Rosie's Rainbow Birthday Cake (part 2 of 2)

Rosie told me that she wanted a "rainbow cake" for her birthday months ago, and I had it all planned out, I did my research and was ready. But really, you can only know what you got yourself into once you've done it yourself. The ultimate result was a lovely (if a bit fragile) cake that looked almost exactly like I thought it would. See, the birthday girl was happy with the results and that's all that matters.

Happy birthday, Rosie!

To make the cake, it required two boxes of mix, oil, egg whites and water as directed. I bought special "food paste" at Williams and Sonoma to get the vibrant colors. Keep in mind if you use these to color your food: a little red goes a looooong way. My red and orange look pretty similar, but that's not for lack of yellow in the orange!

There was about 1.5 cups of mix per layer. The indigo/violet looked a lot more violet in real life instead of the gray it looks on camera.

A few of the layers stuck to the pans after cooling and I was a little inaccurate getting the layers to line up as you can see in the photo of unfrosted cake above, but after two entire tubs of frosting were applied, it all smoothed out!

The happy birthday song was sung, the candles blown out... (oh, hey, there was bowling, too)

and we cut open the cake! 

Much fun was had by all.

Baking a rainbow cake, part 1 of 2

Rosie's bowling party is tomorrow (as is Dash's karate promotion test) so I needed to get the cake started tonight. It's closing in on midnight and I just got the layers in the fridge a few minutes ago! The red, orange, and yellow layers are looking nice!

Green and blue layers turned out great, but indigo's looking pretty gray. The red food coloring must have had some orange in it... Oh well, it'll be on the bottom and nobody will pay it much attention. Wish me luck with the icing tomorrow! Rosie wants sky-blue icing with clouds drawn in.

A multipurpose room: dreaming

A link to this article about an "origami apartment" featured in the NYT was posted on Laughing Squid today, and really activated my imagination. By creating a single cabinet with moving panels, hinges, folding surfaces, and storage spaces, a tiny room has been made liveable. From the architect:

"A single oversized custom cabinetry piece is inserted along one wall. The cabinet is packed with all of the functional components of a larger apartment including a bed, a nightstand, a closet, a home office, a library, kitchen storage, and most of the lighting for the room. An endlessly reconfigurable series of doors and panels can be opened and closed to create the spaces of the apartment."

This got me thinking about my ideal office/work space. I have an office and never use it because it's just got a big, immobile, uncomfortable, heavy desk in the middle of it. I want to chuck the desk and have multiple tables to set up an art space instead. I am so ADD when it comes to creating; I can't decide what craft or media to stick with because I want to do them all! Call me a multi-media artist, if you will. I want a sewing table and cabinet for sewing, a drafting table for drawing, a large flat surface for screenprinting (or stringing beads or setting up a lightbox to photograph work), a comfy chair to sit in to knit, a surface to set down my laptop to design/blog/surf for ideas, and tons of storage nooks, crannies, and containers to store all the supplies. On top of that, I want to be able to roll, fold, tuck, angle or flatten all of the surfaces to fit my needs OR best case scenario, be able to shove them all to the side in case I need floor space.

On top of that, I want to be able to cover all the stored items with curtains as needed, so there's no visual clutter from other projects when I'm focusing on one in particular.

A pipe dream? Of course! But, I can imagine it, so I know it's possible, even modified.

A furniture flashback: when I was a child, my room had this one awesome piece of furniture. The bed, dresser, and side table changed, but my "hutch" was always there. It was a large, shiny, white rectangle, possibly six feet high, with a seam horizontally splitting it at the center by a hinge. If I grabbed and yanked a nested, hinged piece that was attached at the top, a table would swing down and the piece I grabbed would become a table leg, with the table originating from the horizontal hinge. Once the table was down, the hutch revealed its nooks and crannies inside where I stored all sorts of stuff. I have tons of memories of opening that hinge when I was much too small to really be opening it, then praying that I caught the edge or jumped out of the way in time, so the table didn't crash down on me!

I want all my tables to be like that, to fold down from the wall, then tuck back in when I don't need them.

