Skipping Town

Last weekend, we went to NH for my birthday--our last trip of the season, which meant we had to say goodbye until next May. Usually we get to go once more in November, but this year we can't. We were all very sad to leave. It was a quick trip--Friday night through Sunday late afternoon--but worth it, as it always is. I love being up there in the fall--this October trip always feels so moody and final. It's not a place that's all that welcoming for outsiders once the weather drops, and there's the feeling of being ushered out, we who don't really belong there, we who won't be around when the snow piles up around the barn. It's time to leave the house, and the woods, to the ghosts--whose presence we both feel strongly, especially once summer draws to a close. It was not only cold this weekend but rainy, but we managed to squeeze in the things we love. Saturday, we went to our favorite farm to pick pumpkins and run through the corn maze. We celebrated my bi...

Halloween 2016 was a great success. The chosen costume for both girls this year: spies. They wore black pants, black shirts, black vests, black boots, and black hats, and each had a black bag full of "spy tools": flashlight, red-dot laser, rope, calculator, old cell phone, notebook, pen. (Neither girl would wear the hat for her school Halloween parade, which made them look more like New Yorkers than spies.) For trick-or-treating, they added night-vision spy goggles I'd gotten them--blue-lens glasses with little lights at either side. The day was packed very very full. First, Greta's parade at preschool. Next, Lucia's parade at school. Then trick-or-treating at the shops in the village. A quick dinner at home, then trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. The girls had so much fun. What a change from two years ago, when we barely managed to do all the houses on our street--this year, they would have gone on and on. (Last year, of course, we didn't trick-or-...

Baby Grets, Happy happy birthday!! Five is HUGE. A game changer. You've already changed so much in the past couple of months, and so much more will come this year. Though no one can match the birthday excitement of your sister, you were pretty excited about your big day. I had balloons for you in the morning, and you opened two presents--a Pusheen plush eating a donut, and an Applejack Equestria Girl. You requested chocolate croissants for breakfast (Pillsbury croissants baked with chocolate hazlenut spread). Then you went off to school, where the kids sang Happy Birthday and shared the treat you brought in--vampire donuts. After school, you had a playdate here with a friend whose parents needed some last-minute help. (A hilarious comment I overheard you make as you showed her around your room: "Would you like to see some of my magical things from Disney World?") When Lucia got home, you finally got to open the rest of your presents. You were thrilled with them all,...

One of my least favorite things is when Andrew is away for the weekend. Being alone with the kids during the week has gotten easier--we're so busy with school and activities--but the weekends just feel so isolating. Sigh. Fortunately, Lucia and Greta had lots and lots of things to do today, and we were busy all day long as they played with gifts from yesterday's birthday celebration. Both of them are wild about the Legos we bought at the Lego Store, and we spent most of today working on their sets. Lucia is so good at it--has been for a while but it's always fun to watch her build. The set she chose is the biggest and most challenging she's had yet, and she didn't come anywhere close to finishing it. It's a multi-day set for sure. She loved building it and she also loved just playing with the little characters that came with it. Greta is starting to come into her own with Lego building too--today she worked on the Friends hot dog stand, and she was doing it on...

Dear Lucia, Happy happy 7th birthday, little love. You were so excited about your birthday this year. Every year you're excited--but more so this year than any other so far. You couldn't wait to turn seven (and have stated definitively that you now, in fact, feel seven). You counted down the days till your birthday for weeks; and you were just beside yourself with excitement as the big day approached. So much excitement is adorable, and touching--but it also puts a lot of pressure on me, as your mother, to make sure you have a day that lives up to your expectations. When I remarked to your daddy this week that I was feeling overwhelmed with birthday preparations in the midst of an already crazy week, he suggested I cut some things out--like not bother getting you helium balloons to greet you in the morning, which you had specifically requested. Would you have withered in despair without balloons? No. But I went to the Dollar Tree at 9pm last night to get them anyway. And ...

