Friday, December 7, 2007

Bowling for Seven Year Olds

Because we live in stepfordville, North Carolina - otherwise known as the land of the perfect birthday parties - every kid here has a killer birthday party starting at age zero. Tea party parties, gymnastics parties, ceramics parties, jungle gym parties, bounce house parties, pirate-themed parties, magicians, musicians, ponies - you name it, we do it here. And of course, in true spoil-your-kid-rotten-because-you-never-had-anything-when-you-were-a-kid style - Charles had to have a killer party too. So we chose bowling. Charles loves to bowl (alot) and it gave us the chance to match the party with the perfect birthday present - what else but his own bowling ball.

So the short story is, these kids had a blast. More importantly, Charles had a blast. I could tell that he felt like a big kid, doing his own thing and for once, I actually let him. I didn't save "Charles, behave" or "Charles, stop being wacky." I just let him do his thing. Which was hard and most of all strange.

Strange to see him in this grown-up sort of environment. Here he was, turning 7, "hanging out" with his friends. It was nothing like the playdate style parties of years past where kids are forced together by their parents and encouraged to share, play games and not make trouble while Moms make small talk and busy themselves with the process of putting out plates, cutting cake and organizing the present opening. This was a bona fide PARTY and it really had nothing to do with me! The girls teamed up against the boys. Kids were high fiving each other when they did well and they even let me get a fantastic group picture (which I can't show here lest I have to ask every parent for permission to publish their kids photo on the web but if we're related and you want to see it - email me and I'll send it to you!). The bowling alley also had all the kids sign an old bowling pin that Charles now has in his room.

It was bittersweet to see my little man turning into a real young man, but very kool. I was the kool parent - who planned a kool party. Yeah me!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

A Vist to the Pumpkin Farm


A "Date" At the Pumpkin Farm

So this fall we took a visit to our local Pumpkin Farm - Mike's Farm. It's a really nice place to visit - out in the boonies of North Carolina. We've gone for the past few years so it's kind of the beginning of new traditions for us here in North Carolina. We took Charlie's "friend" Logan with us and the three of them tore up the place. Logan and Charles met a goat they named "bobby" and even now as I write this a few months later - just for catch up - they still talk about going back to see him. We took a nice hayride to the pumpkin patch (which incidentally is really great for your back) and picked lovely pumpkins that we then waited 25 minutes to pay for - on line. All jokes aside we had a nice time and here are some pics of all the fun and money we spent. :)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Autumn in New York

I love the Fall. Back to school, start of the holiday season, cooler weather and all that stuff. But I’m always surprised to find that yet another year has past since September 11th. It’s a very vivid memory in my mind and a very personal topic for me and my family. You see, we’re New Yorkers.

My husband and I were born and raised in New York City and let me tell you there is no more beautiful place to experience autumn than in New York. The air is crisp, the skies are brilliant blue and the smell of burning firewood and the crackle of leaves awakens your senses from the humid numbness of a summer in the city. On September 11th, 2001, that all changed. As native New Yorkers, and also having spent a good chunk of my advertising career fighting my way up Madison Avenue, meeting clients down in the financial district, I have many fond memories of the World Trade Center as well. Visiting on class trips as a kid and then later having lunch on the plaza (yes, from a dirty water hot dog cart – Mmmmmm the best!). One year, there was a summer concert series held on the plaza and on a breezy September day, much like September 11th, I took the 9 train down to see Mary Chapin Carpenter. Long flowing hair, faded blue jeans and just a couple of backup musicians and she sounded absolutely wonderful. I met her in person that day and got her autograph right there beneath the shadow of the tallest buildings in New York City. That was almost 10 years ago and although it’s one of my favorite memories of the Twin Towers it somehow makes it all more difficult to move into the coming week – knowing that right where I stood, such an awful thing later happened.

I wasn’t in New York City on September 11th. Luck (or maybe something else) found me on I-95 heading North to my company’s Rhode Island office and all I could do was listen to the radio and hear reports from around the city as the Towers fell. When I heard about the first plane hitting, and then the second, quickly followed by reports from around the country of highjacked planes and the evacuation of major cities, I stopped at a parking lot of an empty movie theatre to call my husband on a pay phone. The sky was bright blue and there I was telling my husband to turn on the news because the country was under attack. We made a hasty plan for him to leave New York with our 9 month old son if he absolutely had to and where we would meet as I drove back towards home.

Well – it’s 6 years later and it’s all boiled down to individual accounts of ‘Where were you on September 11th’, that hardly ever come up anymore. Because I’m a New Yorker, I think about it often. We lost many friends that day. Firefighters we knew from the old neighborhood, business colleagues and classmates. I tell my kids about it. Charles, my 6 ½ year old, has seen photos and he knows that one day when we used to live in New York, some terrible people flew planes into the big buildings. On Tuesday, we’ll try to find a memorial service somewhere in town so that he can stop for a few minutes and remember. I’ll have a good cry but mostly I’ll just be missing Autumn in New York.

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Saving Your Pennies.

My life long motto has always been - expect it when you least expect it. It pretty much always seems to prove true. If we’re worried about one thing - the opposite pretty much usually happens. If I take my eye off the ball for a second, that’s when it comes crashing my way. So having this motto, I’m always surprised when I don’t see something coming. I mean - I should get it by now right? Wrong.

Case in point - today we made a trip to the ER. It wasn’t one of those, “You’re going to poke your eye out with that thing - oh look, there you did it” kind of events. No, it was one of those “perfectly quiet mornings, everything under control, bam - should have been paying attention” kind of events. My two year old loves Mickey Mouse. As a matter of fact, we just got back from Florida where he got to spend every waking moment either waving to or waving goodbye to “My Mouse”. So, this morning I thought it would be perfectly acceptable to allow him to put coins into his brand new “My Mouse” bank. He loved the idea. He sat there with a wad of change from my husband’s pants adorably dropping them in one after another. I even commended myself for giving him an activity that would simultaneously teach him the value of a dollar while giving him practice with those important fine motor skills. Until he swallowed one.

Well - swallowed is really a gross exaggeration. It was more like lodging it in his throat so that his face almost turned purple and his breakfast came up. Much to the dismay of my 6 year old Charles who was busy watching Toy Story for the 342nd time, I had to move quickly. I ran Charles next door to my girlfriend and basically flew to the hospital with one hand on the steering wheel and one on my son. (This is a great position on your back by the way. My chiropracter especially likes it. Makes him a fortune.)

One construction road block, three x-rays and $150 dollars later, the foreign body in question made it down to his stomach and he enjoyed a morning of playing peek-a-boo with the nurses. Money well spent.

So now, after calming down from the hysteria of attempting the Heimlich maneuver and rushing to the ER I’m relaxed enough to laugh about it. But just a few short hours ago it did not seem all that funny. And I’m sure that over the next few days, as I’m searching for my son’s personal internal savings account, it will not be very funny then either.

Next time I think we’ll try a Money Market.