Ballet in Ballet Class

They did some actual ballet in ballet class today (what a concept) so I thought I would show you all. Elizabeth is still better able to control her body and get it to do what she wants it to, but Miranda still has more "natural" talent for ballet I think. She has a nice arch to her foot, longer arms, slightly more gangly (which is good for ballet) and can bend a lot. (You can see what I am talking about it the second picture. Elizabeth is straining to keep her leg up, but Miranda's leg just goes up freely.) But she is a total spazz and doesn't pay attention. Elizabeth pays so much attention she was running the class today when the kids and the teacher forgot the steps and where everyone should be.

Chess tournament

Parker's little league game was rained out so he is doing a chess tournament instead.

At halftime Parker is at two losses and one win, which happens to be exactly where his buddy Jack is as well. Together they make up team wildwood. Three more matchups to go, and the boys are pumped up.

Lots of Kids

The kids are off school today for parent teacher conferences. So of course, I invited over some kids and now we've got 7 here. With the exception of some girls vs boys nonsense, they all get along pretty well.

Here they are preparing to play hide and seek. They had to decide who was it, so the oldest one, our neighbor and a second grader, had everyone put their feet in and did eenie meenie miny mo.

Miranda

Miranda was a complete delight on our trip to New Orleans. With the exception of a few minutes of screaming when she bit her tongue during the wedding dinner, she was almost perfectly behaved the entire 2 and a half days. She was patient and never complained about all the waiting in lines at the airport, or in New Orleans while we decided what to do. She didn't argue about what we ate and even tried new foods like crawfish and oysters. She was perfectly behaved in all the restaurants. She didn't ask for snacks when we weren't eating. She wasn't shy about hanging out with strange people like Uncle Mike or Aunt Claire. She asked questions during the wedding, but she wasn't loud. She slept when she was suppose to and even slept late one morning. She didn't argue about all the walking we did and we did a lot and she was very appreciative of the fun stuff we did. One day Amy and I took her to a park on the trolley. We saw they had an amusement park in the park so starting walking over there. Miranda got distracted by a neat looking tree and asked to go play on it. She played for a good while, just running around, talking to birds, skipping around and climbing the tree. She was happy to just play by herself. I knew she would be the best kid to take on such a trip but I didn't think it would go as well as it did. It really made me appreciate her so much.

Then we got home.

And everything went back to "normal". She was whining. Arguing with siblings. Complaining about going to the bathroom. Being cranky in the morning. Being a victim to Parker and Elizabeth's taunts. Spilling soup on herself. Saying she was thirsty as soon as we get in the car. And generally being a little shit. It is so frustrating and I wish I better understood what, besides having siblings, causes it all.

In Flight Entertainment

Same Freeway.

Attempt at 10 sign for Peter and Oliver.

New Orleans Day 2

Oyster Breakfast/Lunch




The four brothers

Trolly Car Ride to Park and Walk through Sculpture Garden

Wedding!

Miranda danced for a long time with anyone who was willing.

Purple Pig

Parker wrote his own piano piece recently, and he spent much of the weekend practicing it. I don't know where this came from, or what he was trying to say with it, but I think it's pretty cool that he saw composition as a natural part of his experience the piano. It's evidently a tricky piece to play, because he was never quite able to play it through.

He was very pleased with himself when he finished the composition, and Elizabeth and I encouraged him to give the piece a name. After some short deliberation, he decided on Purple Pig.

Chaos Tower

Parker got the Chaos Tower quite a while ago, and it's seen a lot of use. Recently, it's been neglected to the point where we were thinking of getting rid of it. But I suspected it still had some life left in it, and when I went to go straighten the set out for possible sale, Parker decided it was time to build him some chaos.

2nd cousins

Playing with ducks at dinner.

Of course

So Parker has been keen to get his hands on some chalk so he can mark his Around The World course on our driveway. ATW is a basketball game consisting of increasingly challenging shots in a specific order and Parker spent a while yesterday writing out his ATW course, and then he taped it on the wall of the garage as a reference, which you can see in the shot below.

But today Elizabeth went to a birthday party, and the goodie bag contained a big egg-shaped sidewalk chalk, which she promptly went and gave to Parker so he could mark his course on the ground.

Naturally, he did it in Roman Numerals.