The article also made me think of a science fiction story written by Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy, where a poor soul, Thorby, finds himself on a spaceship. He's spent all his life as a slave, then is freed and rescued to find himself in a small prison: a room with no windows, no door, just four white walls. After hours of frustration, a member of the ship's crew comes through a sliding panel (a door!) to check on him. By just waving his hand over a space near the door, drawers pop out of the walls and close, a small bunk raises up out of the floor, a sink is revealed, as is a table and chair that slide out of the wall. It wasn't a prison at all, it was a palace compared to what he was used to. Waving the hand again stowed all of these items away, leaving Thorby with just four walls again; but, he was now empowered to bring them out whenever he wanted and leave the room at will.

Can I have sci-fi now? That is the room I want. The origami apartment from above is getting closer to Heinlein's vision, but his visions of the future were so far ahead of reality, it's stunning. I need to read that story again! And dream of furniture shopping.

Wordless Wednesday: Weegee

Wax on... wax off. Wax on... wax off.

Dash started taking karate lessons in July 2010 (over a year and a half ago) but I only put him in one class a week, was inconsistent about making it to all the classes, and then I took him out for the summer. Not the best way to learn something as complex and skill-building as karate, but necessary. With summer camp eating up most of our discretionary funds, it was a budget thing. When he went back to classes in September—twice a week this time!—most of his buddies from the previous class were already blue belts and he was still a white belt. Not a big deal, except occasionally when he saw that he had better form than the blue belts. Then it rubbed a bit.

HIZA GERI! (knee kick, to you and me)

Fast forward to this past week, when he told me that yes, absolutely beyond a doubt, he did want to take the promotion test for blue belt. I was dubious, because while he does have good form and can punch and kick with the best of the blue and white belt students in class (yellow belts, not even close yet, sorry), he has absolutely no recall for the Japanese terms that Sensei uses or the patterns in the kata. He watches the other students and faithfully does exactly what they are doing. I'm concerned that he won't be able to perform solo or be able to answer questions that are directed at him. He'll be required to announce the kata that he's performing, "tai kyoku sono ichi!" and to perform it solo without error, which he hasn't done yet. I decided that it was a good idea for him to go for the promotion, if for nothing else but to have the experience of taking the test under his belt (a hopefully blue belt, sometime soon enough). Sensei will let him try again and correct mistakes that he makes until he gets it right at a later time.

Dash has got the right feet and hands up, the blue belt doesn't.

He may have had a breakthrough today, though. I've been trying to figure out the best way to activate his memorization skills, and realizing that we are utterly failing with the flash-card method. The blocks, punches, turns, and steps in the kata have been confusing, and I floundered to give him something to visualize: "Imagine the shape you're following is like a capital I!" I told him. But the rest didn't make any sense.

Working on fighting stance (Dash has the right foot forward)

In the car ride on the way home from class today, I'd been really trying to figure out a way to break down the kata in a way that Dash could practice it in his head, anywhere. A pattern came to me and I got him to repeat it with me. There are 20 steps in the tai kyoku sono ichi and three stages with hands and feet working in unison.

The arm movements are:
1. block, punch, block, punch, block, punch, punch, punch (ki-yai!)
2. block, punch, block, punch, block, punch, punch, punch (ki-yai!)
3. block, punch, block, punch, block (end)

The leg movements are:
1. turn, step, turn, step, turn, step, step, step (ki-yai!)
2. turn, step, turn, step, turn, step, step, step (ki-yai!)
3. turn, step, turn, step (end)

See the pattern? So easy to repeat once you get into the rhythm of it. Dash got so good at the repetition that once we were home, I pretended like I was a puppet and had him call out the moves while I performed them! I'll get him to practice himself a few more times every day before Saturday as well as get one more class in before then, and here's hoping he does well on his test!

Hey do you all remember what else is going on for Saturday? Rosie's bowling party! I've also got a cake to bake, goody bags to pack, and balloons to obtain. Can I have a clone for Saturday? I will definitely need two of me, for sure.

Parent-Teacher conferences were today

Rosie is in third grade and about to turn nine; Dash is in first grade and just six years old. When Rosie was six, she was in kindergarten and was having all sorts of issues adjusting to public school. She wasn't paying attention in class, she was pestering her classmates, she wasn't finishing her in-class work, and overall was having trouble focusing or making bad decisions and was very hard to motivate, so her teacher put her on a behavior contract. So, it's three years later and apparently, she's an ideal student! She's adjusted well, is polite, keeps to herself, works independently, gets her work done, is testing well, and the only complaint that the teacher could manage was that she wasn't keeping her desk tidy. I'm totally okay with that.

