Soooooo … a few more details on Miss T’s party.
Secret Agent Party Part 2
Secret Agent Party Part 1
Tabby’s party was today and it was a great success! But, I don’t think I’ve stopped moving since Friday night. Mom and Dad had the kids and Matt and I worked incessantly on Tabby’s party.
Tabby at 6
Yesterday got away from us, like so many days do. There, happily, is just so much living to be done that I couldn’t fit in an update on her sixness on the day of her birthday so now I will recall. Tabby spent most of her sixth birthday in one of her favorite places – kindergarten. She got to be VIP which means she got to help with the calendar, lead the line and other various honors. After school, she played with one of her new favorite toys, a set of “fashion” stencils my mom found for her that allow her to “design” clothes. I came home and she told me all about her day and then we picked up Ben from school and went to swim lessons, another highlight of any day for Tabby. Dinner was the pizza quesadillas she requested, served while watching Phineas and Ferb. She had a hedgehog cookie to finish. After dinner, she wrote a thank you note (to the sender of the hedgehog cookies), cleaned the (real) hedgehogs’ cage, opened a present from Matt and I and read a book to me. Just like that, the first day of her 7th year was done.
This day epitomizes Tabby at this age. She is doing so much and having so much fun doing it. Her enthusiasm for everything is wonderful. I can’t help but marvel, and in some ways lament, at how quickly it’s gone by. But every day, I see what an amazing, kind, thoughtful, creative, positive, and loving little girl she’s become and I’m happy. We’re so so lucky to have her in our family.
We Went to Vail
We spent a few days in our favorite home-away-from-home, Vail, in honor of Tabby’s 6th Birthday (actually tomorrow).
The weather on Friday looked like this ….
So Matt and I got a re-do on our semi-disastrous date day two weeks prior. Mom hung with the kids – who couldn’t ski in the deep powder and who didn’t want to brave the snow – and we skied our butts off.
We also had a great date lunch at The 10 which is a reservations-only restaurant at the top of the mountain. We’d never tried it before, so we treated ourselves. You get to go in and disrobe, including ski boots which is a big treat because even the most comfortable ski boots are decidedly uncomfy. Then you wear furry little slippers to lunch.
The average lunch fare on the mountain is chili and fries and pizza. And actually that’s what we had too, though upscaled versions of those with figs and lamb and stuff. It was tasty. As an after, we shared this sundae. Salted caramel ice cream, brownies, chocolate sauce and candied bacon. Mmmmmm
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mom totally spoiled the kids. They had a picnic, read a billion books, painted with water colors and skipped naps. Is it any wonder we had to beg them to go skiing the next day?
The next day was super beautiful and with tons of nice snow, so we spent the morning at the bunny hill with the kids. Over to the left of the bunny hill happened to be a little event called the US Snowboarding Open, specifically the finals.
We watched from afar as crazy talented guys, including Benji Farrow, pictured above, did their insane tricks on the half pipe.
Back on the bunny hill, it was our Benji’s big day. After some initial regression from his victories in January, he rallied beautifully and …
Took his first runs on the gopher hill, which of course, means his first ride on the chairlift! Big time big boy!!
After Ben’s excellent morning, it was still beautiful weather, so Mom took Ben home and Matt, my dad and I took Tabby up the mountain.
It was a wonderful time. Tabby gets better and better every time we take her out and she really seems to enjoy skiing and she’s so proud of her achievements.
After our ski day, Kelly joined us and we went to dinner for Tabby’s birthday. After dinner, we came home to the cake I’d baked for her and presents.
Exhausted from two days of skiing, we went to bed early and woke up even earlier to pack up and head home.
Valentine’s Fire Drill
This morning just after we dropped Ben off, Tabby told me her Valentines needed to be at school today. I was confused. “Today? But Valentine’s Day isn’t until tomorrow!” But in the back of my mind, I remembered reading that on the Valentine’s instruction sheet. We’ve just been so busy, darnit. Ooops!
I contemplated leaving the whole thing until tonight and bringing them tomorrow, but it didn’t seem fair to put an undue burden on her hardworking, amazing teacher – she wants them there early for a reason! I contemplated being tough love mom and telling Tabby that this was her responsibility and she’d just have to do without, but that wasn’t really fair either since she has been busy with swimming all week. Many why does this stuff always happen when I’m playing single mom?? I’ve been trying sooo hard to keep it all together and something had to slip through the cracks, I guess. At least it wasn’t something critical like picking a kid up from school.
We had almost an hour before school started (much less time before I needed to be at work). So we hightailed it home and did a Valentine Fire Drill. Tabby had colored all of her Valentines and cut most of them out. I finished cutting the remaining ones and stuffed them with lollipops as she addressed them, me verbally spelling her classmates’ names for her to speed the process up.
All in all, it went pretty well and pretty fast and I was only about 5 min late for a pretty loosey goosey meeting. But I have a question … when do kids get a sense of urgency??
The Hedgies go to Kindergarten
Friday in the midst of running around, getting ready to go on our trip, Tabby’s hedgies made their big debut at Kindergarten. Tabby has, of course, been talking nonstop about them since BEFORE she got them, so the whole class (possibly the whole school) was very very excited for them to visit.
