for a few more rides. We started with waiting to meet Ariel at the Little Mermaid's grotto.I knew Mam would love that. We ran into Alice on the teacups...how appropriate...and the kids got to visit with her for a little while.We also spotted Wendy and Peter Pan when going back to the Pirate gift shop for a souvenir for Smunch.Mam was all about getting autographs on day 2. We left the park in the early afternoon, with plans to visit the other water park, Typhoon Lagoon.It wasn't as fun as the first park and both kids insisted on having life vests...which frustrates the heck out of me after paying for all those darned swimming lessons. We still had a good time once the life vests were on and we stayed for a few hours, then started to leave just as they announced they'd be shutting the park due to impending lightning. Our bus was stuck trying to get out of the parking lot for what felt like forever...especially since we were all wet and the air conditioning was on!

We finally made it back to the hotel, took showers and warmed up before going to dinner, followed by some fun in the arcade for Daddy and Gavinand fireworks from the balcony in the lounge, where the soundtrack was piped in over speakers. Faaancy.Unlike the Animal Kingdom, I was ready to leave the Magic Kingdom. We'd planned to drive down towards Sarasota the next day, but since we failed to use our park passes for one day, we opted for one more day of rides and adventure...Epcot.

Dizzy World

2009-08-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

We left early from the last-night karaoke and dancing shindig at the Friends convention. It would've been fun to stay, but since we'd booked everything long before we knew the agenda for the convention, we had a room booked at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge that night. It took us about an hour to drive from Tampa to our hotel outside Orlando.

The first thing that struck me was just how busy the Animal Kingdom Lodge is. Its gigantic lobby was bustling with people at 9 o'clock at night. This photo was obviously not taken then.Next, the bellman seemed to take us on a long, long journey down a few hallways to our room. The resort is just enormous! So, enormous, in fact, that after going out to play with some night vision goggles at the savannah overlook, we couldn't remember our room number or how to get there and had to stop back by the bell desk and ask. Duh.From the windows along the corridor, I could already see zebras and giraffes roaming around the grounds. This was just what I'd been hoping for. I mean, I don't know if I'll ever get to go on a safari in Africa, but it's fun to pretend at least! It made it super exciting to be there.I sat on the balcony for a while that night. It was fun to watch white shapes in the dark distance and wonder what they must be. Off to the right was a flock of huge white birds roosting by a watering hole. To the left, in the distant trees, I could see huge white branch-like things moving around, but couldn't tell what in the world they might be attached to. Morning cleared everything up.Well...almost everything. I think we were also treated to a rare view of the exotic African bunny wabbit from our window. Hard to know with all those crazy creatures roaming around. After a yummy breakfast, we headed out to Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.We picked up some FastPasses for the jungle rapids ride, then stood in line for the Safari ride. The safari was fun, but kinda silly...and a little disturbing now that I stop to think about it. It's really just a wild animal park and you ride around in a big safari jeep looking at the animals, which was a lot of fun, but they make it needlessly bumpy and included a silly story line about poachers and a bridge that fakes falling apart as you go over...in the fake savannah with real animals.Still, I enjoyed watching the giraffes walk in front of the jeep and the lion and lioness up on their rock (Pride Rock, no doubt). The Tree of Life, the centerpiece of the park, is really pretty remarkable in all the detail on its trunk.Before getting onto the raft ride, we met up with Scott's college buddy Brian, who was best man at our wedding and moved out to Florida shortly after Scott and I got married. There, he met Jill, who accompanied him to meet the strange creatures from California. Neither of them had ever met the kids, so even though they'd been to the park before, they'd never really seen this particular Animal Kingdom exhibit. Jill has a great facility with them, so it made things comfortable and fun. And as a couple of certified Dis-nuts, they had great information and recommendations about the park.By the time lunch rolled around, the clouds were beginning to roll around too. We'd fortunately picked a covered table to eat at. At least the adults thought that was fortunate. Having gotten fairly moist on the jungle rapids ride, the kids weren't content to leave fairly moist alone. Not ones to let a little torrential thunderstorm ruin their fun, they were barely done with lunch before they were gone from sight. All I could hear was Mam squealing over the noise of the rain and thunder.After the rain let up a little, the kids, Scott and Jill decided to give Expedition Everest a shot. It's the only roller coaster at Animal Kingdom. Not being a big fan of such things, I hung out with Brian while they waited in the hour-long line. Just as it was coming up on an hour, the rain started again. Empty cars started heading up the roller coaster. Thunder rumbled. Brian and I took shelter in the gift shop, texting Jill and Scott about their status. Another 15 minutes later, having been at the front of the line, the would-be riders gave up and we all headed for drier ground.

