Somewhere Over the Rainbow Unicorn

I was thrilled to go out to California for my niece Laurel's 4th birthday party at the end of September. It was a short visit due to work and family conflicts, but it was absolutely magical seeing my precious nieces again.

Laurel is becoming such a beautiful young lady, and is absolutely enthralled with all magical creatures. I think she gets her love for fairy-tale worlds from her father and grandfather. Mom had sent a Barbie Nutcracker Princess book out with me for the girls, and I must have read this to her half a dozen times in four days. When we reached the part about Barbie marrying the Prince and becoming a princess, she would clap enthusiastically for Princess Barbie, and sigh contentedly, "I just love this story, Auntie."

 

Audrey is a talking and dancing machine. She is 2 years, and 4 months now, and she talks up a storm in the daintiest, sweetest little voice on the planet. I couldn't believe the complete sentences coming out of her mouth, in this high pitch little chipmunk voice. "Look! There is a hummingbird on the apple tree!" was particularly impressive - especially since she already can distinguish the apple tree from the other trees in her backyard, and can identify a hummingbird versus a regular bird. And she loves to dance, especially to the silly Halloween mummy toy Robyn bought that plays "Thriller." Audrey even did some break dancing moves! Sadly, I think she might have inherited this from her father. I'm still traumatized by Beau's rotten taste in 80s rap music in our youth.

Laurel had a beautiful birthday party with her friends, and they decorated their cupcakes to look like rainbows. They had a rainbow pinata to hit, and she loved opening all her presents. Everyone (myself included) jumped on the unicorn bandwagon. She's all decked out as the latest member of the National Association of Unicorn Believers.

(Laurel's bed used to be my bed when I was a little girl. Its just perfect for a little princess!)

During the weekend, we ate dinner at Dad's old favorite restaurant, the House of Prime Rib. Dad first discovered it during his seminary days in Berkeley, and we went their several times with him through the years. Laurel and Audrey had their very first Shirley Temple drinks, a favorite of mine from time past. It must be a girly drink, because no one ever offers them to Alex and Ryan.

We also went to a lovely park where Robyn was competing in See Jane Run, a triathlon to help fun breast cancer research. Despite her unfortunate flat tire during the bike section, she still rallied through and completed the race. The girls played in the lake, and since Daddy had neglected to pack bathing suits, it wasn't long before they were playing "neche" in the water. I was on little girl duty at the time, and at first I would only let little Audrey undress, not sure how it would go over with Beau and Robyn for their little four year old to be one with nature. Laurel was supremely jealous, and kept begging me to let her go 'neche.' Several phone calls to Beau later, her persistence payed off, and she was given the all-clear-for-neche status. Our little rainbow unicorn princess was in seventh heaven.

I can't wait to see them again, and hopefully it won't be too long away or else Alex and Ryan may never forgive me. I'm still in the doghouse for going without them, but its hard when little things like school get in the way.

Soccer

OK, I totally lied, I'm going to talk about soccer! The games this weekend were great. My U5 team played a decent team, but still dominated... but I think it was under 10, so that's pretty good. They all just are little fireballs, its the only way to describe them. One of my players while coming back from scoring a goal said something like "I really like the chance to stretch my legs" ;-) I also discovered 4 year-olds like to be swung around in a circle when they score a goal.

My U7 team played a good team, but not up to their usual level, so we did end of winning I think 5-0... Oh, I'm sorry, I mean tying 0-0 like usual ;-)

Anyway, the best two moves of the game were two slide tackles, one from Will and one from Alex... Will's was not strictly necessary, whereas Alex's was saving a goal. Will did it a bit better than Alex.. but both were awesome. The other coach whined a bit at I think about one of them. First of all, a slide tackle is legal if it hits the ball first and comes from the front of the other kid. Even if the other player ends ass-over-tea-kettle on the ground, its legal... mostly I think. Anyway, it stopped a goal (Alex) and pleased the player (Will, not to mention his coach), so I'm OK.. I'm going to caution against them but secretly enjoy them. And I might have been a tad more sympathetic of the other coach if one of her oh-so-cool-sunglasses-wearing-player hadn't repeatedly grabbed on to, pulled, and thrown my players to the ground.. all missed by there coach and the ref, while my parents were SCREAMING about it. The "move all players to defense to give the other team a fighting chance and stop our scoring run" was over and my sympathies were off. Oh well.