But before they could visit, Matt had to finish a project … namely a permanent home for the hedgies. The had heretofore been living in a plastic storage tub, modified with little holes to hold their water bottle and heat lamp. But they needed more space and we wanted an environment for them where we can view them while they’re going about their daily business. So Matt and I researched hedgie environments and Matt came up with this. It’s a wood frame with acrylic on the front and bottom and protecting the wood inside, glass on the back (so we can have a heating element back there – acrylic is not compatible) and screens on the top and left and right sides for good airflow. It also opens on the front for easy hedgie retrieval. It is a great looking cage and it is also dog secure since it latches. YAY!
Matt was up late many nights finishing this baby and whereas I usually help at least with finishing, I was inundated with swim lessons and other concerns and he was all on his own for this one. I’d say it definitely merits him Dad of the Year!
Party Time
Well this has been quite the week. As of bedtime last night, both of the kids were DONE and in level 5 meltdown. Tabby lost it when her toothbrush ran out of batteries. Ben was in full revolt because we wouldn’t let him watch another ep of Phineas and Ferb. They both had solid sleep, but apparently Ben had a very rocky dropoff this am. As for me, I started off the week with a stomach bug and now I seem to have caught a nasty cold that has me foggy and semi-useless. Yay.
But let’s not talk about the bad stuff. Let’s talk about the good. I think we’ve finally made a decision on Tabby’s party. We had talked about doing a swimming party at our local rec center, but the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea. If we went when it’s not too crowded, lots of people wouldn’t be able to come since that’s when parents are working and there are tons of other commitments. And the weekends at our rec center (one of the biggest and nicest in the state) is a madhouse on the weekends. I hate taking the kids there on the weekends. A party there sounds about 10x worse.
So we gave her a few options: 1) party at My Gym 2) bowling party 3) party at our community clubhouse with the theme of Secret Agent. As jazzed as she’d been about the My Gym idea before, I expected her to pick that. But she surprised me and decided on the Secret Agent Party. This is great because we can do what I think will be a really fun little part with relatively little fuss and expsense. Relatively little.
The plan so far:
- Invitations – these will just be half-page printouts with the party info on them (thank you awesome color laser printer at work) and I plan to do a scratch-off over the party details for a little intrigue. But if this turns out to be tedious, we will ditch that idea. We are inviting her whole class (20 kids – it’s school rules to invite all or none) though I expect only about half to show and a couple of other friends from outside of school.
- Photos – we are bringing out the photo booth and I will make a new template for the photos.
- Photo frames – I found some cheap white foam frames and I plan to have the kids decorate them with their own fingerprints.
- Who am I? game – The kids will each get a character taped to their backs and they’ll have to ask questions of the other kids to figure out who they are.
- Scavenger hunt – The kids will have to follow clues to find the prize (the favors).
- Favors – found some cute stuff on Oriental Trading; magnifying glasses, secret agent rubber ducks and mustache lollipops and tattoos. I was thinking we could roll these up in crepe paper for those fun surprise packages. Or I may get lazy and just put them in tissue or a bag.
- Cake – spherical (bomb) cake with chocolate frosting (and perhaps something surprisingly tasty in the middle) and a sparkler for the candle. Maybe I can get fancy schmancy and pipe Kaboom! onto it. Ice cream.
It seems all very doable and not too ridiculous from my point of view. Hopefully I’ll still feel that way when all’s said and done.
Off Like a Herd of Turtles
I told Matt that I feel like this has been a week of false starts. Between this and that, it feels like some sort of franken-week, and like I haven’t really gotten anything accomplished.
Sunday night onto Monday morning I had some sort of super fun GI bug that left me pretty drained. I stayed home from work and basically slept the WHOLE DAY, just barely managing to accomplish a couple of things via email. By 5pm or so, I’d kind of rallied and I got up and we took the kids to their first swim lesson.
We signed them up for these super-intensive, super expensive lessons because a) they’re 3 and 5 and can hardly swim at all and b) we’re going on a cruise this summer and my wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually take advantage of the pools on the ship? and c) Mommy would like to sit back and read a novel and not worry about her precious ones drowning! Anyway, all said and done it’s about a 90 minute commitment 2 evenings a week, so non-trivial. In addition to that they have some weird rules about eating beforehand so (presumably) your kid won’t throw up in the pool.
So we did swim lessons (in driving snow) which actually went pretty well considering Ben’s paralyzing fear of the water. And then we came home and did the dinner thing and the homework thing and the kids went off to bed and I went for a run. Of course sleeping all day had screwed up my internal clock and I couldn’t fall asleep until way too late. Grrrr
Today I couldn’t get out of bed to go to the gym. And then I went off to work for a few hours which was super productive, but then I had to leave for my great aunt’s funeral and the family gathering afterward. It was simple and lovely and sad.
