the birthday party circuit

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So, besides my girl deciding that she’s half-fish this weekend, we also had not one but TWO birthday parties to attend. This makes three birthday parties in less than a month. It’s pretty sad when you realize that your 3 year-old has a more active social calendar than either of her parents.

On Friday evening, we went to a birthday party at the Jump Zone for Catie’s daycare friend Cole. I tried out the iPhone’s video camera and got this (warning: turn down your volume, the Jump Zone is LOUD).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kjo8tf1v5s
That’s 34 seconds of a tiny blonde blur right there. And it’s pretty much all I saw for the entire two hours we were there.

Finally, we managed to round up the kids and go have pizza and cake. The private room for birthday parties had a big inflatable throne, which I assume is for the birthday boy/girl to sit on, but all the kids took turns climbing on it.

Ava, Catie & Caitlin
(If you look closely, you can see evidence of the Thomas the Tank Engine cake. That blue frosting stuff requires soap and water to wash off, it won’t be contained by mere napkins alone.)

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party for Catie’s friend Ava at a local playground.

Catie at the playground

Of course, it was all fun and games until it was time to get the kids together for a group picture, at which point Catie crossed her arms and pouted. (She wanted to keep playing.)

Group pose time!

It’s a great park, and the party was a lot of fun, but I don’t know if there are adequate words to express how miserably hot it was. Ninety degrees, humid, and not a single breeze to be found. It was about as sweaty as you can get. Not that the kids seemed too terribly bothered by it.

Catie & Matthew

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this child more sweaty in her life. Before we left, I dragged her into the ladies’ room to splash some cold water on her face to try to help her cool off.

Roman and Catie
(If any of y’all remember the boy that Catie was caught kissing? That’s him. He’s a very sweet kid. And apparently he’s told his parents that when he grows up, he’s going to drive a mini-van just like his dad, and Catie will ride beside him. I think that’s the 3 year-old version of saying he’s going to marry her. I’m taking notes of all this for when they end up going to prom together in 15 years.)

The party was great, and I love that most of the other daycare parents seem friendly and nice. But it would’ve been a lot more fun in maybe a month or so when it’s 10-15 degrees cooler outside!

On the upside, though, spending all that time out in the heat made the pool feel extra-awesome on Sunday afternoon. So there’s that.

into the deep end

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This weekend was so busy that I’m going to have to cut this into two separate posts. The most important news item first… (dun-dun-DUUUN!!!)

Catie is no longer afraid of the swimming pool.

Trust me, this is huge.

A month ago, I had to bribe her to just to get her to stick her feet in the water. We’ve been to the pool a few times since then, and each time she’s gotten gradually a little more comfortable, but she still wouldn’t go past the two steps that lead into the pool. I didn’t push it that much. I figured that this was all just practice, and that next summer she’d be more comfortable.

Yesterday, we had my cousin and her gang come swimming with us. Elizabeth is probably just about as chicken as Catie is about the water. But you can use logic with Elizabeth (a skill Catie has yet to master), so I stood in the two-feet deep shallow end of the pool and showed Elizabeth, “Look, see, the water only comes up to here on me? And you’re way taller than this, so the water won’t be over your head if you come off the steps!” It worked. Elizabeth stood up in the pool, and she realized that I was right.

Catie stubbornly stayed on the steps and insisted the water was too deep. I pointed out that she’s actually a little bit taller than her cousin, so if the water was an ok depth for Elizabeth, it would definitely be ok for Catie. Catie finally eased herself off the second step into the water. And once they were both off the steps and in the pool? They were unstoppable. They hopped all over the shallow end like tiny kangaroos, they had us carry them out into the deeper water and spin them around, give them “horsey-back” rides around the pool, etc. It was great.

This afternoon, even though it looked like it might rain, Catie and I decided to quickly throw on our swimsuits again and go back to the pool. I thought we’d probably be there for five minutes before the storms rolled in and we’d have to leave, but we lucked out. The weather held out, and we spent an hour and a half at the pool, just playing in the water.

At one point, Catie was watching a couple of boys who kept jumping in the deep end. She wanted me to carry her over there so she could watch them. (There aren’t any diving boards, they were just doing cannonballs from the edge of the pool.) She watched for a few minutes, then said, “I can do that?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I asked her if she wanted to jump in the pool. She said yes. So I helped her up onto the sidewalk, and she walked over to the lounge chairs, turned around, and ran to me. I caught her around her mid-section as she jumped so that she wouldn’t hit the water too hard. We repeated this about 25 times. (For the record? That’s a pretty great upper-body workout.) A few times I didn’t catch her quite in time and her head went completely under water for a split second before I pulled her back up, but she came up laughing every time.

