She Wants to Be a Ballerina

January 12, 2010kakakakaty 3 Comments

For the past 2 months or so M has been obsessed with dancing and anything ballet. She hones in on ballet books at the library, imitates things she sees on TV, says “I want to be a ballerina when I get older” and knows the French terms for several ballet positions. She’s never been in an organized class of any kind so we thought a preschool ballet class might be fun. Let the search begin…

Our city has a great Rec Department with all kinds of classes and activities so that was the first place to look. I found tons of ballet classes, except all the ones for ages 3-5 are between 10 AM and 1 PM on the weekdays. In fact, every single class offered for preschoolers, be it ballet, hockey or art, is during a weekday. After 5 PM classes don’t begin until age 8! To me this is a big old “F you!” to working parents. They gladly take income taxes out of each and every paycheck but offer no services for working parents in return. My taxes pay for this stupid Rec Department – too bad we’ll have to wait another 5 years to use any of its offerings! And for comparison, I checked with 3 other area Rec Departments and every one offers at least one evening or weekend ballet class for preschoolers. Calls to each ended in disappointment as I was told I had to be a resident to enroll M in those classes. The local YMCA and JCC both only offer weekday classes.

So I started looking around elsewhere and here’s a bit of news: dance studios don’t really advertise much, especially on the web. I finally found one that is close to our house and seems to have a good reputation. I got really excited to see they have a Saturday morning class for 3 & 4 year olds. But their “sessions” are 22-weeks long which translates into a few hundred dollars in fees! That would mean dance class every Saturday until the end of June. I called anyway; ready to bite the tuition and commitment bullet only to find that their Saturday class is full and they usually give enrollment preference to families with older kids in their program. Would I like to be put on a waiting list for next fall? Um, no thanks.

A lunch-time visit to the local dance-supply shop for help has given me some more hope. Another local studio has a Saturday preschool class, but their session started a week ago and they won’t return my several calls. Here’s a Pro Tip: if your website and answering machine says your hours are 1-7 PM and no one ever answers the calls I make between 1 & 5 then I have no trust in you as a business. Moving on…

There is a Dance & Gymnastics studio in a nearby suburb that holds promise and the draw of a dance + tumbling combo class on Monday nights. There is also a studio that is holding Saturday classes at a brand new fitness center that just opened very close to our house. And as a final resort – a studio about a half-hour away has a creative dance class on Saturday mornings. Now…if I can get someone to call me back so I can talk to a real person.

Keep your fingers crossed that one of these places has an opening for our tiny dancer. Because seeing all the adorable little leotards and skirts at the dance-supply shop just about killed me with cuteness.

Updated 1/13: Lots of calls later, M is now signed up for classes taught by Remote Dance and held at the new Lifetime Fitness near our house. Tomorrow night we’ll go get the proper leotard, tights and shoes – lots and lots of pictures to follow!

Looking Ahead

December 29, 2009kakakakaty 1 Comment

There is no doubt that 2010 is going to be life altering in many ways. The arrival of baby 2.0 will make sure of that. But right now, I’m having a hard time looking even that far into the future. Just taking a look at my/our January calendar is making me tired – excited but tired.

We will be heading to Disney on Ice in just over a week and I predict M will loose her mind when she sees princesses! and ice skating! together in one show. Then my mom is coming up for the long (for her, not schmucks like me who have to work) MLK weekend to help paint the baby’s room (and maybe M’s room, too – if we hustle) and this will make it official – our guest room will become the baby’s room and then there is no denying the impending arrival.

After that comes a jam-packed week of a Cavs game followed by yet another 36-hour trip to Las Vegas for work. I don’t mean to sound whiney but these biannual trips lost their luster after the 2nd one – now they are just exhausting. It’s nice to go to a warmer place even for a few days, but I really do find Vegas kind of gross and dirty. The hotels are nice, but I’m not a big gambler and when you’re only in town for about 27 hours which is book-ended by 4 ½ hour flights it gets old really fast. And Vegas while pregnant? Yippee! At least I will get to see my college friend who is due with her first baby just a few weeks before I am.