Then, of course, I hightailed it back home to change clothes and gather stuff and run out for swim lesson #2. This one, though an hour later, went even better. Ben actually seemed to enjoy himself by the end and made real progress with his backfloat. Tabby swam across the pool and dove for rings. The only problem was that since they can’t eat beforehand, we were all STARVING and so we all chowed down on Subway on the way home. My car will never be the same again.
So in two days I’ve spent about 3 hours doing swim lessons, spent not much more than double that at the office, and exactly 0 hours at the gym. On the plus side, the house is spotless and I’m pretty well rested. Trade offs.
Party Planning
We’ve got a few parties coming up in the pretty near future and so I’ve been finding myself spending too much time browsing around Pinterest and Oriental Trading company looking for fun party stuff.
The first party on the horizon is Tabby’s class Valentine’s Day Party. A friend and I and one other mom are the politically correct “room parents.” It’s funny because we have quite a few dads involved in school stuff – crossing guards, PTA presidents, etc. – but I’ve never seen a room dad. But I digress.
So we get to put together a little soiree for the kinders on Vday. My friend was a teacher and she always has great ideas for activities for the kids. She came up with a cool puzzle scavenger hunt that the kids can do on their own and then bring all the pieces together to reveal a secret message. It sounds like great fun and is even learning based what with the puzzle pieces and the reading and all that.
I on the otherhand, have Pinterest. And there I found these great Valentine’s floats. They’re made with Cherry 7up, ice cream and twizzlers for straws. We have to have a bunch of healthy food options available, but I thought these would be a fun treat for the kids and it’s nice to break away from cupcakes and cookies. Plus no decorating! And those are about as far as I’ve gotten. We’ll need to come up with a simple craft and probably some stickers for the kids to take home.
Then there’s Tabby’s impending 6th birthday. I think we’ve finally decided she’s going to have it at our local rec center with swimming afterward. Now we need to figure out about the party part. The activity portion is taken care of with swimming, so decorations, food and maybe a little craft or take-home something. But I don’t know where to go with this. I’ve had two thoughts: hedgehogs and kawaii (random Japanese cuteness).
Hedgehogs are obvious, but I thought the Kawaii “theme” would be fun because T has the slightly bizarre distinction of being the kid in her kindergarten class who listed her favorite food as “sushi” and I thought it would be fun to have candy sushi at her party. But that’s where that idea ends. The problem with either theme is that there’s no page in the catalog for hedgehog or kawaii birthday supplies so I have to come up with pretty much anything that we use and I don’t really have the time at the moment. So maybe we ditch themey things and she just picks a cake she likes and we buy some balloons.
Lastly there’s Ben. He and Tabby have been at their new schools the same amount of time, but while we’ve met lots of Tabby’s classmates and their parents, we don’t know ANYONE from Ben’s school. There’s no set pickup/dropoff time for his school so whereas with Tabby’s you’re constantly seeing the same people at start and end, the parents trickle in and out and rarely do we see any of them let alone stand around chatting for five minutes before/after school. As a result, we don’t really know Ben’s new classmates and I’m trying to figure out if we should do a party for him this year. He definitely wants one. We could easily invite our family friends and their kids (few of whom, I should point out, are actually Ben’s age) and have a nice party for him. But I’ve considered inviting his classmates and seeing if anyone will come and trying to get some of that friendliness started. Part of me also wants to have him wait until next year for a friends party so we can alternate who gets a big friend party each year, but next year may be the same friend situation all over again. It’s a bummer.
So I leave you with party on the brain.
Hedgies!!
Well I better post quickly while I can!! I have had an annoying issue with WP login that is apparently pretty common and pretty hard to diagnose and correct. I’ve tried tons of solutions only to have most of them not work long-term. Frustrating. But ultimately off topic.
Because as of Thursday, we are hedgehog owners! They are officially Tabby’s and officially her birthday present a bit early. We adopted them from a local breeder and they are very cute, sweet little things.
This is Snowball. She’s 8 wks old and she’s a “pinto” variety. She is very active and more on the svelte side. She is big on wheel running and she’s got a pretty sweet temperament.
That’s Hedgie on the right. She is more of the typical hedgehog look, and I believe she’s a “chocolate chip” variety. She’s only 6 weeks but a bit larger. When we got her she was in the process of “quilling” which is sort of analogous to teething. The loose and regrow their quills on a monthly basis throughout their first year as their bodies grow and it makes them a bit on the grumpy side, so we haven’t gotten to see her true personality just yet. So far she seems a bit more sedate, but that might be the quilling too.
It’s been interesting having them in our house. We didn’t keep them warm enough at first (despite our best efforts!) and they started to go into hibernation which is dangerous in hedge hogs. We got them warmed back up with the help of a heat lamp and they are doing much better now.
They are currently housed in a plastic tub (this is pretty typical for hedgies) but Matt is building them a more permanent (and aesthetically pleasing) home. I will be really glad when it’s done because Loki is a little toooo interested in them and we’ve had to be very very diligent about keeping him away from them.
For her part, Tabby is overjoyed. She has been so excited to bring these guys home and she is loving on them every chance she gets! Now if only she’d taken my naming advice. I wanted them to be Hedgie and Wedgie.