L'Hermione - docked in Old Town!

A replica of L'Hermione, the ship that carried General Lafayette, troops and supplies for the American Revolution docked in Alexandria. Through a bit of confusion, I was able to score a pair of tickets after waiting in line - and a kind man in line behind me gifted me his second ticket so that I could take both Connor and Helen on the tour.

Connor's class has been studying Virginia history, and he is particularly drawn to all part of history related to war, so I knew this would be a big hit with him. Helen is not quite as enthralled with wars, but she does love old-timey things, so there was a change this would be a huge hit with her as well.

In order to pick-up our tickets, we needed to arrive at noon. Our tickets were good for touring the boat at 1:30. This left us plenty of time to walk around the dock, get a ridiculously thorough explanation of naval navigation at the time of L'Hermione, and have an ice cream snack.

Even before stepping foot on the ship, Connor kept muttering "this is awesome" and "thank you so much, mom". He then spent his time on the ship noticing details, asking about them, and reminding me of tidbits about the ship he had read earlier in the day.

This solidly qualifies as another one of the ridiculously great experiences Connor and Helen have gotten to go to because they live in this area.

Elaine

(almost) Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner! 6th Sweatiest City!

Good news, friends who are visiting soon! We are NOT the sweatiest city in the US! Good news, right? The bad news? Honeywell's recent survey selects DC as the 6th sweatiest city. I'm guessing there's not much difference between 1st and 6th, but I'm not planning on traveling and finding out.


Instead...we here at Chez Connor and Helen will be porting about personal fans this summer (at least when we are not actually immersed in water at the pool or beach), trying to keep ahead of the heat.


And you can, too! Just hop on the metro and head down to the mall on Friday. Snag a FREE fan, and then pack that thing in your backpack so when you're children start complaining about the heat, or you fear you will soon be melting like the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz you can whip it out and air yourself a bit. We will personally be comparing it to the combo fan / water spritzer that Helen acquired in Disneyland a few years back.






HUNDREDS OF HONEYWELL FANS BEING DISTRIBUTED TO HELP WASHINGTONIANS

KEEP COOL THIS SUMMER

 

WHAT:                         Honeywell Fans, in partnership with a team of scientists at environmental consulting company Environmental Health & Engineering, developed new criteria to rank major metropolises across the country on their potential “sweatiness” -- and, Washington D.C. has ranked sixth! To help Washingtonians prepare for summer heat waves, Honeywell will be deploying the Beat the Heat Street Team to hand out portable fans on Friday, June 12^th at the National Mall from 9am-4pm.

 

Washingtonians go to great lengths in order to cool down from climbing temperatures. The new, USB and battery operated Turbo® on the Go! portable fan from Honeywell provides strong air circulation in a convenient, compact design that folds, stands upright and pivots for personalized cooling that goes with you anywhere you need it.

 

 

WHERE:                       The National Mall | Washington D.C.

 

WHEN:                         9:00 AM – 4:00 PM, Friday, June 12^th

Think First

Like everyone else with a child in elementary school (and probably at all school levels), I am getting crushed by the end of the school year. It happens every year, and I feel about it the same way my research assistant feels about a project we do together annually - if it doesn't result in at least two heart attacks and one instance of forgetting our names, we haven't really done the project.

The biggest lessons I have learned is to back the eff off in June and respond quickly. As soon as an email comes asking for money to thank some person who has no doubt, done something amazing for my child, I put cash in an envelope with the person's name on it, and deliver it ASAP. I know these (mostly moms) are hunting down a lot of people, and they don't need the trouble of having to ask multiple times for something. I also quick-scan all class or activity party invites and decide what I can realistically bring, sign up, and move on. For Connor's classes, I always volunteer to bring a treat. He's picky, his friends all tell me how much they love my baking (which endears me greatly to them), and I know whatever I bring will be appreciated (and it might be the only treat at the party Connor likes). For Helen, I let the pinterest moms do their thing (thank you - your thing is always amazing), and take something that's easy to prepare. If someone needs napkins, I volunteer those as well due to a napkin ordering mistake I made a few years ago which resulted in more napkins being delivered to my home than I have been able to use in the past several years.

