Baby Dunking

What kind of mother shoots her kid through a basketball hoop?  And more than once?!  Who would do such a crazy thing? 

Well, um, I did.  And Wesley couldn't get enough. 

StoryBook Theater in Seattle this Weekend

Just a service announcement for my West Side friends. I took the girls to see this in Kirkland earlier this month and it was a hit.  Tickets are about a third of the cost of Seattle Children’s Theater (which I doubt we will ever attend, because I’m not paying almost $150 to take all five of us to a kids’ show).  It was just right for anyone with enough attention span to watch TV for an hour.

The Frog Prince at Seattle's Museum of History & Industry
March 4 @ 11a, 1a, and 3p

Greetings!
The Frog Prince finally makes its way to Seattle! If you are looking for something fun to do with your kids this weekend, join us for this classic amphibian tale with a country-western style twist. StoryBook Theater shows are only 55-minutes in length, feature audience participation, original songs, and are sure to delight the whole family.
Plus, you can't beat our ticket prices - Only $10!

Tickets can be purchased by calling the StoryBook Theater box office (425-820-1800) or online - UNTIL 3PM on FRIDAYS

• StoryBook Box Office Hours:
  • Monday-Thursday: 9:30 to 5:30 pm
  • Friday: 9:30 to 3:00 pm

Tickets are also available at the door, 30 minutes before each show, based on availability.

When I Love Them Best

Kyla and Piper had a sleepover on Piper’s bedroom floor. Kyla really is sleeping, just responding to the camera’s flash.

 

Sound asleep, all tucked up in his corner.

The Sweater

Did you notice Piper’s sweater in the last  post?  My mom knitted it for Piper’s birthday. 

 

Look at this cute detail in the pattern and scalloped edge.  Thanks, Mom!

Seattle Aquarium

 

Piper was sick last Saturday when we were going to take her to the aquarium for her birthday, so when health and weather cooperated, we headed out again. Papa Jim joined me and the kids, mostly under the guise of a pack horse, for our adventure down on the city’s waterfront.   

 

 

 

Kyla is proud of being a big sister and a huge helper.  I’m proud of her, too!  Unfortunately, Wesley knows when Mama is not pushing the stroller and he has opinions about that.

 

The tidal pools were great.  Where else can you pet a starfish, stick a finger into a sea urchin, and then suck those very fingers?  Yahoo.

 

If I may confess, fish get a bit boring watch, but we loved the otters!

 

Silly octopus!

 

Aquarium entrance for 1 adult, 2 kids (Wes is free) with Microsoft Prime card, approximately $24 (instead of $46). With $11 parking, a total of $35.

This is about $30 too much.  We’ll stick with the zoo, and wait another 5 years before hitting the pier again.  But Wesley and Piper did both snore all the way home!

The Ballet

I had gotten tickets for a  Fancy Nancy ballet a little while ago, and decided to make them a birthday gift for Piper (knowing we’d take Kyla, too, of course). I thought it would be fun, but I was unprepared for how wonderful it was. 

 

 

 

By chance, I had gotten 2nd row seats!

[Just as a side note, our YMCA has an adult ballet class on Saturday afternoons. I’ve gone the last two weeks, and really want to keep going with it. I’ve never done anything in my life like this, as I have the flexibility of a marble statue without the grace and beauty.  It is paradoxically a good strength workout and an excellent way to relax for an hour.  When the instructor puts on gay music and we sashay and all sorts of other French things I haven’t caught onto yet, I grin the whole time. ]

I didn’t know that the first half was going to be other ballet pieces.  They played several Disney songs (Heigh-ho, Three Little Pigs, and my favorite, April Showers, to name a few) and had excellent and funny dances.  Then the best of the ballerinas did a piece from Sleeping Beauty (the classical ballet, not Disney).  After intermission, Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly was performed, which was fabulous, but not any more wonderful than the other pieces.

 

Kyla and Piper couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful it was.  With Piper in my lap and Kyla holding my hand, we were all transfixed.  They loved the costumes, the dancing, the ballerinas, the music.  If Wesley had been two years older, I would have taken him.

 

 

I can’t stop raving about it (please take your kids to see it, you will love it!), but I can stop typing about it now. 

Sigh.  I need to get the kids back into ballet classes.

Here’s the link:  http://www.evergreencityballet.org/perf-fancy.html

Final Birthday Party

The Fam came up tonight to celebrate Piper’s birthday with some homemade pizza and ice cream cake. Even Brian and Sandi were up, and I don’t know exactly how Sandi bewitched them, but Kyla and Piper couldn’t get enough of their newest aunt. Luckily, she and Brian spent the night and went to church and out to lunch with us next morning. 

We have such a great family!