Miranda ready for wedding

Favorite numbers

We were talking about favorite numbers, and Parker said his was 400. When I asked him why he said, "You know how I like music, and music comes on CDs, and also how I like Roman numerals better than regular numbers? Well, 400 in Roman numerals is CD."

Interestingly, I was reading old blog posts the other day and saw another instance where music and numbers collided weirdly in Parker's brain. See for yourself.

New Orleans day 1

Rainy day bowling

Wheel watchers

Chess

So Parker and I started playing chess a few months ago. I don't recall whether I taught him how the pieces moved, or whether he got that from one of his little pals, but he was very much a beginner. To help him learn without it being frustrating or patronizing—i.e. to be able to play real games—I used a method recommended by a friend of mine. For the first game I played with just my king and three pawns, while he had his whole set. Once he beat me with that, I was able to add another piece, a bishop, on our next game. And then I would get a pawn, and then a knight, and so on. He mapped out all of the "levels" he would need to pass before we could play real games, and that sort of thing always motivates him.

We played this way for a long time, and it was really fun for both of us. I always tried my best to win, and forced him to live with the consequences of his mistakes. But he was extremely clueless, and tended to focus on the wrong things. For example, he was obsessed with promoting his pawns, and would build his whole game around promoting pawns while never even bringing out his queen. I kept drilling him on his goal in the game, to get the king, but he was catching on very slowly.

But then it turned out that I was just a crappy teacher, because once he started going to an after school chess class with a bunch of his pals, his game changed dramatically. Something clicked, and he was now focused on all the right things, throwing these multi-pronged assaults on my king which I'd have to scramble to defend with my limited set of pieces. I've never been great at chess, and as we played through the levels, I was basically forced to learn how to play chess, just to avoid the humiliation of getting my ass handed to me by my 7-year old son.

So we made it to the penultimate level last week, where I had everything but my queen, and I was sweating bullets to keep beating him, which I did for 5 or 6 games before I finally succumbed and he took me down. So now he has earned the right to a level playing field with dear old dad.

He immediately challenged me to a full game on Chess With Friends, which was a reward he was clearly looking forward to, and over the last two days we've been playing our first full game. We're approaching the end game now, and I think I'm going to emerge victorious, but it's been a real nail-biter, and I'm only ahead because of a couple of key moves he missed along the way. I'm going to keep fighting the good fight, but I think it's clear that he'll be able to beat me before he finishes first grade, and he'll probably be wiping the floor with me before the summer is over.

There is probably a nice, long German word to describe the mix of pride and shame that I feel about the whole thing.

Chess with Friends

I'm sitting in the dining room. Parker is upstairs. We are playing Chess with friends.

Every few minutes, I hear, "MOVE!" or "HA! I TOOK YOUR ROOK!" or "DANG IT!" or "NICE!"

I haven't won a game with him in ages but this one might be it. Probably not, but we'll see,

He is also playing with Elizabeth and Michael.

Didn't take long.

Parker is composing his first piece today. He started practicing about an hour ago even though he already did this morning. I wasn't really paying attention, but when I came out to his room an hour later, he said, "Look mom, I wrote some piano music." I said, "Cool. Can you play it for me?" He said, "Well...it's kinda tricky, but I'll try."

He wrote something that was too hard for him to play. How funny is that?

New Orleans!

Going to New Orleans tomorrow with Miranda. Cousin Laura, who I have seen no more than 4 times in my whole life, is getting married. Both Parker and Elizabeth have had special trips with Michael so I decided to take Miranda with me. It's a short trip, but I think it will be fun for her. And hopefully me. My parents and brother and sister are also coming so it should be a fun weekend of good eating and hanging out. I think she will particularly enjoy the actual wedding part with the white dress and all the bridesmaids. Hopefully it doesn't give her any ideas though...

Parker's Great Monday

Parker has piano and swim on Mondays.

When his teacher arrived for Piano today, Parker was already playing and he sounded damn good. The teacher stood in the door listening to him play for a while before he knew she was there. She looked at me with quite an expression. They had their lesson (I don't listen anymore) and when I came down at the end, she said he did great. I told her that he practiced a lot this week, sometimes twice a day or just goofing off on the piano trying scales or whatever. She said, "Yup. That's what musicians do."