The conference with Dash's teacher was another experience altogether. The teacher started out with, "I'm really concerned about our little guy." Never the greatest opening, but I'd prepared myself given all the extra reading stuff he's been coming home with. The reading, or lack of progress in reading skills was really of most concern to her. She expressed that Dash is a very hard worker, super polite, well-liked by all the other kids and plays well with them. He's more of a people-pleaser than Rosie ever was and wants to finish his assignments and get the answers right. He seems to be having a retention problem? Or a recall problem? He has difficulty answering back facts you throw at him, or memorizing lists, data, or naming words. Flash cards are not getting him anywhere.

I was noticing this when I was trying to help him study for his karate test. I'd tell him, "Dash, 'hiza geri' means knee kick and 'mae geri' means front kick, okay? Now, can you tell me what 'hiza geri' means?" And he'd answer, "Side kick?" This would be after practicing these words for half an hour with him, at least once a week for the past four months. I was pulling my hair out. It could be that he's just a young first grader, with a June birthday — some of the kids in his class are as much as nine months older than him and most have surpassed him. Or, it could be an actual learning disability. What's amazing, though, is that if you read him a book or a short story, he'll have perfect recall on all the details in the narrative. He's also incredible with his recall for details —names, vocabulary, colors — in certain TV shows and movies, down to if you hear a random song playing in a grocery store, he can tell you what movie soundtrack that he'd heard it played on.

He's not just having trouble with reading, he's struggling with writing as well. Here's an example of the writing he's been doing in class. I'm sure there's an elaborate story here with incredible amounts of detail, because that's the sort of story he tells, but I can't decipher the strings of letters. After a quick scan, I think he's talking about going shopping with me at Target for all the toys he wants for Christmas, but that's a shot in the dark. Mrs. S told me that her heart went out to him on this one! He was working incredibly hard to express himself.

He's so charming, sweet, and obviously intelligent that the teacher and I are at a loss. We'll just keep doubling up with intensive reading and writing work at home and at school and hope that it sinks in. Maybe he just needs time and attention, like his sister. If he does need some outside help, we'll find it for him. Anyone out there reading this, does what he's experiencing sound normal? common? treatable with therapy?

What I'm actually hoping for is that things work out for Dash they way they did for Rosie. We struggle for a bit, let him know that he needs to work at this(skating along is not okay anymore) and when he's nine, this issue will be long gone. Exciting new issues will arise to replace them, no doubt!

Rosie and Thea, BFFs

KellyGo's Thea and my Rosie have known each other since they were infants. Rosie, Monkeyrotica, and I visited the hospital on the day Thea was born to Kelly and Todd in December 2003 and the two girls have been the sweetest friends ever since. I just rummaged through our vast photo archive and, while I'm not the greatest at documenting everything, I found an image of our two girls together represented for every year.

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

I wish they'll still be "BFFs" when they are old ladies together! Cheers to our girls. They rule.

The Vices that Made Virginia, Celebrating

Monkeyrotica and I went to the second annual The Vices That Made Virginia, a sold-out annual event supporting sustainable food and agriculture for our second year. We had really enjoyed last year's experience, with great food, amazing wine and spirits, and fantastic people, so when we found out they were repeating the event, signed up immediately. The cherry on top to the soirée was the event's date: Monkey's birthday. We headed out, ready to enjoy ourselves. Taking a lesson learned from last year's cold and muddy experience at Woodlawn Plantation, I layered up my clothes, sported my galoshes, and managed to be perfectly, appropriately dressed.

An Arcadia t-shirt for sale at VTMV

When we arrived, we were a little early and the main tent hadn't opened yet, but the space was already thronging with people. What was the deal? I overheard someone talking about getting their tickets through Living Social, an online site for crowdsourced discounts, and understood immediately how and why the overall scene was much different from last year. Last year's group of people were primarily associated with the food industry, or the sustainable ag community, or just really into the restaurants/wineries/distilleries that were being featured. The overall effect for the previous event was a group of afficionados who felt privileged to be at an "Event Celebrating the Cause." This year, it was more like being at a tourist attraction. The Living Social ticket included an early arrival with a pre-event, cut-the-line bus pass for an additional fee. That explained that.

