Downtown

The girls, Esther and I went to a birthday party at the Ranch today. (We all rode the zip line--Evelyn by herself! Amelia & I were tandem, & even Esther took the plunge. It was GREAT!) As we left, we were given some leftover balloons, and tonight after dinner I told the girls a balloon story from when I was little.

I was about six or seven, and I'd gotten the balloon from a school fair. We were still living on the Alameda in the city, and as I got out of the car when we got home, I accidentally let the balloon go. It disappeared into the sky. I was devastated, cried, and couldn't stop thinking about what had happened to my lost balloon.

That night, as I lay in bed mourning my balloon, my parents started playing this song. The stereo was in the dining room directly below the room Jon and I shared, and in retrospect they must have been really cranking the volume (were they down there dancing?? Now doesn't that just bring a smile to my face to imagine! Mom--do you remember this? I really must ask you and Dad about this album--this secular album.)

At the time, I didn't think about how loud the music must have been for me to hear the lyrics so clearly. All I knew was that God had given me a sign. He was telling me where my balloon had gone--downtown. I could imagine it floating through the night sky over the harbor, the Constellation, and Federal Hill. And, finally comforted, I fell asleep to the sounds of Petula Clark. To this day, this song makes me smile.

Enjoy the groovy effects and Petula's adorable way of pulling her (plastic??) collar up to keep out the downtown chill. And BTW, this album pre-dates me by a good couple of years. While I DID have a birthday this week, I was NOT yet born when this song topped the US charts. :)

Since summer is half over...

...I thought I'd put up the summer curtains. I have no idea why I get such a kick out of changing & rearranging our house. (I'm too lazy to look for a "before" picture of our dining room. Basically the curtains were orange, the chair was in the right hand corner and the table had all its leaves and was centered.)

Since we've been slowly re-painting the girls' room, I moved ALL their toys to the basement. But the toys crept up, until the first floor was Barbie World. They were in every room. All the shoeboxes in the house were confiscated for Barbie daybeds, along with most of my dish towels for bedding. (Wish I'd taken a picture of that.)

Then I cracked. I stayed up until 1 am one night last week going nuts putting Barbie World back into the basement, vacuuming, and trying desperately to regain a bit of the order I crave.

Truth is, I love when I can overlook my desire for order and serenity so that Barbie World can coexist with our family for periods of time. I think my tolerance for it has grown, and it makes me smile to see the space beneath the dining room table transformed into a Barbie Palace (though it looks remarkably like a refugee camp.) But I do reach the breaking point, as I did last week.

Since then, there has been so much game-playing--Candyland (I should post Alan's variations for this classic board game), Memory Match, Go Fish, Old Maid, and a new favorite, "Pictureka." The girls even pulled out Twister and took turns being the spinner and the contortionist. We've also done kid-sized puzzles (totally my speed. I have no patience. Puzzles with 1,000 pieces make my eyes glaze over just thinking about them. But we can whip up a 100 piece Disney Princess in no time flat.)

It's going to be a busy rest of the week. The girls are in RVR's day camp again, Alan is teaching at a jazz camp in D.C., and I've got a lot of meetings for work. We are looking forward to being together on Saturday--maybe playing a few games in the (hopefully) still-serene, summer version of our living room.

Positive Peer Pressure

Two weeks ago the girls and I were at RVR for the week. They were in Day Camp, and in the evenings we enjoyed hanging out with some of the Ranch families. The kids would ride scooters and bikes around while parents chatted.

I was talking with one mom, when suddenly I heard Evelyn yelling, "Look, Mom!! I can ride a two-wheeler!!" Sure enough, coached by a fellow six-year-old, she'd done what she'd told Alan and me she would NEVER do. I guess it just took a little positive peer pressure.

The next week I took the girls to a local park here to ride bikes, and figured I'd get some exercise running as they rode. I got exercise all right--and they ended up waiting for me around every bend. Evelyn kept saying "Mommy, are you ok?"

So the positive pressure continues as I get back on the exercise bandwagon!

Where has this song been?!?

I was driving Shelley's car today and THIS song came on the radio. If I had heard this song a year ago, would I have been more or less likely to try to coin its title as a pseudonym for my husband? I don't know. But hearing it gave me a really good laugh. :)



And I liked watching this YouTube video. You gotta love closeups of early 80's cheesy mustaches, and thanks to MY jazzman, I'm an honest-to-goodness fan of a live band. Thank you, Carole King! (I can't wait to find out what Alan thinks of this...)

You Nork

Alan had a meeting in NYC last week for a grant he got through Chamber Music of America (very cool. More on that later.) We used it as an excuse to spend 2 1/2 days visiting Josh & Laura and exploring the Big Apple kid-style.

We love visiting Josh & Laura. If they had a blog I would read it every day, just to see what they are cooking. They get a lot of food out of a local organic grocery's dumpster, tossed just as it reaches its expiration date. They also grow food in buckets in their apartment building's tiny back garden. They drink out of jars, & if you compliment Laura on a piece of clothing, she's likely to laugh and say, "Would you believe I found this on the STREET?!?"

Speaking of streets, our girls walked MILES of city streets last week. They were troopers! Alan researched two amazing playgrounds and a putt putt right on the Hudson River. We revisited "The High Line," a city park created out of an abandoned, raised railroad track. We rode a few city blocks in a cab--a tiny TV screen on the back of the seat in front of us was, of course, a total hit.