I do not start new projects.

I do not ask other parents to do anything for me. We are all dying.

I organize a carpool to every bday party that isn't in the immediate neighborhood. For whatever reason, most of Connor's friends' parents tend to drive their kids both ways to everything. But the last two parties, I simply emailed one other parents and said "I can drive either way, want to carpool" and both times, I had the parent practically kiss me through email at the thought of not driving. One of the times, we were able to shove a third neighbor in the car which was awesome because his mom was - at the moment my note came - fretting about having to say no to the party because she couldn't figure out how to drive either way (which is no problem when there are three kids and two parents have already offered to drive).

Finally, I try very hard to be thoughtful about every decision that is not on the above list, because I know when I'm busy I make crappy decisions. I have already scheduled a playdate when my parents are supposed to be arriving - and it's a playdate that got rescheduled to that time because I had to first cancel it about 45 minutes after making it when I realized I was not going to be home to host the playdate. Gah! So...I'm hoping my parents don't curse me too badly for either sitting at the airport for me waiting for the playdate to end, or having to hop on the subway or a cab.

I also try not to overreact, which is why I'm posting here, instead of on Facebook. For real, I received an email today asking me to BID ON A SPOT to recreate the first grade musical with parents on the last day of school and donate the proceeds to a music department in need.

My thoughts, in this order:

1. That performance was for our children. Yes, parents. I get it. We have all memorized every line in that show after hearing it sung over, and over, and over, and over these past couple of months. But guess what? That performance is not ours. Yes, we could recreate the show. We could also talk loudly to our children about how we ride bikes up hills faster, read better, and can totally kick ass at the monkey bars (well, maybe they own that last one). But we shouldn't. It's their show.

2. Rehearsing at home would only mean Helen would likely be prompted to sing the score over, and over, and over, and over - with Connor joining in frequently. I've lived that hell (twice), I'm not encouraging it to happen again.

3. It's a children's show. It was not designed for adults to perform. There's a fine line between engaging in something with your child and mocking them.

4. If there is a music department that needs money, surely we can get it to them without going through the trouble of a performance and the two or three rehearsals that are planned. Asking me to take part in this is a demand on my time that I simply don't have in June.

I'm thinking before responding to that email, and I'm glad I had the presence of mind to do so. I'll be sitting this one out. I hope the other parents do as well. And Helen, when you read this, let it be known that you were the best damn Crabby Cabbage that How Does Your Garden Grow has ever seen. And I hope you always remember how much fun you had sharing your role with Miley and how the two of you, in your words, "could not stop laughing during part of the show because you were having so much fun." I almost missed that performance, and I almost had a heart attack when I thought I didn't get it on film. I am so proud of the work you did - even if it did make me want to put ear plugs in and run outside because the thought of hearing the musical even one more time was driving me nuts when the show got close.

But you know what my role was? Costume assistant. And I had a ball meeting other moms to take on this task. You noticed right away that I had put special golden gems on your cabbage, and you thought they were divine.

I'll update with the video - probably some time in July.


Love,
Mom

World War II Planes

No shortage of cool adventures exist in our area, a true gift of being located near the nation's capital. We end up taking advantage of a small fraction of these events, largely because they can be very crowded and ultimately difficult to get to.

We did, however, make a point of heading down to the mall to visit Ed for lunch and see a recent display of World War II planes that flew over the mall on the 70th anniversary of VE day. I made this a priority given Connor's near encyclopedic knowledge of WWII. (He once had the chance to hang out with a friend of his and that friend's dad who is a military historian. They geeked out so hard on WWII trivia that they completely alienated another friend who could not have been more bored. I felt her pain, since I live with it almost daily.)