Just Having Some Fun

I had a hard time making up the guest bed for Brian and Sandi with all the extra lumps in the mattress.  (Why is playing “bedtime” so intriguing during the day, but not at 8pm?)

 

The YMCA now runs an indoor playground at our community center three days a week.  “We” dressed up.

 

I haven’t seen these type of scooters since 4th grade PE class.

 

During a slightly windy morning, Kyla flies a kite.  She is mostly successful when she runs at top speed.  Wesley follows on his bike.

 

Dwayne and I played as well, and filled the Beast with storm debris.

 

There’s always an art project being produced.  Kyla wants to be an artist when she grows up.

A Sweetheart Birthday II: Evening

Piper got to have a complementary cupcake at the Barnes & Noble Café for her birthday.  We went as a whole family to have Valentine treats.

 

Wrapping paper is an accidental tradition, but I am deliberately trying to make another birthday tradition: a list of reasons why they are loved in our family.  For instance, Wesley “wrote” that he loves how Piper holds his hand in the car.  Here, Dwayne reads the list to her.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

We Love You, Daddy!

This is what Daddy saw when he came up on the night of Valentines.  Even Wesley, and perhaps I should say, especially Wesley, helped decorate the p0ster.

 

And this is what we were greeted to when Dwayne came home.

 

Don’t bother reading this, as it’s just a gripe note to myself.

I thought it was so sweet when Piper was born on February 14th.  It’s turning out to be a bit of a hassle.  Piper couldn’t celebrate her birthday at preschool on her birthday, because the class was too busy celebrating V-Day.  I spent the days before her birthday getting the girls to color and sign valentines for all their classmates and friends, in addition to making treats for the class party (when I needed to make birthday treats for preschool for later in the week), and doing what I could to make Piper’s birthday special on a day when everyone is only focused on Valentines and candy.  (Even the Y had a party in the morning the kids wanted to go to!)  And had I really been thinking about it, I wouldn’t have volunteered to make dinner for a shelter the night before.   But, phew, it’s for another year.

A Sweetheart Birthday I: Morning

Piper was born four years ago today. 

 

She woke up to presents on the table, one of them wrapped her  Special Wrapping Paper.  (Dwayne and I shot ourselves in the foot by making it a tradition to stay up late the night before a birthday, drawing [Dwayne] and coloring [me] a poster that doubles as wrapping paper.)  Here she 0pens her hooded kitty towel/blanket.

 

Then we hang it on the wall until we tear down that wall, sometime in April.

I had wanted to find her a ceramic tea set, but I could only find her this tin one, which turned out to be brilliant fortune.  Why would I deliberately purchase a set with nine tiny breakable items?

 

All the kids loved it enough to eat miniscule pancakes off the miniscule plates, washed down with multiple miniscule cups of tea, flavored to taste just like water.

Piper carefully pours tea for her guests.

May I Brag?

Piper read this story –quite fluently– to me the day before she turned 4.

 

[Lesson 60 from Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons]

Haven’t Yet Found a Month We Don’t Bike

For his birthday, Wesley got a little mini balance bike that I found on Craigslist  for $25.  It’s a homemade one, which I love, partly because it is well-crafted and partly because its smaller than the other store-bought Skuut bikes.

 

Piper has a regular pedal bike with training wheels.  She has ridden it less and less, and I’m not quite ready—in winter—to teach her to ride without the training wheels.  So when I came across a flat-tired Skuut bike for $10 at Value Village, I grabbed it,  knowing that used, these usually go for $50.  I doubled the original cost when I fixed the wheels, but Piper loves it and uses it whenever she has the chance. 

 

When we were at my parents’ house last weekend, Piper and Wes both figured out how to glide downhill with their feet up in the  air.  I think there is an implicit daring between the two.

 

Kyla just loves to ride her bike.  She’s great at it now.  Running along side her in the neighborhood I grew up in, I remembered learning to ride my own bike without training wheels.  I was much older.  But like her, I was certain I was the fastest thing on two wheels in the world!

Piper’s Super-Duper Someone-Loves-Her Cake

When Kyla turned five, she wanted to go fishing and have a fish (um, shaped) cake.  This burned into Piper's psyche the image of the perfect birthday cake.  My good friend, Elizabeth, who made Kyla’s cake in September, volunteered to make one for Piper as well.  So at playgroup today, we ate cake. 

Kyla’s cake in September:

 

The problem with this cake is the kids couldn’t decide which to eat first, the frosting, the cake, or the 7 pounds of M&M’s.  I couldn’t decide either. 

 

Piper was thrilled with her cake.

 

She still considers herself 3 1/2 since her 4th birthday is still 4 days away.

Susanne has been my kids’ mother-in-waiting, if you will, and they adore her.