Ah, fall in New Hampshire. We love coming up here so much in the summer, and usually only make it once or twice in the fall, but somehow our fall visits are among my favorites. We still get outside, but not as much in the cold and damp, so we spend much of the days just here inside, the four of us, enjoying the quiet and stillness. Well, Andrew and I enjoy the quiet and stillness. The girls keep themselves as busy as anywhere else. A rundown of our days so far: Friday, Sept. 30 We drove to NH after Lucia got home from school--a long, endless drive with lots of traffic. Saturday, Oct. 1 L&G started off our weekend with their go-to NH activity: playing doctor with antique kitchen gadgets. Then on to hide and seek. We also played Candyland and Memory. Wary of a rainy weekend, we seized the afternoon to go apple picking at our favorite spot, Riverview Farm. We picked apples, went on a hayride through the orchard and blueberry fields, ate maple ice cream, took pictures by pu...

There were no tears from Greta on the first day of pre-K! As I said in my last post, I really thought it could go either way--no tears or big tears. But she was excited to go, and joined the children in the pre-K line with nary a backward glance. And it's been like that all week. She's talking about new friends, the pre-K kindness cheer, and center time. At the end of the day, she plays on the hill outside the school with her friends. There's something about the pre-K teachers that's truly magic. Even after just one week, I see a change in the little miss. This makes me happy....and sad. She's my baby! One of the things I've had to talk to L&G about a lot lately is tone. From school and YouTube videos, they'd picked up "Duh!" with its attendant insolence and eye-rolling. I explained that saying "duh" isn't polite, that it is, in fact, rude, and they took it to heart. If they slip, they theatrically clap their hands over the...

We made it through the first week of the school year. Lucia has settled into first grade with nary a blip. She seems very happy. She was also very happy for the weekend, when she and Greta could just stay home and play. All weekend they played with Shopkins, ponies, and Magna Tiles. Lucia also requested we do a craft: she wanted to make homes for her toys. So we made a few box-homes with wallpaper and carpet scraps. We did have some disruption on Saturday because we're doing a facelift of our bedroom, and the workers were in our house all day replacing the windows in our bedroom and my office. Tomorrow, they'll paint. We're trying to find wallpaper for one wall of the bedroom but have so far failed to find anything we like. This is proving to be difficult. But the new windows look amazing. Today I went to yoga and then we just stayed home and relaxed. Andrew made fried chicken for dinner--our summer favorite, made in a cast-iron skillet on the grill. We're gearing u...

Lucia was so excited about starting first grade. Without all the unknowns of last year, she was a little freer to just enjoy the excitement of beginning a new school year. We all walked to the bus stop, and then, once she was on the bus, we drove to school to meet her. We got to see her classroom and meet her new teacher. She has a few friends in the class, which is great. She was a teeny bit sad when we left, saying she'd miss us, but she got off the bus at the end of the day happy. She told us she knows she's in real school now because there's no rest time and no play time. Just work. I had to go to Target yet again after bedtime for still more school supplies. I don't even know how many times I've been to Target over the past week. I threatened to just buy a tent and set it up in the parking lot. Sigh.

Last day of summer. We spent the day close to home, and made a trip to Pier One to buy new bedroom furniture. Fall brings two home renovation projects: a small renovation of our bedroom, with new windows, paint, furniture, and carpet; plus a larger renovation of our basement, involving a full demo and brand-new everything, including a bathroom and laundry room. Nothing will be as disruptive as our kitchen renovation, so we're excited to get these started. Otherwise, the girls just played. Last day of summer. By evening, Lucia was jumping up and down with excitement about starting first grade. I'm very glad I did this (more or less) daily blog this summer. In June, the summer seemed like it stretched ahead endlessly--the first couple of days really threw me for a loop, with both kids home all day, and no time to myself at all. But we hit our stride as the days went on (though I never did get any time to myself). The first half of the summer was somewhat of a trial, with lots...