We got in line for drinks, then walked over to check out the handrolled-cigar area with my cranberry champagne in hand to catch a glimpse of the artisans at work. I think Monkey was able to see what was going on, but there were too many people blocking the low table, and I couldn't see a darned thing, so I hung in back until he showed up with his treasured new cigar in hand. We tried to head back outside, but were stuck. There were a clump of morons who were standing around, lighting their cigars right in front of THE FREAKING DOORWAY, oblivious to all the people on either side of them who were either trying to enter or leave the building. We pushed through, but I couldn't help ranting to Monkey about what idiots they were, and how despite getting shoved, they were all still in the same clump, being idiots, and I started feeling a lot better. Maybe it was the champagne or just that I let off some steam, but this is when I started to have a good time.

Portrait of Nylonthread and Monkeyrotica at Woodlawn Plantation

We skulked over to the main tent as the clock was closing in on 4 p.m., when the event was scheduled to open. Monkey knew (and the Living Social crowd likely did not) that the most scrumptiously delicious, large, and fresh (local, sustainable) oysters would be waiting at the back of the tent. We made a beeline for it. I scarfed down about a half dozen of the lovely oysters while he put away close to three dozen of the plump and briny delicacies. Nearby, there was a table set with Oysters Bienville, a salad of julienned brussels sprouts with maple-roasted pecans, and a selection of roasted root vegetables, all of which I sampled. All were wonderful and I couldn't help but think how lucky I was to be surrounded my so many fabulously prepared foods. The tent was filling with people as I squeezed my way past tables of food: pork shoulder, cheese ravioli, thinly sliced cured hams, and stopped at the shrimp and grits. The cook from Tallula was wonderful to watch — an artist with his presentations and adorably smiley and sweet to boot. As soon as he brought out a tray of small bowls each with shrimp lovingly arranged on a grit cake, cream sauce, then dressed it with basil oil and micro-greens, all the bowls were gone within 15 seconds. Monkey and I were squeezed next to his table and became entranced by this, so we timed it.
 

Tallula Eat Bar's shrimp and grits, just plated

I love this photo. I was waiting for just the right moment, after the cook finished plating all the dishes and before they were gone and almost missed it! See the grabbing fingers?

Sipping butternut squash bisque

We left the crowded tent to catch some air (read: Monkey got his cigar on) and the remaining shafts of sunlight for the day. We estimated the crowd count totals: 800? 1,000 people? A waiter handed me a small cup of butternut squash bisque and I savored every creamy drop. There was a photo booth, stocked with period costumes and wigs for silly people have record of themselves being silly. The staff were putting out space heaters around the tables where every third guest was smoking a cigar. Replenished, we headed back in to brave the longest line: pulled pork with apple-herbed coleslaw. People were queued up from the front of the tent to the back. We were feeling patient, so found the tail-end and stood. After finally making our way to the table, we enjoyed our servings. The pork was nice, but lacking in smoke flavor (however, there were smoked pig heads adjacently displayed — bait and switch?). Perhaps because of the large crowd, they weren't able to prepare for the large quantities with a smoker the way they did last year and went for oven roasting instead. Still tasty, and the slaw was a perfect accompaniment.

As we made our way to the front of the tent, we introduced ourselves to and joined a trio of friends at a small table and began making small talk with them when someone nearby yelped, "pies!" A swarm of diners advanced on the dessert table, and like a seething mass, dove in and out with multiple pie slices. The adventurous types at our table (not me! I watched and laughed from the sidelines) arrived with arms full of doubles of each selection for the group: chocolate-bourbon pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and key lime pie. I had one slice each of the key lime and pumpkin. Those sweet and creamy desserts called an end to our outing. We said our goodbyes and headed off to get the kids.

Happy birthday, Monkeyrotica, I hope you enjoyed our evening out! I wouldn't have missed any of its flavors, sour or sweet. Much love to you.