Looking past January my eyes go out of focus as all I see are days whipping past at break-neck speed until mid-April and my due date. February and March are hectic times at work and are the dreaded never-ending grey winter months of NE Ohio where you feel like you are doomed to never see the sun again.

And all I can think about is “OMG, are we really doing this again? What were we thinking?” There are 3 things that my mind is dwelling on at the moment: 1) I will never sleep again after 04.2010 and this makes me very grumpy. 2) The great fear of my water breaking in public has returned – this gets me more freaked out then any other part of the birth process. And 3) I had better get a private hospital room. If I have to share a post-partum room I’m going to be livid.

So there you have it – my excitement and fears for 2010. Well, the first quarter of 2010 anyway. The rest of the year is up in the air.

This is How We Do It

December 26, 2009kakakakaty Leave a comment

Growing up all of our Christmas Eves were spent at home, with just our immediate family. Once in a while a grandparent or 4 would join us but for the most part it was just the 5 of us. We did extended-family celebrations before and after Christmas, sometime even heading to Toledo or Defiance on the afternoon of Christmas Day. But Christmas Eve was the calm in the storm.

As an adult I can really appreciate this tradition where at least one day of the holiday season can be spent as a family. When my older sister got married she established the same tradition for our generation – and thus one by one as we all got married we stopped going to my parents for Christmas Eve & Day. At first my mom was crushed, but over the last 11 years my parents have embraced their holiday vacation freedom by traveling – last year they took a cruise, this year they are in the Florida Keys.

And best of all, I have no horror stories about dragging us, the kid, the dog and all the swag from house to house while her schedule goes to pot and she gets more and more overstimulated and cranky. We did the extended family thing last weekend, therefore the last 2 days have been just the 3 of us relaxing.

Mark and I both worked until noon on Christmas Eve but that afternoon we took advantage of the fact that we still had some snow and went sledding.

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That evening we had a relaxing dinner, drove around to check out Christmas lights and M opened gifts from her cousin & Uncle in FL my BFF from college.

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Duplo

Everyone got to bed at a good time. M was up a couple of times during the night and seemed to be up for the day at 6:30 but we managed to hold her off until about 7:15. She was awfully excited to see what Santa had brought. After checking to see if he ate the cookies and orange juice (her choice) she left out, she dug into her stocking where she found the DVD of Snow White, a Santa doll (the only thing she asked Santa for) and a Care Bear’s card game. Under the tree were more gifts including Candy Land, a trampoline, a tent/tunnel set and a tea set. Just enough to open without getting bored with the process, not so much that she forgets about half of what she received.

stocking

candyland

trampoline

tent

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The rest of the day brought several rousing games of Candy Land, tea parties, a long nap in her new tent, 2 viewings of Snow White, lots of time with the Lego Duplo farm and lots and lots of jumping:

jump A trampoline is my new recommended gift for anyone in a cold climate with a preschooler – she loves it and jumps all day long.

Sugar Shock

December 16, 2009kakakakaty 2 Comments

I love to bake. On Sunday I set out to make our holiday cookies. The only ones I make every year are cut-outs and peanut-butter kisses (but we use mini peanut butter cups instead of kisses because Mark is a PB freak). The others on the list were made on a whim. So, after sitting down with my recipe box and binder I came up with a stack of 5 recipes and got started. I had high hopes of finishing it all in one day (ha!).

First up – were the PB Kisses: P1060998 Tip: parchment paper is your friend (if someone wants to get me 2 1/2-sheet pan Silpats for Christmas, I could save some trees). Use it on your pans for quick clean-up but also prep all your cookies at once on parchment, without having to wait for an empty cookie sheet.

P1060999 Mini Peanut Butter cups get really melty. So after they cool on the rack, I pop them in the freezer to firm up.