Helen does not share Connor's love of all things WWII, but she does share his love of leaving school early. She happily joined our party.

I felt a little guilty about pulling Connor out of school, because his teacher had sent a note a few days earlier asking parents to please keep their children in school. I emailed back right away letting her know we had this plan, but could cancel if needed. She knows how much Connor loves WWII. She not only agreed he should attend, she asked if he'd like to talk about what he saw later in the day! (Which was much to my delight, because presumably every word uttered about WWII to someone else is one fewer word uttered to me, assuming there is a finite number of words one can speak about WWII!)

We scored a parking spot about a block from Ed's office (thank you, congressional parking sticker!), got tossed off the nearby lawn briefly because someone left a package unattended, then finally tossed our blanket on the mall just in time to see the first of the planes start to fly over. Connor removed the binoculars from his eyes for a few moments, but not many. He was definitely loving the action. I had a field guide of the planes, but still had difficulty figuring out what plane was flying over at different times.

Upon his return to school, Connor ran into the gifted teacher and told her how he had seen his two favorite planes, neither of which I can recall right now. Even she was caught off guard by his excitement, and usually she doesn't tend to get thrown by kids being super intense about random stuff.

Elaine

Neverland

My friend is moving in a couple of months. We've been running at the track together since I started running in November of 2013 and more recently, we've been running on the weekends together. (I needed to get a lot faster to keep up with her on these 8 - 12 mile runs.) She has helped me get a lot faster, and is an absolute joy to run with as the minutes turn to hours.

She's also willing to run in terrible conditions, including the rainiest day ever when we both decided to brave the track - the only ones in our group to do so. But she's super smart, too, and knows when to hold back, when to push, and when to analyze what's going on and find an answer.

As we got to know each other, we learned we had more in common than running, including our oldest sons being very young for their grade, both of our sons play instruments in school, and we have jointly raced to school on many days when we didn't leave quite on time. (This last thing is distinct from just about everyone else in the neighborhood, who arrives at school early every day.)

A few days ago, Helen commented on how my friend was going to live where Peter Pan lived. And it was then that I realized Helen had confused the mythical place of Neverland with the actual place of the Netherlands.

When Helen told me about my friend moving to where Peter Pan was from, I bit my lip and said "she might as well be".

I'm going to miss her.

Elaine

From the backpack: Bats

And here's my entry for Connor from the backpack this week. I think he wrote it so sloppily the first time, the teacher made him type it. Even though Connor likes hunting and pecking around to find the keys, I think he's realized it's pretty tedious - and every assignment after this he wrote more neatly.

Elaine

P.S. Teacher, please teach Connor when to use less and fewer.

From the Backpack - How To Writing: Knitting

I keep intending to make this a series of posts, but looking back, I see the backpack posts are spurious, at best.

But how to resist these ditties that Helen brought home this week.

Her class has been working on "how to" writing.

The first one, she worked on with the Vice Principal - because "Mrs. C-M is a PROFESSIONAL knitter, Mom!" Helen was so thrilled to go down the hall and ask for help on her writing. I was thrilled that the vice principal has enough time to help a first grade student trying to work on her writing.

Step 1. You will need two needles and a ball of yarn.
 (this seems like a good enough way to start to me)

Step 2. You will need to loop the yarn 15 times.
 (this is when you ask your mom or the vice principal to cast on 15 stitches)

Step 3. Begin knitting.
 (easy, right? just start right up!)

Step 4. Repeat until long enough.
 (did I mention she was making another scarf?)

Step 5. Enjoy!
  (I love that Helen added a 5th step and that's this is what it is.)

Elaine

Out at Second! Softball update.

It's hard to remember just how much has to go right in order to get an out on the softball field. But Helen and her friend M. had a great display of what it takes a few days ago. All of the steps below are virtually unheard of in a first grade girls' softball game, and I have never seen all of them completed before Helen and M. pulled it off.