November is always nuts

There's always plenty to write about in November, so there will be plenty of content fodder here this month, no worries! Whether I'll run out of momentum after putting up a post every day (for NaBloPoMo) is another matter.

Monkeyrotica's Birthday, 11/5

This weekend is Monkeyrotica's birthday — same day as Guy Fawkes' Night — and we're celebrating in style. We have tickets to "The Vices that Made Virginia" a sold-out event at Woodlawn Plantation tomorrow night. From their website:

"The Vices That Made Virginia is a rollicking outdoor celebration of the region’s finest farmers and food artisans ... a lively evening of bourbon, bluegrass, oysters, beer, wine and so much more – all designed to showcase the very best of Virginia."

We are going to have a blast!! We went last year and had such a wonderful time, talking, drinking, and eating with a great crowd of people—lots of real characters, too. I'm glad we can make it again. I doubt they'll be burning a Guy Fawkes effigy, but who knows? That would be a spectacle. Note to self: wear warm clothes and shoes I don't care about; it's outdoors and there's mud. Happy Birthday, Monk E.! Also big thanks to my parents who will be watching the kids while we're out.

Rosie's Birthday, 11/13
Right after we have Monkey's birthday, Rosie's is just a week away. She has invited a few close friends to join her at the bowling alley, to bowl in her 9th birthday. The party package includes pizza and soda, which makes me sigh—Rosie won't consume either, and they don't allow outside food in the alley. We'll have to find something else off their menu for her and hope the other kids don't notice. The challenge for me: Rosie wants a rainbow cake. Have you seen these? It's a six-layer cake with ROYGBV in the individual layers, she wants sky-blue icing and rainbow sprinkles. I haven't made one before and I'm planning to bake this one myself. Maybe I should do a trial run before next Saturday... Oh, and I talked my close buddy Staci into throwing her son's party at the same time and place! Since there are usually two parties rented in every slot, at least we'll be next to friends. And our sons can party in the Donovan's lanes while our daughters party in Rosalie's.

Craft night, 11/20
Other things going on? I have a craft night planned for November 20, which friends and I were chatting about on Google Reader before Google killed it (man, I'm bitter, I can't stop talking about it!). I'll have to check in with the interested parties and coordinate via email, invite, or G+. Heck, maybe I'll use the phone, who knows? We were going to knit, as a few of us took a knitting class last year and I might be the only one keeping up with it. We were all going to work on projects and help each other start/finish/fix what we couldn't figure out. The last time I was at my mother-in-law's, she destashed a huge bag of yarn on me, so I can offer some skeins to my friends. The kids were interested, too, so if we are all working, maybe they'll join in and learn something!

A big incentive to having a get-together at my house is that it'll make me clean up, which the place dearly needs. It's just clutter-heaven right now and we need to put crap away, donate, recycle, toss, anything.

Winter dance performance, 12/18 (coming right up!)
I'll also be practicing for the Winter Dance performance for the next month. I take a modern dance class on Thursday nights and we have a much larger group this year, with about nine teenagers and three adults. There's a holiday party every year and the Director, Mrs. H, invites several classes to perform in the studio with a packed audience of parents, siblings and family all sitting on the floor and standing room only. Our class is dancing to a Mannheim Steamroller song again, but this time we have props: a wand with very long streamers attached. They are incredibly fun to dance with. Really, I'm having way too much fun with them in class and Mrs. H has called me out for playing with them too much. Hee! I leave you with a photo of Monkey and me waiting for the dance recital to start from this past summer (I've got my stage makeup on and my costume's hairband).

Dash is reading, finally.

Dash, reading on his own, in bed. (Totoro photobomb!)

Dash is in first grade. At the end of Kindergarten, he still wasn't reading many words, despite having an amazing vocabulary, an incredible imagination, lots of work with flash cards, and a very book-friendly home. I tried to engage his imagination by telling him reading was like being a spy and solving secret messages, but he just wasn't interested. He loves to be read to, but reading the words himself just took too long and seemed to consider actually sounding out each word to get to the message in the story to be a chore. His generation wants immediacy! Heck, I can find a particular episode of Voltron (a cartoon series from 1984 that only lasted two seasons) on Netflix streaming within a minute, what's the point of slogging through a book?