We continued our Ocean City makeup weekend by taking a day trip today to Storm King Art Center, something I've been wanting to do for ages. It's about an hour and fifteen minutes away, an easy drive, and so worth it. We had a great time. Storm King is a sprawling sculpture park, 500 acres, with gigantic sculptures by Calder, Serra, Maya Lin, and many many more. It's a beautiful place, and walking through the enormous fields, with sculptures towering overhead, was stunning. We'd brought lunch and had a picnic under some trees. L&G had a lot of fun too, not least because I'd let them each bring a small purse with four ponies. The ponies came out to play whenever we stopped to take a break. A highlight for all of us was Maya Lin's Storm King Wavefield. We climbed along and over and down the grassy waves, feeling much higher up than we actually were. We walked around for well over two hours and had just hopped on a tram to head toward the parking area when L...

To assuage our disappointment over canceling our Ocean City trip, we planned a fun city excursion for Saturday. We drove in and went to the New Museum to see "The Keeper," an exhibition I've been wanting to see. I thought the girls might like it, since it's about collections and collecting, and I'd seen a writeup in the Times that there was a family event on Saturday morning--a teddy-bear-decorating workshop to complement the centerpiece of the exhibition, a collection of vintage photographs that all contained a teddy bear. L&G were thrilled when they were each handed a small white teddy bear when we got to the museum's workshop area, where tables full of art supplies had been set up, along with hot glue guns. They worked for a long time making things for their bears, less interested in making clothes and hats and more focused on making accessories--which I guess is no surprise. Bears complete, we headed down a few floors to the exhibition, which was pre...

Tues. 8/30 & Wed. 8/31 These days have kind of blurred together. There was more swimming at the pool on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the girls and I went to the zoo for our final trip of the summer. We had a lot of fun doing all our favorite zoo things--riding the zoo train, feeding birds in the aviary, riding the carousel. I definitely felt some end-of-summer melancholy. We went swimming later on Wednesday afternoon. However, an hour into swimming, Lucia began complaining that her ear hurt--we headed home, and her pain quickly escalated until she was sobbing. Fortunately, it was walk-in hours for our pediatric practice, so after changing out of our swimsuits we rushed over for a checkup. It turned out to be nothing--just a tiny inflammation that a dose of Motrin seemed to take care of. Poor Lucia, though--she's not a complainer, so I really thought this was going to be a raging ear infection. Thurs. 9/1 Thursday we had a regular day at home. We also went to Target,...

Back home. L&G seemed happy to be here and began playing with all their ponies and Shopkins in earnest the second they woke up. Late in the morning, we went to the library and got out a zillion books--probably our last summer library trip. I've loved this part of our summer--our regular weekly library visit. In years past, it was difficult to take them to the library. For one thing, when we first moved here, when they were very very little, I stubbornly held onto the idea that I should walk to the library, which meant pushing two kids plus a bunch of books up the hill in a double stroller to get home on a blisteringly hot summer day. (What folly: this is why we have cars in suburbia.) Second, there were diaper changes to consider. And nursing. And then potty training. How, how, did I ever leave the house at all???? You couldn't pay me to go back to all that. Anyhoo, then there was a stage where one or both would throw some kind of fit in the library, or run wild. Sigh. ...

Sat., 8/27 Since this was our last visit to NH this summer, we made our annual trip to the recycling center to deliver all the recycling we'd been saving up over the past few months. Of course we couldn't escape NH without an injury: Andrew cut his finger as he grabbed a bag of glass bottles. It looked terrible, but he didn't think it needed stitches, so we went on with our day. Next we went to Walmart so L&G could pick out their reading rewards--Lucia's been doing daily reading practice plus journal entries, and though going to Walmart is never fun, the girls were so excited. Greta chose a blind bag pony--Sapphire Shores--and blind bag Happy Places Shopkins. Lucia chose a blind bag Happy Places Shopkins and a regular blind bag Shopkins. The Happy Places Shopkins are ridiculously cute--and tinier than anything else the girls have. That's saying a lot. Each set comes with two regular-size Shopkins plus a miniscule accessory: a Shopkins bank plus a miniscule S...