I’m just stunned. A month ago, she cried when I mentioned going to the pool. Today, she jumped into the deep end.

I don’t know when this kid is going to stop knocking my socks off with the things she does. But apparently it won’t be anytime soon.

PR Done Right

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**This post is not sponsored in any way, shape, or form. I just think this was a particularly awesome experience that warrants a shout-out.**

One of the major things people talk about at BlogHer is the swag. Last year, I brought home way too much stuff, and a lot of it eventually wound up in the trash. This year, I was way more cautious about only bringing home stuff that I genuinely wanted. The rest of it, either I didn’t pick it up in the first place, or I gave it to one of my hotel roommates.

Something I actually did want to keep, was a Play-Doh duffel bag. Sure, it’s nothing huge, but I knew Catie would like it, so it was one of the things I shoved in my suitcase to bring home with me.

Flash-forward to Sunday, at LaGuardia airport. My suitcase was 3 pounds overweight. The (not-very nice or helpful) airline attendant told me that I’d either have to take some stuff out or she was going to charge me $75. (Which, BTW, would be on top of the $25 I was already paying to check my one damn suitcase in the first place, and good GRIEF, don’t get me started on that sucky new airline policy.) I didn’t want to pay $75 for 3 pounds worth of stuff, so I quickly opened my suitcase and grabbed a few things to shove into my carry-on.

Without thinking about it, I put the Play-Doh duffel bag in my carry-on bag. It never occurred to me that Play-Doh would be considered a “liquid” (WTF?), and so, a few minutes later at security, my Play-Doh was confiscated by the TSA.

To be fair: I know this was my fault. I should’ve packed more carefully ahead of time. I was annoyed with myself, and I was irritated with the TSA (because come ON, you can see that the package is sealed and has never been opened or tampered with, and I also heard from other people who got their Play-Doh past the TSA without a problem, which just made me even more irritated). I mentioned something on Twitter about how the TSA took my Play-Doh, and somebody made a joke about how they actually took it so they could play with it themselves in their break room, and I really thought that was the end of that.

A few days after I got home from NYC, I got an email from a representative of Hasbro, apologizing for the trouble I had with the TSA, and asking for my mailing address so they could replace the Play-Doh that was taken. I was pretty surprised. None of this incident was Hasbro’s fault in the slightest. What am I going to say? “Damn you, Hasbro, you gave me a lovely gift for free and I lost it, and it’s all your fault!” That doesn’t even make any sense.

We got the new Play-Doh set in the mail yesterday. Catie is very pleased.

Catie loves Play-Doh

Catie loves Play-Doh

So, thank you, Hasbro. You made a little girl’s Saturday morning a lot more fun than usual.

**Honest to God. Not sponsored at all. I just thought they deserved a little praise there for handling the situation so well.**

To DVR or not to DVR, that is the question

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A couple of things today got me thinking about how much TV I watch. Over at MamaPop, they’re taking a poll to find out what show their readers want them to recap. I read the list – fully intending to vote on one of them – but then I realized that I don’t watch any of the shows they listed.

Then a little while ago, I saw that my lovely BlogHer roomie Angie wrote a post on Aiming Low about what shows to DVR this fall. Again, none of them are shows that I watch (and I don’t really have any intent of watching the new ones she mentioned).

So, it got me thinking… What do I watch on TV? And the list is pretty short.

* Dave and I have shows that we DVR and watch together during dinner: The Daily Show, The Soup, or Tosh.0. (Although, really? I think Tosh might need to be a “not while you’re eating and definitely not while the kid is awake” show.)

* Project Runway (which I’ve watched since season 1).

* I usually DVR shows like “Clean House” or “Hoarders” for when I just want to veg out and watch a show that doesn’t require too much brain space.

* Umm… I think that’s it.

That’s weird, right? Don’t most people have like, I don’t know, a sitcom or a serialized drama or something that they enjoy watching? And I don’t have any? I mean, I used to watch Lost, but now that’s over, so… yeah.