Since he started first grade, his teacher told me initially that he would catch right up with the other kids, not a problem. That's what they do in first grade! A few weeks later, a message was sent home that he was being put in an intensive reading group to bring him up to grade-level. I'm not sure what intensive activities they're doing at school, but they've been sending home a pouch with a series of easy-reader books and we sign off every night that he's reading them to us. We are also doing our best to read 2 to 3 books of his choice to him a night. It doesn't seem like much, but since we have to wrestle books away from Rosie and she's been reading since she was four years old, I just figured that Dash would come around and pick up reading at some point. We hadn't been pushing him.

It's been over a month since Dash started coming home with that special book pouch in his backpack, but the extra work has finally paid off. Yesterday, after driving home, rushing to get Dash to karate class, rushing home to take Rosie to art class, I finally got to eat a delicious dinner (prepared with love by Monkeyrotica) around 7:30. While I was eating, I had Dash do his spelling homework next to me (homework just started this week). When he finished, I got out his book pouch and asked him to read me a few of the books. He still wanted to be read a book, but I was busy clearing the dinner dishes and putting away food before I needed to leave and pick up Rosie from art class at 8:30. I paused to put him in his pajamas and got him ready for bed. I handed him one of his favorite new books "Earth to Clunk," and suggested that he read it to himself. I returned to the kitchen and the dishes.

The door to Dash's room is right off the kitchen and his voice carries. I could easily hear him reading aloud. He's had "Earth to Clunk" read to him so many times that he may have some of it memorized, but he slowly (with a few shouted requests for help) read it all the way through! I was so thrilled that I was late picking up Rosie from class because I wanted to get a good photo of him with his book! Cheers, Dash, may you enjoy many more increasingly challenging books in years to come.

Vacations are awesome.

Photos from a trip I never blogged about: 

For spring break 2011 the Strings went to Philadelphia, much like we did the year before. We stayed in the same fabulous hotel room (with the gigantic jacuzzi bath, perfect for entertaining chilled children after a long day of walking in the rain), at the cozy, historic inn in the Jewelry District. The kids loved the dining areas, which have continental breakfast in the morning and warm cookies after 3 p.m. The back dining room also had a floor-to-ceiling library with an eclectic collection of books. Dash pulled encyclopedias while Rosie perused the art books, and both of them generally acted like goofballs.

One fortuitous difference between this trip and the last one was that Kelly, Mike, Liam and Thea just happened to be in Philly at the same time we were! I had caught a tweet of Kelly's the afternoon that we were headed there; they had gone to New Jersey on a day trip, but decided to take a spur-of-the-moment side trip and had no idea we would be there too. How often does that sort of coincidence happen?

We met up for breakfast the next morning at Reading Market, and the Strings and the O's headed straight from there to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [Kelly, if you have any pics of your family from that trip, send them my way and I'll add them in!] Featured works from the museum: Duchamp's Fountain and The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Rosie and Dash are on the far side of the room in The Bride's photo, near the window, and if you look closely, you can see Liam's reflection in the glass, lower right.

Dash with Marcel Duchamp's Fountain

Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even

We split up from our friends after the museum to see different sights, but had such a fun time as a group, much more so than if we had gone solo. All the kids love goofing around with each other so much. We visited the Franklin Institute again—Rosie and Dash were clamoring to climb through the giant heart once more, Rosie wanted to visit the Mutter Museum (Dash thought it was too scary last time, so he and I went to a yarn shop instead), and Monkeyrotica wanted to try the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen, a historic Jewish deli in Queen Village. We also spent some time poking around an old-school second-hand book store, complete with an in-store cat. One of the highlights of the trip for me was sneaking away from the fam to the 12th Street Gym for the best step aerobics class EVAR! Not kidding. DC doesn't do it like that anymore.

We ended up at our favorite restaurant from last time, Jones, where Rosie and Dash split the fried chicken and waffles dinner (waffles for Rosie, chicken for Dash), and Monkey and I enjoyed some delicious cocktails with our comfort food.

Photobombing at Jones

Rosie and Dash are already asking to go back! I know there are many other wonderful, educational vacation spots out there, but Philly is just far enough away to feel slightly exotic and just close enough for a day trip. There are still plenty of spots there that we haven't seen yet, so until the kids insist they've had too much of Philly, it's an awesome destination for us.