These got separated into 2 batches – one for Christmas and one for Mark…there was no way he could wait to gobble these up.

Next I made the cut-out dough and put it in the fridge to chill and rest. I’ve been making cut-outs for the family since high school when I got disgusted with my mom using store-bought cookie dough to make them. In her defense she used to make them from scratch but with 3 kids (and all the cussing that came from the kitchen), she found an easier way. Anyway, I have a system for making cut-outs which usually takes 3 days because I normally make a double batch of dough. Day 1: make dough, separate into 4 batches and flatten on parchment, chill overnight. Day 2: roll, cut and bake. Spend hours cleaning up all the flour. Day 3: frost cookies beautifully with homemade buttercream, preferably using melted chocolate for detail work – yum! But this year it was a single batch and I did everything from dough to baking in one day.

Then it was on to oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I tried a new recipe that was just okay, no photos since everyone knows what oatmeal chocolate chip cookies look like. The recipe made a TON of cookies, so there are some for now, some for Christmas and a big bag in the freezer for the future.

Next I took a 2 hour nap and woke up with a huge headache, but the baking must go on! I made no-bake square buckeyes (which are buckeyes, made into bars and topped with melted chocolate so you don’t have to roll and dip). They are basically just peanut butter, sugar and butter – yum!

Then we moved on to rolling and cutting the cut-outs. M had a blast helping me press the cookie cutters in the dough, but the real fun started when I gave her the dough scraps for her to play with. She made cookies, a “santa cake” and a “princess castle cake”.

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I had grand plans for finishing out the evening by making chrusciki or Polish “Angel Wings” (that’s not the recipe I use, but you can see what they are). I’m the only one left in my family who knows how to make them, because I took the time to have my Busia walk me through the process a few times. They are delicate, not too sweet fried dough sprinkled with powdered sugar. People love them. But, I was exhausted and chrusciki are very labor intensive, not to mention that the recipe makes dozens and dozens of cookies and I’ve never had any luck halving the recipe. And my Busia would haunt me if I wasted half of the dough. So I went to bed, instead. Monday night I entertained the thought of making them, but I didn’t have the energy.

Tuesday night we had a rare week-night date at the Cavs game with awesome seats. Plus we got two Shaq bobbleheads. Score!

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Tonight, we frosted the cut-outs with homemade buttercream frosting but no chocolate because I am lazy. M again had a great time “painting” the cookies when her fingers weren’t in her mouth (don’t worry, we separated those out). She even made a few to take to her teacher. She was so proud of her work.

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And now, with 4 of the 5 recipes done I’m calling it quits. Our extended-family Christmas is this weekend and hopefully most of these cookies will be consumed. I used to do huge plates of 7-8 different kinds of cookies for friends and co-workers, but this year I just don’t have the time or energy. Funny how being 5 months pregnant will do that to you.

What are your holiday baking traditions?

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

December 12, 2009kakakakaty 1 Comment

Thanks to lots of other CLE bloggers, I had a huge list of holiday cheer I wanted to experience. And in the last few weeks we have been busy checking things off that list.

I finished off my shopping at local places and hit the Bazaar Bizarre where I scored a couple of things for me (90% of the shopping was done before Thanksgiving, given my general fear of shopping centers during the month of December). I got my “Hot Rod” Williams shirt from C.L.E. Clothing and will be sporting it at the game next Tuesday. We hit a bunch of fun things and the girl is so enamored with all things Christmas that it’s been lots of fun.