At swimming, Michael has been working with him on using the locker room on his own. For the fall season he was terrified to go in there so I would change him like a 3 year old with a towel around his waist. The cold air didn't help. We decided that if he was old enough and good enough to be on swim team, he had to be mature enough to use the locker room like all the other kids did. He is still the youngest there I think, but by only a year or so. Today, Michael said he did great and is ready to do it on his own. Parker agreed. Michael also said that he looked great in the pool choosing to go first in the lane rather than last. He is much more confident after just a few lessons with the coach and a few months time. I was really impressed to hear all of it.

Superman!

Yesterday, on the day that the time changed, we were done with dinner at 6 but the kids weren't tired and we didn't feel like entertaining them anymore. So I suggested we all watch Superman. Parker and the girls talk about super heros a lot, but short of a few lame books, they really had no idea what they really were. They all seemed interested in the idea so we put it on.

We had forgot how much plot there is in Superman and how long it takes for really anything to happen. Lots of talk on the planet of Krypton, too much Marlon Brando, lot of him growing up in Kansas or wherever. We would pause it every few minutes to explain what was going on. They asked a ton of questions like 'Does he know he's superman when he is a little baby?" but the ones that really cracked us up were when Parker got concerned about the three bad guys that are prisoned in the glass at the beginning of the movie.

A few minutes after the planet exploded, Parker asked, "Did everyone on the planet die?" We said, Yes. Then he said, "but what about the bad guys in the glass?" No, we said, they were in space.

Then later on, he asked if they could escape from that glass. We said Yes.

Then he said, "Mom, if they do escape from the glass in another Superman movie (we had already suggested there were other movies), do you think Superman would get involved and help?"

We did were actually quite impressed with his questions considering we didn't give him much other info. It was very forward thinking.

He was more nervous about the scary parts than the girls, needing to hold my hands when the helicopter was crashing. He was too tired to watch the whole thing but said that we wanted to watch more of it today.

More Horse Back Riding

Miranda did her second horse back riding class today. She had the best grin on her face the whole time.

Last Long Run

I'm doing my first marathon in two weeks and today was my last long run run (I have to do 8 next week in new orleans but 8 miles is no longer considered a long run, crazily.) I usually do flat long runs because...well...I hate running and I hate hills, but today I wanted to do hills so that when it comes time to do them on race day I wouldn't be scared. I did them (part of the actual marathon course) last Sunday for the 20 mile run and again this wednesday for a 9 mile run but wanted one more try at them for the 12 mile run. Luckily my running pal Sara was game (she is game for anything really) so we left at 6:30 which was really 5:30 due to the time change. It was light by the time we got to Lake Temescal and for the first 6 miles it was pretty much all up hill with a tiny bit of flat and downhill thrown in to help us.

Amazingly, I did just fine...even better than Sunday or Wednesday and feel much more confident about race day.

After the up hill, it was pretty much all downhill back which was nice and almost made you forget about the uphill. Almost.

After all these long runs I always feel slightly fluish and I lay around under covers recovering. Also, I'm typically in desperate need of a giant burger. But today there was no time for burgers or lying around. I took Parker to a swim lesson (one of his swim team coaches is giving him a little one on one attention and it's really helping him) and then went back to get the girls to take them all to Lawrence Hall of Science where we met up with Zoe and her family. The kids can never get enough of that place.

So now I'm starving and ready to crawl under the covers...two weeks from now at this time, it will all be over and I can't wait!

Two Parker Tidbits

The kids wanted Frozen Yogurt today. Michael and I have been trying to be better about spending money for random un-planned nonsense so I told them I didn't have any money. They suggested they use theirs (they each have a stash of coins that they either earned or found around the house). I told them to count their money (Parker helped) and then we determined they each had enough to buy some.

So we went to the frozen yogurt place. It's the kind that you serve yourself and put your own toppings on it. I'm always very conservative with amounts at these places despite the giants bowls you get to use. Today I noticed a sign that said $.39 per ounce. So I showed Parker the sign and told him that was gonna be how he could figure out how much yogurt he could afford. "For example," I said, "If you wanted to buy a pound of yogurt, you would need to multiply .39 by 16 right?" Yup, he confirmed. Then about 4 seconds later he said, "I guess I can't get that much since I don't have $6.24." Seriously.