By that time, the soaked children were getting cold. Not that it was cold out, of course, but being soaked to the skin will do that to you. And all the indoor areas were air conditioned, so we instead opted to head back to the hotel and dry off.

It cleared up again, of course, and we got to enjoy more of our savannah view. Brian and Jill joined us for a yummy dinner at the big buffet restaurant downstairs...where I ran into an acquaintance from home. (It's a small world after all, you know.) Later, the kids talked Scott into taking them to the pool, where there was a great little water slide for them to play on. Ahhh...
We only had two nights here and I was sorry to leave, but on to the Magic Kingdom we went...

It's a Trip

2009-08-03T11:00:00.001-07:00

I somehow meant to write this post while we were in Tampa, when everything was fresh in my mind. I couldn't have posted it then...not for less than $10 in internet access fees anyway...but I thought some reflection was in order. Now, you'll all be spared my detailed reflection because it seems like so long ago.

On June 22nd, we left for Tampa, Florida to attend the annual Friends convention. Friends is the short name for the National Association of Young People Who Stutter, so our attendance was mostly for Smunch. It seemed like maybe he was getting old enough to want to meet other people who speak more like he does. We were wrong, but that was our logic.

It also seemed like Florida would be a pretty good place to go. The best man from our wedding lives there as do some old family friends of Daddy's. And Disney World is there. Despite living in relatively close proximity to Disneyland, we've never been there. If you're going to do it, do it big, right? Of course, Florida in late July is hardly recommendable, but what the heck.

We arrived late that night, without any luggage because although we'd barely made our connecting flight in Dallas, our suitcases hadn't made it at all. We stopped at Walgreens for toothbrushes and $2 T-shirts to sleep in, checked into the hotel, ordered a pizza and went to sleep only to be awoken at 3am by the front desk calling to tell us our luggage had arrived. Uh, thanks.

In the morning, we discovered that the outdoors is alive with little lizards and geckos and the trees are all dripping with Spanish moss (pictured at the top). I also learned that epiphytes (air plants) seem to be native to Florida and live in all sorts of trees in the hotel parking lot. Cool.And that's about the extent of the outdoors we saw in Tampa...well, that and a couple of trips to the pool. It was a convention, after all.The rest of the time was spent indoors, at the Embassy Suites at the University of South Florida (USF)......where they have a super fun-to-ride glass elevator.Seriously. Who needs Disney World?

The convention wasn't quite what we'd expected, but in a lot of ways, it was so much more. We were unsure what we'd do with Mam while we were there. You had to be six to join in the kids' activities (didn't matter if you stuttered or not) and she's not quite five and a half yet. Turns out, no one really cared if she joined the other kids or not, so she did. Both days she and Smunch went merrily on their way to their own activities while Daddy and I sat through talks.

There's a significant aspect of "support group" to the Friends organization. And that's good. It is obviously fantastic for a lot of the teenagers there. They have friends who they look forward to meeting up with every year. I'm not sure what it did for Smunch. I'm not even sure what he was doing most of the time...only that he was in a room playing games with a bunch of Speech and Language grad students. Daddy and I, however, learned far more than I ever thought we would.We've done a lot of reading about stuttering. I feel like I know the current thinking on it and I wasn't wrong. Much of what we heard confirmed that we had a clue. But then there was a talk about making your IEP (Individual Education Plan) work for your child. It was done by the Stuttering Program Coordinator from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Joe Donaher and it was absolutely brilliant! I left that talk with a completely new view on IEPs for stuttering and feeling very grateful.

To be honest, I never paid much attention to the goals set in Gavin's IEPs. I knew they were mostly unreasonable and not easy to measure. I didn't care if he never met them. Acheiving a certain percentage of fluency or learning to use certain speech tools (which general work great for about a week and then fail Smunch completely) are totally ridiculous goals for him to have. But goals such as participating in a class play, volunteering answers in class, calling someone on the phone...those are totally appropriate and may help him get over any fears he's got about doing those things. I wish I'd thought of these things earlier. I don't imagine many school-based speech therapists are going to come up with them.