There’s been lots of unbloggable things going on lately, nothing bad just not for public consumption yet so I don’t have much to say. So, instead of rambling on anymore, here are some highlights of the last few festive weeks:

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The Night of Lights @ Legacy Village
(tip for anyone going next year – go a little early and get a spot on the balcony near Melting Pot – best view, no crowds)

holiday2 Helping me get the assigned side dishes together for Thanksgiving at my parents

holiday3 The annual making of graham cracker houses at grandma’s house

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holiday5 Cousins M & A and M stringing popcorn and cranberries for the birds and deer at grandma’s house

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holiday7 At Kringle’s Inventionasium in Tower City. Very cool for me and Mark, M was a bit freaked out by it all

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holiday10 Meeting the Abominable Snowman & Rudolph at the Public Square Tree Lighting

holiday11 Watching the fireworks at Public Square, with Terminal Tower dressed for Christmas in the background

holiday13 Of course she helped decorate the tree. This meant she put every single ornament on one branch. We did some rearranging.

holiday12 Her favoriate ornament – Rudolph (purchased for her in 2008)

holiday14 1800 lights and countless ornaments from my childhood (the oldest, still in tact ornament being a 1984 breaddough angel I made in Sunday School). We get a new family ornament and M gets a new ornament every year.

Last night we started a new tradition – lighting a menorah and playing dreidel. M is learning all about Hanukkah at her Jewish preschool and was asking where our menorah was at home. We figured why not? So after a mad scramble on Friday night (after I realized that Hanukkah started this week and not next) to get a menorah failed, we made one together using Play-Doh. It’s a fun new twist on our holiday and assures us at least 30 minutes a night of all 3 of us around the table playing a game.

All that’s left is an early Christmas celebration with my family (my parents travel during the actual holiday), a relaxing Christmas at home and then the Cleveland Children’s Museum New Year’s at Noon party.

I hope you all are having a great holiday season and are avoiding the stress that can come with it!

I’m Not Even Drinking

November 27, 2009kakakakaty 1 Comment

All the food yesterday must have done something to my brain. Either that or the “pregnancy brain” is kicking into high gear already. My 2 most recent tweets:

And, 90 minutes later…

Oops! Let’s just hope that tomorrow night isn’t a repeat of tonight! And if you are in downtown Cleveland tomorrow night and see a pink-coat-&-boot-clad, blue-eyed 3 year old tantruming, please have pity.

Better Late then Never

November 6, 2009kakakakaty 5 Comments

No real reason for not posting here for awhile…just busy freezing (broken boiler – it’s now fixed and we are now broke) and hanging out under layers of blankets. Or, if I’ve had time at the computer it’s been spent trying to sort the 558 photos I’ve selected for M’s baby book. No, she doesn’t have a baby book, or any sort of photo album for that matter. Yes, she’s 3. My goal is to make photobooks for year 1 and 2 before the baby is born. To do that I need to slog through about 4000 photos and figure out which ones to use. It’s a bit overwhelming.

Anyway, in lieu of a real post here are some week-old Halloween photos of a really cute bumble bee.

Haphazard Tuesday

October 27, 2009kakakakaty 3 Comments

I don’t have the brain power to compose a cohesive post these days, so here is a random listing of what’s being going on around here.

Pregnancy
I’m now 16 weeks along but it feels like 25 weeks. Being pregnant with M was so easy that this one is kicking my ass. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older, or chasing around a 3 year old or what, but I am TIRED all the time. Food still is unappetizing and so I end up getting so hungry that I get sick…not a fun cycle.

This baby seems to be riding low. I feel like I’m already doing the 8-months-pregnant waddle. I have no motivation to take daily walks like I did last time and instead of the fruits I constantly craved with M, I am craving only carbs this time. A big bowl of ramen noodles or Kraft Mac & Cheese are the only things that consistently sound appealing.

The girl
She won’t go to sleep at night. When we switched from crib to a toddler bed we used the much lauded and successful “by any means necessary” route to get her to actually stay in the bed at bedtime. This evolved to one of us staying in her room until she fell asleep. Nearly one year later and we are still doing this, and these “bedtimes” can last up to two freaking hours. It’s killing both Mark and I, because on most nights by the time we can sneak out of her room it’s after 9:00 and evening is shot. I know the solution is going to involve lots of screaming and tears (probably for all of us) so we are girding our loins in preparation.