Thurs., 8/25 We did something new-to-us yesterday--traveled an hour and a half to Lake Winniepesake to meet some of Andrew and Katherine's college friends for lunch and some lake fun. It was such a nice place--we had lunch at a restaurant right on the lake called Town Dock, then went to a public beach, where there was a lovely swimming area. Sandy bottom, no sludge, crystal clear water, waist-high for the kids at the deepest point. L&G had of course brought Equestria Girls, but they actually played with real kids too--two of the kids there were little girls age four and six, and the four-year-old had brought a big bag of My Little Ponies as well as an Equestria Girl of her own. It was a beautiful lake. Definitely a place to return to. We got home around 6:30pm and went immediately to our cousins' house for cocktails. I was worried about the kids being a tired mess--but they had so much fun. Our cousins brought out some toys they'd saved from their own kids' chil...

Lost some days in here but I'll try to recap the past few. Sat., 8/20 Did a preschool cleanup in the morning, then went to a rummage sale, then spent a lot of time losing my mind over the sheer intractable mess that was our house in preparation for a weeklong trip away, during which time the cleaners would come, so the house had to be both vacation-clean and cleaners-coming-tidied. Not fun. I gave the girls their first week's reading-practice prize--a blind bag pony and blind bag Shopkin. Lucia's been doing great with her daily reading practice, and as everyone knows I like to buy the girls their favorite tiny things, so the reading-practice incentive is win-win for all of us. In the evening, Katherine, Patrick, and Thomas arrived, to much excitement. L&G had been eagerly awaiting their arrival all day. A whirlwind of Shopkins and pony introductions ensued. Sun., 8/21 Katherine and I went to yoga first thing in the morning, and then we packed up the cars and...

The past few days, L&G have really just been happy to be home. All they've wanted to do is play with their stuff--all their stuff. All together, all at once, creating by the end of day a huge, house-size soup of stuff. Shopkins, ponies, animal figurines, play food, Equestria Girls, Playmobil food, Legos, kinetic sand, Beanie Boos. It's been blazing hot, but they haven't even asked to go to the pool. They just want to stay inside and play. We did go to the library twice so far, getting stacks of books. Today we read together nearly all day. We've found a new series called Never Girls, which is really cute and has totally captivated them. (Hence our two-days-in-a-row library visits. We read #1 straight through and had to go back for more in the series.) I'll miss our regular library trips once school begins. With school just a few weeks away, I've set up a reading challenge for Lucia--if she reads out loud every day (about 20 mins), she gets a sticker on a...

Beach week! We spent last week in North Myrtle Beach, all together in our cousin's beach condo: Andrew, the girls, and I, plus Molly, Luca, and Mom and Dad. None of us had been to North Myrtle before, and there was so much to do. We spent almost every morning at the beach, and then did some swimming in one of the condo's pools. We took a few excursions as well, and had some delicious restaurant meals. Here are a few highlights: --All three kids learned how to use a boogie board. Lucia, the eldest, was the most proficient, and she was beyond excited at her new skill. She said it was her favorite thing about the trip. --We visited the Alligator Adventure animal park, which was surprisingly fun--tons and tons of huge alligators, plus lots of other somewhat terrifying creatures. We watched a reptile show, and all the kids touched a skink. And learned the word "skink." The admission price included a second visit for free, so we went back to watch an alligator feeding--...

Friday's another one of those days that I remember little about, even though it was yesterday. I know the girls played a lot and made a gigantic mess of games and ponies and Shopkins. And Andrew and I got a babysitter in the evening and went out to dinner with friends. We also met with a contractor and then an architect about our basement renovation. It's moving ahead nicely. Today the girls slept in till 8:30am. They played for a while and then Lucia had a birthday pool party to go to over lunchtime. While she was gone, Andrew, Greta, and I went to the basement to start a massive cleanout. Greta was immersed in playing with pony stuff while Andrew and I tackled the scary area behind the refrigerator, plus the root cellar. We threw away a lot and sold a lot. We packed up all the stuff we're keeping and moved it to the attic. We made great progress and kept working even after I picked up Lucia. L&G were in a mood of happy cooperative playing, and they basically were on...