We heard a talk from Dr. Gerald Maguire a member of the Stuttering Research Group at U.C. Irvine and also a person who stutters. He's involved in clinical trials of drugs that may reduce stuttering. I've been following some of his studies for a while now. They're interesting, but far from complete. He talked about the pathways and such involved in stuttering, so it was very educational, even if it wasn't exactly information I could put to work for Smunch right away.

The third memorable session was one where some of the teenagers addressed the parents with things they wish they could have told their parents earlier. There were a lot of tears and it was heartbreaking as well as eye-opening. Being parents of one of the youngest attendees, I felt like we could get a lot of instructional guidance from these young people who struggle so much with their speech, even though Smunch's struggles aren't nearly so severe right now. First and foremost, it turns out, kids don't like to be told to "use your tools" when they're speaking. They just want to be heard without their parents listening to how they're saying it.

That's hard. After several years of going to speech therapy and paying for speech therapy, you really want to make the most of whatever your child is learning there. The therapists tell you to practice at home, to use gentle reminders to use their tools. Obviously, it does a lot more damage to some of these kids than you might expect.

But it's hard. It's hard not to tell Smunch to use his tools (although I've stopped completely since the convention). I really want to hear what he has to say and I don't care if he stutters when he stays it, but sometimes I can't understand him and that's really frustrating for both of us. I hate making him repeat himself. I often try to blame my own inattentiveness when I ask to to say something again. At least half the time, my inattentiveness is the culprit anyway. But not always.

So, that's the story. I don't know that Smunch made any friends. Having his sister there (who did make friends, of course) probably didn't help much with that. I don't know that he identified with these kids who stutter. He knows he's one of them, but in some ways, he's not. he hasn't yet been particularly damaged by his stuttering. He's not made fun of. He raises his hand in class regardless. He's just a kid. A kid who happens to have trouble speaking.But I feel better about everything. I feel like I have some things to work on that don't involve frustrating my son or asking for things he can't deliver. I know the majority of children don't face this kind of issue, but now I also know that there are many children who face far worse issues with their speech. He's going to be O.K.

Now, off to Disney World!

Camping Right Along

2009-07-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

Last week was another week of camps. This time, Smunch was at baseball camp from 9 to 3:30 every day. And it was HOT. And there wasn't a lot of shade. After the first day, I took to sending him with three water bottles. That seemed to do it. As you can see, he was a little guy at camp. This camp was for 7 to 12-year-olds, so he was on the young side and he's always been on the small side for his age. He wasn't the smallest kid there, but he was certainly a shrimp.

It didn't seem to make a big difference. The second day, he wore his Chicago White Sox jersey that his great Uncle Quentin sent him. It has his last name on the back with the number 20 (random number as far as I know). From that day on, you could hear all the other kids talking about Ryder doing this or that. It was cute and it was clear that he'd be accepted, even though he didn't know any of the other boys before the start of camp. Smunch was also named "camper of the day" on Tuesday. He was so thrilled! And I was thrilled for him. Unfortunately, things kind of went downhill from there.

By the end of the week, he wasn't so sure that he liked baseball camp after all. He hated all the warm-up running they had to do each morning. I tried to tell him that running is part of the life of a baseball player. He still says he's going to be a major league baseball player when he grows up. Guess he's going to have to learn to run.

Mam, on the other hand, had a completely different kind of week with an animal-themed camp at her former preschool. She was gone from 9 to 11:30 every day, knew several kids in her class and came home with all kinds of art projects and stories. She got to see a walking stick, a hedgehog and a parrot show. Beyond that, I know very little about what happened. There were no pictures, but hopefully for her, there were lots of great memories.

For me, I spent what little free time I had between getting home from dropping Smunch off and picking up Mam by trying to think about our next big trip and what we needed. Either I'm overthinking things because camping trips are so much work (and we've done a lot of that lately) or I've failed entirely to get it together for this trip. At least we'll be in cities and hotels this time around, so we may be able to make up for all my packing failures. I guess we'll find out!