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I finally got Parker to watch a movie. Not an episode of something. Not a few minutes of a movie. But a whole movie from start to finish. With no snacks or bribes of any kind. I would consider this a major miracle except that the movie was "Searching for Bobby Fischer."

Tag

Elizabeth played tag with about ten kindergartener and first grade boys after school today.

She could out run them all.

Except her brother.

More musical commentary

Parker, while writing out the music to one of his pieces says to himself,

"Why do I never think about A sharp?"

Crying Wolf

Elizabeth: Mom can we go to the library and get the book "A boy who cried wolf?"

Me: Sure. Did you read that at school?

Elizabeth: No.

Me: Who was talking about it with you?

Elizabeth: No one.

Me: Why did you think of getting it?

Elizabeth: It just popped into my head and I think it would be a good idea.

Music Talk

Elizabeth: Are there any other notes except for Treble clef?

Parker: Yeah, there is base clef.

Elizabeth: What are those?

Parker: They are the ones that tell you it isn't Treble clef.

Things I found around the house this morning.

What do you think the ducks are looking at?


I like the little guys and big bug protecting the house.


This one is just disturbing.

A "typical" weekend.

For the last few months we've been good about not doing much on the weekend. That has ended. Here is what we did this weekend.

Saturday morning Parker had opening ceremony for little league. His was informal but nice with all the kid wearing the uniforms and running through this balloon arch. They even got a big leaguer (who coincidently runs a pitching clinic) to speak. Donut holes and bagels made it bearable for the girls.

Then the girls had ballet class. I stayed the whole time to see what, if any, actual ballet they would do. There wasn't much, but they did do some plies at the bar. The girls (all of them) are total spazzy and there appears to be no actual talent in the bunch. Elizabeth seems to be the most able to tell her body what to do, but she goofs off a lot and acts like a class clown at times too.

After ballet, Parker had his Certificate of Merit test for piano. It ended up being about an hour and a half and we don't get the results before Tuesday. Parker said he did well, but who knows.

Then we all went to the amusement park shown in the previous post.

This morning, I got up with the kids and got ready for my longest run to date (20 miles). I left about 7 and the kids hung out until they had to go out to get a present for friend's party today. They made cards and with Michaels' help wrapped it.

I returned hours later and then took the girls to the party. While they were there, I went shopping for some much needed staples like milk and cheese and starbursts. Then back to pick them up and home again. (The mom at the party, who is a friend, said, "I was super careful to make sure that their party favor bags had the exact same items in them so they wouldn't fight about it" but in reality Elizabeth got a ring that Miranda did not and it was noticed in about 3 seconds.)

Michael and Parker had just returned from a coaches and kids baseball clinic (Michael is the assistant coach for Parker's team.)

Then I collapsed in my bed, but soon enough Miranda and Parker were both in there with me; Parker demanding I play him words with friends and Miranda requiring my assistance getting dressed. (She likes to have "company.")

Michael, thank the lord, made dinner, then took the kids to ice cream since they all requested it using their saved up poker chips. Elizabeth threw a little fit when she found out Miranda was coming to, but it ended quickly and they left me alone. Normally I would do the dishes so that when Michael gets home he can just put them to bed, but I'm pooped and can barely muster the energy to sit here typing let alone do dishes. Michael, who has done two marathons, understands this and has generously given me the night off.

Carnie fun

Yesterday Parker has his piano certificate of merit test. We don't actually know how he did (hopefully fine), but we decided to celebrate the effort by going to this side of the freeway pop up amusement park off 880. It has popped up from time to time over the years, but we've never gone. We told the kids we were going on an adventure and to keep an eye out for 'fun things to do'. Parker brought his binoculars and they all kept seeing stuff saying, "we could go there" or "how about that". Then we saw the giant ferris wheel and the kids were thrilled. After a full day of rides and eating crap, Parker exclaimed, "That was the best adventure ever!"

Getting Cocky

Parker: Mom, you wanna play chess?

Me: Sure, go set it up.

Parker: I'll play without the queen.

Me (to myself): Fuck you, kid.

With a few minutes between piano lesson and swim team, Parker works on his roman numeral scroll