Blogging for the sake of blogging

Why I Blog: For the Photos.
I love my family's photos. I love that they are patient, sitting and waiting on the hard-drive until I come by to browse and discover them. I just saw the ones below for the first time while going through archived photos last night and adore every little slice of life recorded in them, from back in March of this year. I didn't photograph them, Monkeyrotica or Rosie did, so I'm really seeing them fresh. I'm not even sure where we were or what we were doing back in March. It doesn't matter. They're mine and they're full of love.

Why I Blog: For Friends and Future Me.
The reason I started blogging in the first place was because of changes that were happening so fast in my life. I was pregnant and internalizing, not communicating well with family and friends about changes. This venue was perfect to get a dialog going with important people in my life, near and far. Years later, I am amazed and grateful to the former me, who thought to document my hopes, thoughts, dreams, good and bad. Looking back and re-reading posts from when my kids were infants, re-experiencing the joy of first steps, or reliving the horror of a missing child, makes me more whole, more me. These things are so easy to forget in a busy life. My kids are just-shy-of-nine years old and six-and-a-half now, and full of personality. Now that they've been a part of my life for so long, their every moves and things they say are no longer quirky novelties. They are known to me, adored and sweet.

Why I Blog: For People I'll Find along the Way. 

The community I found while blogging was also an added bonus to the writing. I found friends that I've now known for years who live in Oregon, Alabama, Canada, Ohio, whom I've never met. I read their blogs, they read mine; for a while, anyway. A couple of years ago, everyone moved over to Facebook or Google Reader and we commented over there. But now, since Facebook sucks and Reader is gone (SOB! so sad, I hate the people who took it away :-(!!!), we need to come back to the blog as a community. Let's move our conversation back over here.

Why I Blog: I Need Challenges.

I'm looking forward to NaBloPoMo 2001! I just fell out of the blogging habit when there were so many other social venue options. Twitter/Facebook/Google+/Diaspora/Reader/Buzz? Where to connect? Who is there? How can I get in touch with my favorite people best? Bob knows I can't do them all. It's mind-boggling and my head hurts just thinking about thinking about it. Bring on the blog!

So, I'm committed, for a month. I've got my make-up on, let's do this!

More posts in one month than in the previous eleven...

At the Udvar-Hazy IMAX theater, waiting for the Fighter Jets movie.

A tweet by Mary Lynn inspired this post:

"Part of me is considering doing #nablopomo this year just because I think it'd be hilarious to do more posts in 1 month than in previous 11."

I'm thinking of going through all of the awesome but unused and neglected photos that I didn't blog about for the past year and hit them all in one month. My excuse for everything, including not blogging regularly or even looking at photos that I've taken after pulling a camera from my face, is that I've got two kids in public school, with homework every night, I work full-time, and I dance, craft and socialize with friends. When do I have time to do all that AND document it? I don't. Or do I?

I might fail Nablopomo, again. But, I'm going to give it a try, again. If I do it, you get 30 posts from me, in one month, more than I've posted in the past eleven.

Rosie poses below the Enola Gay, displayed at the Udvar-Hazy museum.

Now, I just need to figure out how to get on the new blogroll system.

Rosie's Fairy Garden

A friend of mine who also has a young daughter suggested this fairy garden project as after seeing a post about it over here. We have corresponded about how her Katie and my Rosie love little things, like Littlest Pet Shop pets, Pixie Hollow, and other pretty, tiny things, so when she saw this project, she immediately thought of us. Just as expected, Rosie immediately wanted to make one, so she and I went to our wonderful local variety store to purchase a cheap plastic pot and a ceramic fairy figurine. We used craft/floral filler (reindeer moss?) that was around the house from an earlier project, rather than real dirt, to give a garden-like appearance. To finish the look she wanted, Rosie found a collection of tiny shells from our last beach trip, and voilà, a garden for a fairy!

She plans to add flowers later, but this was quite a success considering how impromptu our craft time was and how much she really wanted to finish her garden. She managed her time well enough, considering that she had five (5) homework assignments that she needed to complete before she could start it. Third grade homework, especially the terseness of the "dumbed-down" instructions, is already kicking all our butts. 