Today I took the girls for a walk on the Fairy Trail in the local nature reservation, a lovely adventure that was recently written up in the New York Times. It'd been on my to-do list all summer, so today the girls chose it over the zoo, and off we went. And it was pretty thrilling to start walking along the trail and spot the fairy houses--L&G were so excited each time they saw one. They stopped after a while to make their own fairy things--a campfire from a ring of stones and flame-colored leaves was the highlight. The reservation is beautiful, and we were having an extremely pleasant stroll. But then the stroll started going on and on and on, and I knew approximately how long it was supposed to be, and this was much much longer. And we were no longer passing other people. And there were no more trail markers, or fairy houses. We were lost in the woods--on a trail, yes, but not the right one. Fortunately, L&G were game for hiking and hiking, and eventually we made our...

Monday was a rainy rainy day. Right now, as I write this, it's only Wednesday, but for the life of me I can't remember even one detail about Monday. Not one. Was I even here??? Tuesday started off on an unfortunate note. In search of some packing material, I went down to the basement like I've been doing for the past four years, la la la, just going down to our basement, not even thinking about it, not scared, not even of the scary root cellar, and then, when I turned around to go out of the raw-storage area, I saw A ROACH by the refrigerator. It was the largest roach I've ever seen, and I've seen my share. My reaction was not in my control (see: phobia born of two nights amid roach-covered walls in Juarez, circa 1997). The next thing I knew I was in the kitchen, screaming and sobbing and hyperventilating, not even able to verbalize to Andrew what I'd seen. When I managed to rasp out roach to Andrew, he went downstairs...but found nothing. And had the gall to ...

Friday 7/29 Andrew worked from home and took the girls to the pool in the afternoon while I grocery shopped. Cheeseburgers and zuccini on the grill for dinner. Saturday 7/30 A big day for us. In the morning, we went to a local Volvo dealership to test-drive Andrew's desired car, the XC90. It's a three-row car, much larger than our small wagon, and it's been clear for a while now that it's time for us to upgrade. So we test drove it and then L&G occupied themselves in the car dealership's kid-friendly waiting area (TV! Balloons brought to them! Snacks!) while we suffered through the ridiculous charade that is buying a new car. End result: we bought one. It's the third car of our marriage, and the first brand-new one. I hope we like it!! L&G were freaking out during the test drive, beside themselves with excited proclamations of how much they loved the car, how we HAD to buy it, how they loved the white color (we're not getting white), how they...

Thursday was, yet again, a good day. I think we've reached a kind of turning point with little miss Greta. She's been pleasant and amenable to doing things like, you know, getting dressed and putting on shoes, with no wild whining that brings our day screeching to a halt. So, good. Maybe the whole Pinkie Pie Sweet Shoppe debacle will have led to something good in the end. We didn't do too much Thursday morning, just hung out at home. Lots of playing with ponies, Shopkins, and Legos. In the afternoon, one of Lucia's friends came over for a playdate. Lucia had been soooo excited, and they all had fun. Some iPad time, leftovers for dinner, lots of reading (Princess in Black, Francine Poulet and the Ghost Raccoon, Stella Batts: Superstar), and we'll call it a day. One thing I forgot about Wednesday. At one point during the day, L&G were happily playing downstairs in the basement with a bunch of toys they'd carried downstairs. I was in the kitchen, online...