She won’t poop on the toilet. We started potty training on Memorial Day weekend…it’s been FIVE DAMN MONTHS people! She will successfully do her business on the throne maybe 3 times a week, and only at school. At home if we even suggest that she try to go she flips out and sometimes even throws herself off the toilet. It’s not pretty…and neither is the wreckage to her princess underwear. We’ve tried everything – reward charts, M&Ms, even the John Rosemond method that worked for Amanda’s daughter. The kid will not perform, and her newest trick is to hold it all day and fill her nighttime pull-up at 9 PM, thus guaranteeing her a later bedtime.

We took our first trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art this last weekend and she was enthralled. After her initial slip-up of hugging a marble statue (OMG! I was so happy no one else was in the gallery at the time), she was great. She loved Frieze of Dancers by Edgar Degas (“Just like Olivia!”) and Armor for Man and Horse with Völs-Colonna Arms (“look! A king on a horse!”) in the Armor Court. I think we will be making several trips to the CMA this long, cold winter.

Life – pregnancy style
I have had the itch to cook and bake for the last few weeks but have fallen woefully short on time. I was all set to shop for a and make Pauline’s Bigos on Sunday only to be sidelined by a migraine. Now it’s on the menu for a hearty pre-trick or treat dinner on Saturday. Tonight I am going to prep my mom’s lasagna and as usual, I will make 2 since it’s just as much time and effort as making one. The extra will go to our friends and neighbors who have a 6 week old (whom we haven’t even met yet because of the sick that has plagued at least one of us for weeks). I am feeling the need to start stocking the freezer so if you have any great recipes that “freeze beautifully” as Annelle says in Steel Magnolias, please send them my way.

M doesn’t have one single photo album. There are probably over 4000 photos of her on the computer (and obsessively backed up daily) but not one album. I would really like to get at least her 1st year on paper before the baby is born but can’t decide on a photo-book company. I don’t want to use Shutterfly and have had some success with MyPublisher in the past – are their other suggestions out there? I would love to have books of 50+ pages, but quality and price are my two main concerns.

I have a deep desire to clean out all of our closest and do a major purge of stuff. I just lack the motivation to get off the couch and actually do something about it. Anyone want to come and do it for me?

I Was Feverish When I Wrote This, Forgive Me if it Goes Astray

September 30, 2009kakakakaty 4 Comments

On Sunday the heavens parted and the sun shine down for a key fewf hours that allowed our M to celebrate her birthday with her family. After days of rain I was so grateful that the weather cooperated for a few hours, even if it was chilly (last year M wore a sleeveless sundress for her party – this year it was jeans and long sleeves). I had borrowed an inflatable “bounce house” from a friend and the kids only got out for presents and cupcakes. M was delighted to have almost her entire extended family to dote on her all day.

P1060702 M and 2 of her cousins
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P1060683 The cutest birthday girl ever

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In other news, last week I was a good hospital employee and got my seasonal flu shot. This is only the 3rd or 4th time I’ve gotten a flu shot and just like EVERY. SINGLE. TIME before, I am now sick. I know, I know – the vaccine does not use a live virus but for whatever reason I get sick in the few days following the shot. I was so chilled last night we turned on the heat. The heat is on in September – something is wrong with this. So far today I vegged out in my chair wearing layers and under 2 blankets and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the first time.

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We have a weird neighbor who does odd jobs for some of the elderly people who live on our street, including mowing several of their lawns. Right now he is mowing the yard right next door in the pouring rain. He’s wearing a rain coat, jeans and no shoes. He gives me the creeps.

In other strange neighbor/lawn mowing news: the old dude 2 doors down mows his yard wearing a baseball batting helmet, knickers, a wife beater and bags over his shoes. It’s amazing what you learn when you stay home sick.

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The View is on the TV behind me and Yoko Ono is “singing”. She sounds like a cat in heat.