1. M. was playing third and cleanly fielded the ball.



2. M. threw to second to get the lead runner.



3. Helen moved toward second, since she was playing second base.



4. Helen caught the ball thrown by M.



5. Helen turned around and stomped on the bag - all before the lead runner arrived at the bag.



Out at second. Helen would go on to get one more out with a catch of a ball thrown by someone close to her and two unassisted outs (everyone bats in Helen's league, it doesn't matter how many outs the defensive team gets).

Elaine

More Tooth Fairy News

Although I was prepared to tell Connor about the Tooth Fairy, I never did. I just couldn't take the sadness. And that turned out to be a good choice, because a few months later, Connor pulled a tooth out, handed it to Ed, and then it was lost. Or so everyone thought.

Connor wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy asking for assistance, and you know what? Four days later the Tooth Fairy's helper found that baby tooth in the bottom of the washing machine. Sometimes it take a little while for the magic to happen, but it always happens.

After returning the tooth to its owner, Connor left it out for the Tooth Fairy and was greeted with the usual note, gem, and $1. Little did I know, I was setting the Tooth Fairy up for a very tall task.

Yesterday, Helen came home from school and announced she had lost her tooth, and then announced that really, she had LOST her tooth. It fell out of the tooth shaped necklace gifted to her by the nurse. Her friend Sara helped her look for it in the mulch on the playground outside of her classroom, but to no avail.

In the evening, Helen asked if we could ride bikes, and we rode them up to her school just to take one more look around. Still, no luck.

By bedtime, it was sinking in that her tooth might really be gone. But Helen remembered Connor's good fortune, so while I was downstairs picking up a few toys, Helen got out a piece of paper and asked the Tooth Fairy for help finding the tooth. Helen pointed out to me that she was trying to be very polite and careful, and had refrained from writing Mrs. Tooth Fairy or Mr. Tooth Fairy, for fear of accidentally insulting the Tooth Fairy.

Helen asserted her confidence that the Tooth Fairy was real because she just knows there would be NO WAY for me to sneak upstairs, get the tooth from beneath her pillow, snatch the tooth and replace it with goodies, and exit the room without her noticing.

Last night, she opted to sleep as far away from the note as possible, so as not to risk accidentally crushing the Tooth Fairy by rolling over on her or him, just in case her tooth was returned.

I do not know why, but I have saved all of my children's teeth. This came in very handy last night. The Tooth Fairy returned a tooth to Helen, described where she found it (which was a bit away from where Helen had directed me to look) and asked Helen to please confirm if it was hers. That way, on the off-chance that the torrential downpour we experienced last night did not totally wash the real missing tooth away - or if it turns up in a desk or locker in the near future - Helen will know the Tooth Fairy made a mistake, not that the Tooth Fairy intentionally tried to trick her!

This morning, Helen confirmed that indeed, this was the exact tooth she lost. Tonight, Helen plans to leave the tooth for the Fairy.

Elaine

St. Patrick's Day 2015

That ol' leprechaun got us again. In the process of trying to find the darn thing, we also learned our toilet leaks - enough to turn water that was green when Ed went to bed to clear when Connor and Helen checked for miscreants the next morning. I fixed it, at least temporarily, a task I'm exceedingly proud of. (Hat tip to my friend Jenny for the advice! And if you know Jenny, you also know she is the least likely person to be able to deliver advice about a  home repair, which makes it double awesome that her trick has worked.)

Ed thought the clues were trickier this year than in years past, but neither Helen nor Connor had much trouble deciphering them. When Helen did get a little stymied, Connor actually talked her through the clue with a hint in order for her to be able to solve it on her own. This is in stark contrast to years past when Connor wouldn't give Helen that chance, and would instead gloat about being first.

Connor was delighted to not have to shovel his way to one of the clues, as he had done last year.

And both were thrilled with the loot they found at the end.

Happy Late St. Patrick's Day! Maybe next year the kids will catch that darn leprechaun.

Elaine