While Alan headed to hear some live jazz, I had the splendid idea of taking the girls to see Times Square. I wanted to see their eyes pop like the scene in "Enchanted" when Giselle emerges from the manhole into the city for the first time. Reality was a little different. It was pouring rain. We couldn't even get out of the subway--all the tourists were standing packed like cattle on the stairs. Once on the drizzly street, Amelia had to pee, and we walked to the police station to find that the only accessible restroom was McDonald's. Have you ever been to the McDonald's in Times Square? It's something out of a dark, futuristic movie. Seating runs along dark, brick corridors, where patrons sit on individual bar stools facing wall-mounted TV screens you swipe credit cards to watch. Fortunately, it was so packed and dark no one noticed that we peed w/out patronizing.

So we bought some street vendor soft pretzels and headed back to Josh & Laura's, where they crashed on the floor in about 2 minutes' time. However, it was still fun. And memorable. And we would do it again in a heart beat. Well, maybe not the Times Square in the rain part.

Another First

Monday night was our friend Tim's b-day, so Alan, the girls and I headed over to have dinner at their house w/friends. We had a great time, but when it started getting late and a storm was rolling in, Alan and I decided to hurry home to shut the windows and get the girls in bed. Because I'd come to their house from work, we'd driven separately, and as the raindrops started and the wind howled, Alan and I raced toward our cars. The girls went with Alan, so I ran to my car and headed home.

By the time we drove the one mile home, the rain was blinding and blowing sideways. Alan pulled into the driveway just in front of me, jumped out and ran into the house to start shutting windows. I thought it was wise of him to leave the girls in his car since it was raining so hard. I ran to the house, soaked by the time I got to the front door. I closed all the first floor windows, then grabbed the only umbrella I could find--Disney princess--to get the girls out of the car.

Once at the car, I was horrified to find it empty. My first assumption was that they had gotten out to exult in the storm and were splashing in puddles on the sidewalk or street. I ran frantically up and down our street with my Disney princess umbrella yelling, "GIRLS!!! GIRLS!!! EVELYN!!! AMELIA!!!" to no avail. Then I ran into the house, thinking that somehow they'd made it inside while Alan and I were frantically shutting windows.

"KIDS!!!!! GIRLS!!!!" I screamed over and over, soaked and dripping on the entryway rug. Alan came racing down the stairs and said, "What's wrong? What's all the screaming??"

"Where are the kids?!?"

He stared at me. "They were in your car!"

Then I stared at him. "I thought they were in YOUR car!"

Then Alan looked at his phone. A text from Tim. "Forget something?"

We'd left the girls. As we stared at each other, Alan looked out the front window and said, "Look--it's Sung. He brought them home. They must have loved riding in a car with no car seats!"

Feeling like an idiot, I raced back onto the dark street under my Disney princess umbrella and pressed my face against the front passenger window of Sung's car. But it wasn't Sung's car. I scared the tar out of some woman whose husband happened to come to a stop in front of our house because their windshield wipers weren't working. Trying to cover myself, I yelled over the din of the storm, "ARE YOU GUYS OK?? I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE YOU GUYS WERE OK!" She nodded, smiling weirdly and probably trying to regain control of her heart rate.

So I drove back over to Tim and Diana's. I had no idea just how drenched I was until I walked into their living room and everyone burst out laughing. Except the girls. They were so disappointed that we'd not left them there longer. So much for my worry that it would permanently scar them to recall watching both their parents driving off in the rain as they stood alone on the sidewalk.

Another first. :)

Summer Skating

Grandma and Grandpa Blackman helped make one of Amelia's birthday requests possible--ice skating lessons. I'm actually glad we went for the summer session, as it's been so refreshing to be in that chilly rink for an hour a week during the heat of summer.

The girls have really enjoyed it, and have learned amazingly quickly. They have one lesson left in the session--and now we've got another fun thing to do together! Thank you, Grandma and Grandpa Blackman!

Dreams do come true.

So often life with kids does not turn out exactly like I imagined it would.

Like that home made A-B-C book I started crafting with Evelyn when she was two. I think we got to about G.

Or when I thought I was FINALLY going to potty-train Amelia by taking off her diaper completely. I turned my back for a few seconds, then turned back to find she had pooped. Was she frightened? Taken aback? No. She was delightedly playing in it.

But sometimes it turns out like I'd always hoped it would.

During our nights in a tent at RVR this past week (camping w/kids always offers a nice balance between things that do and do not turn out as one hopes), I decided to begin reading the Chronicles of Narnia aloud to the girls.

They are hooked. It is delicious. I cannot quite express the joy I have when I reach the end of a chapter and they just BEG for another. Tonight Evelyn begged, "just one more WORD!!"

Yes. Dreams do come true. In the midst of a week spent sweaty, stinky, peeing outside in the middle of the night, and sleeping through thunderstorms (they must have been tired, and wow I love my ear plugs and Tylenol PM), there was Narnia by flashlight. Perfect.

A Little Literacy

Diana handed down a children's book to us that has biographical accounts of the childhood of the Bronte siblings (Emily of "Wuthering Heights" and Charlotte of "Jane Eyre" are two of them.) One of the many creative things they did was write their own tiny books (they sewed their bindings with needle and thread...obviously I am not above modernizing the technique.)

So we make tiny books, and honestly, I'm not sure who has more fun. I even wrote one about not picking your nose while eating lunch, which they thought was hilarious. I must soak up this phase. How much longer will my daughters think it is funny that we write tiny books together about the pitfalls of mealtime nose-picking?

Summer Solstice

I know I'm behind...wanted to post a few pictures from the annual one-day-trek-to-the-beach on Summer Solstice. Even though, due to schedules, we had to do it two days after the actual solstice, we still managed to enjoy eight and a half hours of sunlight on the Delaware coast.

Amelia dug herself "a chair," and Evelyn could not get enough of jumping waves (translation: I was holding her and we were going through the waves together. This is definitely a new phase for my inner thrill-seeker. There is nothing like ducking under a big swell as it crashes over your head, hoping your six year old will still be in your arms--and happy--when you surface.)