Wednesday was a nice day, all around. The cleaners were here, which meant we had to be out of the house for most of the morning, so I took L&G to the mall with me to return some shirts I'd bought and no longer needed thanks to my super-deals at Gabe's last week. They were pleasant and happy at the mall and even tried on some rash guards, which I was hoping to find for our beach trip in August (no luck). There was no whining, no bickering, no silliness. We even went to Bath & Body Works and I sprayed the girls with their choices of body splash. (I'd gone there with the hope of finding some Sun-Ripened Raspberry products, which I'd heard they were bringing back--but alas, they brought back that scent only for June.) When we got home, we had lunch and quiet time. A note on quiet time: it became clear early in the summer that the quiet time we've had all these years to this point--just playing in their rooms--was no longer going to work. The reasons are many. ...

Monday, it was back to normal here in New Jersey. Andrew went to work, and the girls and I had our day. It was a surprisingly good day all around. No fighting, no whining. We went to the library, had lunch, then went to the pool for a little while before going to gymnastics. Going to the library has been really fun this summer, with the girls' interests expanding and deepening in new books and series. Lucia especially loves the Stella Batts series, which I like too. And yesterday we discovered our first Princess in Black book--really really great. I ordered two from Amazon because it's clear they'll be favorites for a long time. Today wasn't as fully good as yesterday. Greta descended into some whining this morning, pushing me to my limit, but she eventually rallied. We had lunch and quiet time and then went to the pool for the whole afternoon. It's been in the nineties, so the pool has been a real relief since, of course, we don't have air-conditioning. Bot...

Saturday, Mom and I took the girls to the Yough River Trail for a bike ride. They rode three miles with barely a blink of fatigue--Lucia rode far ahead, zippy; and Greta, too, pedaled fast enough so that I had to run to keep up. They had a lot of fun. Afterward, they played by the river, "not going in the water." Andrew flew back from CA that evening, so I drove to Pittsburgh to meet him and go out to dinner with three of our friends. We had a great time--building the case for a move to Pittsburgh someday... Sunday was the day of an epic Parenting Fail. As you may recall, we embarked on our week in Connellsville with a grand agreement: Greta agreed not to whine, and she and Lucia would receive the Pinkie Pie Sweet Shoppe set in return. Lucia's part of the bargain was not to bicker with Greta so much. Neither girl fulfilled her end of the deal for the entire week. There was a lot of whining. There was a lot of fighting. Requesting pristine behavior for a week was a roo...

Thursday, Lucia, Greta, and I started off the day with a visit and swim at the home of some of my very very old friends, along with another old friend and her daughter. It was so much fun to see all the kids in real life, not just Facebook life. Lucia and Greta had a blast. They'd swim all the time if they could. We were there almost two hours and they got out of the pool only once, to eat a donut. Mom's cousins were in town so the girls played at home the rest of the day. They made a big mud puddle outside, in which their ponies played. Today, I went for a walk on the Yough Trail first thing--if I could start off every day this way, I would. What a peaceful, beautiful place. When I got home, we all walked to a rummage sale at a nearby church. It was underwhelming. Unfortunately, Greta's disappointment at not finding a treasure propelled her into a downward spiral of whining that she couldn't break out of. So much for the Pinkie Pie deal. Mom and I got her to get in...

Monday, Andrew drove into Pittsburgh to work at the Pittsburgh office for the day. After our Idlewild outing, we took it easy at home, just playing here. We visited Grandma and Florence at Beechwood. Afterward, Mom had promised L&G some new Shopkins, so we went to Target to pick some out. Later, L&G and Mom and I took a walk/scooter ride around the neighborhood in the evening. Tuesday, we all drove into Pittsburgh together to go to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Such a wonderful place. Andrew got to stay with us for about an hour, before Ubering to the airport to catch his flight to CA. Mom, Dad, the girls, and I stayed at the museum. L&G like the dinosaurs and the gems, but more than anything else they love the Hall of North American Animals--beginning with the gruesome diorama of the lion attacking the camel and rider. They also love the bears eating salmon, and anything that depicts a predator attacking or planning to attack its prey. Greta really liked feelin...