I think there’s a couple of problems here working against me. First, I’ve basically had no attention span since 2006. Apparently when I got pregnant with Catie, I also acquired A.D.D. at the same time. I know some people call that “pregnancy brain,” but with me, it never went away. Pregnancy did lots of weird things to me. Like, I can’t stand to wear earrings anymore either. (I don’t know why, they made me nauseated during my first trimester – something about the idea of poking that thing through a hole in my ear made me want to barf – and now, since I wear them almost never, they make my ears hurt and ache on the rare occasions I do wear them. It’s weird, I know.)

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh right, my attention span. (See? A.D.D.!) I could probably count on one hand the number of movies I’ve watched from start to finish in the last year. It’s just nearly impossible for me to sit still and follow a plot for two hours. So the idea of watching a serialized show where you’re expected to commit to following a particular plotline week after week? No. I just don’t think I can do it.

The second reason that I don’t watch TV much anymore – and I think this is probably the bigger reason – is that my prime TV viewing time is at night, after Catie goes to bed. And usually, by the time I finally get her to sleep, all I want is an hour or so of blissful silence before I go to bed myself. I’ve hit my noise tolerance limit for the day, I don’t want the chatter on TV, I just want… QUIET.

Is that so weird? Do y’all have a bunch of shows that you watch, or do you (to quote Depeche Mode) enjoy the silence?

Catie's Feelings

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Catie made a “book” at daycare last week, and this is too good not to share. So, I give you….

Catie’s Feelings

Catie's Feelings

The cover is a picture of her and a little boy in her class named David. They were playing basketball together. Do you see the hoop in between them that’s at their shoulder height? Aww yeah, my kid can slam dunk.

So, apparently the idea was to pick a few emotions, and the teacher asked them to draw it. Then she said, “So when were you happy/sad/whatever?” and she wrote on the page what the picture was supposed to illustrate.

Important to note: Catie’s drawing skills are, uh, less than stellar. She has a hard time pressing down the crayon hard enough to even make a visible scribble. We’re working on that.

"Catie is sad when Mommy said I didn't get a treat"
“Catie is sad when Mommy said I didn’t get a treat.”

See the misery and woe in those sad scribbles? That’s all because I didn’t let her have a York peppermint patty five minutes before dinner. Yep. Worst mother ever, that’s me.

"Catie was happy at the beach with Mommy and Daddy"
“Catie was happy at the beach with Mommy and Daddy.”

I love this one, not only because the sentiment is so sweet (aww, she remembers our fun trip to the beach!), but also because her drawing almost makes sense. Those scribbles actually look like wave lines in the ocean, right? Kinda? Maybe?

Whatever, *I* can see it.

And now, for our big finale (seriously, this is the last page of the book)…

"Catie was lonely on the playground"
“Catie was lonely on the playground.”

WTF? I have to be honest, I laughed when I saw this because it just doesn’t seem like her at all. I’ve never seen Catie lonely on the playground. This is a child who runs up to stranger-kids and says, “Hi, kid! Wanna play wif’ me?” So… uh… when exactly did she go all emo-kid on me?

I showed her the picture and said, “Sweetie, when were you lonely on the playground?”

She said, “Because, a mosquito landed on me, and it bit me, and it HURT!”

I said, “Well, baby girl, that means you were upset. Lonely means that you were sad and all by yourself. Have you ever felt like that?”

Her: “No, that’s silly!”

Right. That’s what I thought.

There you have it. Catie’s Feelings. Or something that she thinks means the same thing. Close enough.

Our Weekend

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This weekend, Dave taught Catie how to develop game apps for the iPhone.

Catie's really into learning how to develop iPhone game apps

She’s totally into it, and taking it very seriously.

I love this because it looks like Catie has a freakishly large man-hand

She’ll probably design the greatest app since “Words With Friends.”

Oh, and I got an iPhone 4! Which shoots video! Related: we sang happy birthday to my sister, and filmed it since Tracy is currently celebrating her birthday with friends in Italy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_dJWOwLBBU

Of course, it didn’t really occur to me until later that my sister can only access her email on her Blackberry, which doesn’t have YouTube capabilities, so she won’t actually see it until she gets back to the US. Oh well. Happy birthday, Tracy!

We also watched a heck of a lot of Xanadu. (And I learned that if you turn the phone to a landscape setting, it automatically adjusts when you copy it over to your laptop. Nice job, Apple! I won’t make any more oddly narrow videos.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF38NO646cg
(I’m still trying to get a video of her really singing it. So far, she kind of goes quiet as soon as she sees the camera. You can still see her lip-syncing it, but hopefully I’ll get a real video of it soon.)