More of the weird and random...

A few years ago, I blogged about how some of my friends are connected to each other in bizarre, coincidental ways. I had a similar experience last night that made my head spin. I've written about how I met my husband, Monkeyrotica, through a personals ad, but not about why I was looking at personals ads in the first place. That's a tale that I was reminded of last night while I found myself face-to-face with the wife of my ex-boyfriend. Here's that story, from the very beginning.

I first met Andy when I was home for the summer after my freshman year of college. I was in a new place, didn't know anyone, so I was hanging out with my sister and her high school pals. He was nearby with a group of friends not in their clique; I have no memory of why we started talking, but we did and exchanged phone numbers. We had similar taste in music and in movies, but that's as far as it went. He was crazy for antique cars, performed in karate competitions, and talked up his experiences as the star of his HS distance cycling team. He was charming, charismatic, and came from new money; his father had built a local empire and his son got the spoils. There were certain personality issues that made it a summer romance and not a long-term one, in my mind: he was extremely anti-social, for one thing. He discouraged hanging out with his friends (bunch of "jerks") and had no interest in meeting the few I had—didn't want to "share me" on our dates. He never introduced me to his parents (we entered through his "wing" of his house without disturbing anyone) and when he came to take me on a date, he would honk from the driveway rather than make small talk with mine. This drove my parents to dislike him intensely.

Anyway, when I left for college after break I'd forget about him while busy with academics; when I returned for the summer he would start phoning again. I'd ignore his calls for a while, but once the boredom set in, I'd call back and we'd start up again. After I graduated from college and came home to stay, he was elated at first. He excitedly talked about having more time with me and started planning for a relationship. I played along for a little while, but really knew it was going nowhere—we had too little in common. My dad started taking an interest, negatively, and I found pages of personals ads left on the dining table after I came home from dates, with red circles drawn on good prospects. After a "disagreement" between Andy and me, I picked up the personals and seriously considered them. I chose Monkeyrotica's ad—not one that my dad had circled. I listened to the message on his phone box (pre-Internet in 1992) phoned and left my own.

Back to today: twenty years later, Monkey and I are about to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary and have two lovely children. Yesterday, I was out with Dash, the adorable six-year-old, at his karate practice. There was one other mom also watching her son and between poking on our iPhones, we started chatting. Her son was one of the two Jacks—the light-haired one, not the dark-haired one—an eight-year-old with a yellow belt. We'd smile at each other when one of our kids screwed up and got yelled at by the sensei. I learned Jack was an only child, but was born in the same year/month as Rosie, my gorgeous and talented older child. She lived nearby and had been in the DC area for a while, but was from Connecticut (where my family is originally from).

Our sons were paired up to spar together and I heard the sensei call out Jack's last name. Same as Andy's. I hadn't thought of him in forever, but my brain made the connection anyway. I asked, "Is there an Andrew in your family?"

"My husband," she answered. I followed up with questions about his family in case there was more than one person with that name in town, got affirmatives to all. I must have been noticeably freaking out, because she asked me, "Are you having a 'moment'?" I looked at her more closely, noticing her brown hair, brown eyes and that she was the same height and complexion as me.

I can't keep my mouth shut sometimes. I told her I used to date her husband. I asked when they first met and found that it was about 6 months after Andy and I broke up. She was my rebound? They married five years later, in the same month and year that Monkey and I were married.

Okay, so for those who are keeping track of coincidences here:
1. we both met our spouses within 6 months of breaking it off.
2. we were married the same month and year.
3. our oldest children were born the same month and year.
4. she is the same height, and has the same complexion, hair and eye color as me.
5. she and I are both originally from Connecticut, but settled in the DC area after living in other cities.

Inevitably, Andy and I are bound to cross paths at the karate studio. Perhaps we have already and I had no clue, without any context. I'm not looking forward to it, to tell the truth. I have no idea what I'd say as we didn't split on friendly terms. I needed to document this story, though—coincidences are very intriguing to me. Is there a reason that our paths are crossing again after all this time?

Happy post-first-day-of-school haircut Dash!

Pre-first-day-of-school haircut