And I just "thought of" a hypothetical scenario that pissed me off this past week.. I mean that might piss me off if it had happened to me. Briefly: Coach A has an overly aggressive and shall we say inappropriately rough player (player X). Coach B brings it to the commissioners attention, complete with accurate video-tape evidence. The commissioner asks Coach C to watch player X in their next game with that team. Coach C dutifully reports back and says not only was Player X very rough, but Player X's entire team is rough, even amongst just themselves, with Coach A and said parents not really helping. The commissioner then sends out a general reminder to all coaches about appropriate conduct. The *ONLY* person to write the commissioner back was.... you guessed it: Coach A. Complaining about Coach B's team ironically. Whom when the commissioner's team played, the commissioner saw no such problems on Coach B's team.

So, the commissioner is, I'm not sure what the term would be... probably irritated... if Coach A had been a bit nicer to the commissioner when his team played Coach A's team, then the commissioner might not feel so irritated, but the rough behavior is unacceptable. Anyway, that was my hypothetical scenario I thought of this past week.

Alex's Dream Home

Alex's school has their annual book fair going on right now, and on Friday, we joined him for lunch so we could go shopping. There was a huge display for the 'Wimpy Kid' books. We pre-ordered Wimpy Kid #5, which is released next month. But Alex also found another Wimpy Kid book he didn't own... the Do-It-Yourself Book.



I wasn't so keen on purchasing this book, but I also thought the idea of Alex keeping a journal was pretty cool. And if it encourages his love of reading... call me a sucker.

The book is about half blank pages, half fill-in-the blanks.

My favorites of what he has done so far:

Drawn Dad, Ryan, Granny (spelled Grane) and myself:

I love the fact that Carl, Mom and I all have glasses. And that he has drawn the smallest person here, Ryan, as the largest.

He also drew his own Zoo-Wee-Mama comic strip. In case you are unfamiliar with Wimpy Kid lore, the Zoo-Wee-Mama comics feature prominently. They ordinarily look like this:

And here is Alex's:

And finally, the piece de resistance, Alex drew his very own dream home.

Zooming in on the architectural plans, his future home will be free.

And it will include a bowling alley, a 50 foot long bed (wonder what he plans on doing there??) as well as a 100 foot massage table. I asked him why the massage table, and he said it was for me. That's my boy!

He's also planning to add a movie theater, a race track, four dining tables, a hot tub, an arcade, a pool (and his WILL have a diving board, I was told). The final square, off to the right, was the last addition. Its his "War Room." Nope, its not a room to plan his mother's presidential run. Its a room for army tanks and where he can play with all his war weapons. Now THAT would be Carl's boy.

Never so happy about being wrong

So I'll skip the weekend soccer games, because its going to just be another cheerleading-fest with my reiterating what incredibly awesome soccer-playing danger-boys I have... both are just great.

But I mean to write about Alexander... he had a water-based article he had to read and summarize... we were working through it together.. and I helped him write "Travis County (and my mom) is suing a house builder" (forget the context for a minute). So he's copying it onto the final piece of paper, and he says to me, "Daddy, shouldn't this 'is' be 'are'?"

So I look at him, then I look at the paper, then I look back at him, then I look back at the paper... and I think "Damn it if he isn't correct". We had originally had no 'and' before "my mom", so the singular "is" was the appropriate word. But then we'd put "and" in there, and poor use of parenthesis not withstanding, that technically makes the sentence plural, and "are" is correct... So he's correct. And I'm thrilled. I'm wrong, thrilled, and grinning inside like an idiot.