(Also? This is how she always watches Xanadu – with lots and lots and lots of random questions about the plot.)

Sunday afternoon, we went to see the Wiggles in concert.

Catie & Dave at the Wiggles concert
At first, Catie wasn’t too sure what she thought about the whole concert thing. But she took the popcorn very seriously.

Honestly? That might’ve been one of the most fun kids’ concerts we’ve been to (and I’ve been to a lot of them). You can tell that these guys have been doing this stuff for 20 years, and they just have fun with it and throw in all kinds of improv lines here and there, which makes it really funny for the adults in the audience.

That said, I’m glad I didn’t take advantage of the chance I had to get closer seats, because Catie got a little claustrophobic from the crowd, so we spent a lot of the show toward the back where it was emptier. She usually reacts that way in crowds, same as Dave, so I wasn’t too surprised by it.

I did manage to get one decent picture of all three of us, although the weird iPhone flash thing makes it look like we’ve been dousing ourselves in self-tanner.

Catie, Dave & me at the Wiggles!

Also? Sweaty. It was HOT in there. I don’t know how those guys on stage do it.

Catie with the Wiggles

Overall, though? A pretty great time was had by all. But I can’t quite believe it’s Monday already.

a million lights are dancing, and there you are, a shooting star

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Last night I was looking for something to watch on TV that didn’t involve either Caillou or Dora. Catie was still awake and I was trying to get her to eat a pre-bedtime snack since she’d hardly eaten any dinner. It’s our typical Nightly Bedtime Struggle.

I happened to see on the cable guide that over on HBO, Xanadu was on. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Between Xanadu and Grease, I wanted to be Olivia Newton-John. All of my toys were named either Sandy or Kira. Because of Xanadu, I roller-skated in a dress while wearing leg warmers, and I had my mom braid ribbons into my barrettes. (If you haven’t seen the movie, that probably makes no sense to you.)

And yeah, I’ve seen Xanadu again as an adult, and I’m fully aware that it is not exactly a high-quality film. In fact, I’m pretty sure the people involved in the production were doing massive amounts of cocaine. (It was the 70s, after all.) It’s cheesy as hell. The acting is terrible, the storyline is convoluted and bizarre, and the weird “dissolves” between scenes look SO corny now. But whatever, I still love the music. In fact, I still have the whole soundtrack in iTunes.

Catie is just getting to the age where she likes musicals. The kid-oriented ones, of course, like the Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and the Wizard of Oz. And she’s seen a couple of (not risque) songs in Moulin Rouge and really liked them. So I thought I’d click it over to see what she thought of Xanadu. We missed the first half of the movie, and came in right around the beginning of the “All Over the World” song.


If you haven’t seen the movie, you might want to watch that to get an idea. It’s supposed to be a simple, “Let’s take Gene Kelly shopping to find him a snazzy outfit for his nightclub opening” montage, and instead it turns into… that. I don’t even know WTF that is, 30 years later.

(Also? Poor Gene Kelly. The guy is probably one of the most talented dancers of his generation – he did freaking “Singing in the Rain,” for God’s sake – and to get a gig in his old age, they put him on roller skates. Did your investments really turn out that badly, Gene?)

Catie was absolutely riveted, because… well, probably because it looks completely surreal and bizarre.

And then, there’s the finale. Oh, the finale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr6WidQqhu4
(Apparently if you want the full 8-minute finale and not a chopped 3-minute version, you have to deal with poor video quality. Oh well.)

Y’all, I couldn’t get Catie to sit down and eat her snack because she was too busy dancing around the living room (while keeping her eyes glued to the TV the whole time). As soon as it was over, she kept saying, “Again! Again!!” I had to search for the videos on YouTube for her to watch a couple more times.

This morning, as soon as she woke up, she asked, “We watch Xanadu again?” I said, sorry baby, it’s not on-demand and I don’t have the DVD, so we can’t watch it now. She said, “We can buy the DVD?” I told her I’d look to see if I can find it.

Since we couldn’t watch the movie, I turned the soundtrack on my iPod in the car when we drove to daycare. I had to explain to her daycare teacher why Catie might be singing, “Xaaaa-na-duuuuu” all day today. (Her teacher is in her mid-20s, has never heard of the movie, and likely thinks I’m completely insane based on my explanation.)

But you know I’m totally ordering the DVD on Amazon today, right? The only problem is that I’m not sure if Dave will ever forgive me for turning our daughter into an Olivia Newton-John fan.