So I look at him and I give him a half smile, and I deliberately lie to him and say, "No, I don't think so, I think we want 'is'". And I keep smiling at him, and I wait. And he looks at me, and we keep waiting. And in my mind I'm daring him to argue with me, because that's of course exactly what I want him to do. And he finally says "I think it should be 'are'". And I smile a little bit wider and I say "Why do you think it should be 'are' Alexander"? And he answers "I don't know.... it just looks right". So I pretend to look at it again, and I say "you know, I think I'm wrong and you are correct, those are plural nouns we're referring to, so 'are' is correct, great job Alexander". And he finishes copying the sentence correctly.

So I couldn't believe it, I had made a minor grammatical mistake.. and my *BARELY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD* caught it. He doesn't know why, but he's already read enough to know it was wrong. I've never been more happy to be called wrong about anything ;-)

Anyway, if one of my offspring is this smart at age 7, I think his mom and I are in trouble, we'll have no chance at all against him by age 8. And forget when he and his just-as-smart brother team up against us ;-)

Suphero Party

  

 

Its been two weeks since we had Alex's superhero themed birthday party, but its taken me that long to recover and process everything.

I enjoy going all out for birthdays - I figure with two boys, I've got a limited number of years where I get to do this and then I probably won't even be invited to the party, let alone get to plan it. So I'm cramming it all in while I can.

I posted about the invites a few weeks back. I had done a lot of Internet sleuthing, and found lots of great ideas for the party. Turns out there are other parents that get even crazier about this than we do.

Like this mom, that in addition to dressing as Batgirl herself, felt the need to serve "Wonder Woman Cosmos" at her child's party... with little drink umbrellas handcrafted from vintage comic books. Who the hell has time in their life to do this kind of thing??

And this party... wow. Talk about blowing me away. I loved the cupcakes, and I tried to find a bakery here in Austin to make me some like that. I did... for $4 per cupcake. Seriously. I ended up with Walmart cupcakes, where the Batman, Superman, and Spiderman rings were included at my $5 for a dozen price. That's what I'm talking about.

Once we (okay I, with a bit of input from Alex and Carl) had settled on our theme for the party, the decision about whether to do costumes began. Since we have a pool, and its hard to keep the kids out of the pool, I thought costumes plus swim suits plus regular clothes was a lot to have people bring. So we decided on providing capes to the kids, and letting them wear them with their regular clothes and/or swim suits. The trick was how to make it not break the bank. If you search around etsy, there are plenty of crafty folks ready to sell you capes and masks for around $10 / child. That wasn't going to happen. But then I found the idea of using plastic tablecloths, and it worked beautifully.

My mother-in-law is a talented, crafty sort - the opposite of me. So she helped us out (massively) by creating these capes for the kids to wear, and the masks. The capes were cut from plastic table cloths bought at the dollar store, or the  party store for the pink and black which the dollar store didn't stock. The masks came from foam sheets, and I bought a tub of these cool foam glitter stars for the masks. To make the initials, she used construction paper and then clear packaging tape to affix them.

I'm in love with the capes... the kids all looked so cute wearing them.

For decorations, Carl made these cool giant superhero emblems out of cardboard being thrown out at Ryan's preschool: Superman's "S", the Bat signal, and Captain America's shield. Captain America is currently Alex's favorite superhero, so we needed him to be well represented. We had red, yellow, and blue balloons and streamers, and I had found some cool blue and red stars garlands.

As the children arrived, we gave them their capes and masks to wear. Carl was our M.C. and after everyone was there, we gathered outside. He explained to them that while they may look like superheroes, they won't officially be superheroes until they undergo superhero training.

First up was Attacking the Villains - each child threw two water balloons at the Villain target.

 
Second was the Tug of War, to test their Super Strength.

 
Next was the Obstacle Course, to test their Super Agility. Carl spent most of the night before the party planning and diagramming. This is what happens when you marry an engineer. ;)

And finally, the pinata - a Superman which Carl, Alex and Ryan were all quick to tell me looks NOTHING like Superman when I brought it home. Fine. Next time they can go to East Austin to buy a pinata.

 

 I even found a bunch of Marvel superheroes and Spiderman candy for the pinata at the dollar store. Score!

After the pinata, it was pool time.

 

They swam and played for about 45 minutes, and then we brought the cupcakes out.

It was a lot of work, but Alex had a blast and truly enjoyed himself. And we all had a "Super" time. :)