Posts from — March 2011

So, do you think all those poor little crocuses are going to get covered in snow? We were speculating at dinner that maybe, just maybe, the National Weather Service is playing an April Fool’s Joke. Ha, ha, heh, heh, heh. . . okay, you know what? It’s not funny. It. is. not. funny.

M seems to be coming down with something, so between a possible sick day and a possible snow day, I don’t think I’ll be lonely tomorrow. Meanwhile, for the third day in a row, Cute W dragged himself to work in the morning only to stagger home sometime in the early afternoon to drink juice and watch manly movies on his laptop from underneath a pile of blankets. J is perky as ever, but she’s a regular mucus factor. Meanwhile I’m the picture of health (knock on wood).

Snow or not, we’re shifting into spring, which means I’ve got upcoming posts on new classes, Easter Bunny encounters, and spring break camps. Just in case you were worried that I’ve been slacking off.

We have an exciting weekend of the school talent show and pancake breakfast along with our usual activities. Here’s what else is going on this weekend:

All Weekend:

• There are hockey games on both Friday and Saturday night at the Glens Falls Civic Center. Tickets $11/child, $12 to $26/adult, plus fees and taxes.
• Cohoes High School is presenting You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at 7 pm on Friday and Saturday night. Tickets are $5 each.
• Sarah, Plain and Tall continues this weekend at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts in Averill Park. Tickets are $16/adult, $10/child.
• Friday and Saturday, there’s Journey Through the Body at Colonie Center (thanks, Erin!).
• Sage College Theatre Institute is presenting Seussical the Musical on Saturday and Sunday. It’s $10/adult, $8/student.

Friday, April 1st:

• From 5-9 pm it’s First Friday in Albany.
• Celebrate the Easter Bunny’s arrival at Colonie Center from 5:30-7 pm.
• It’s First Friday in Ballston Spa from 6-9 pm.
• Cohoes High School is presenting You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at 7 pm tonight. Tickets are $5 each.
• Sarah, Plain and Tall continues this weekend at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts in Averill Park. Tickets are $16/adult, $10/child.
• Go on a Star Watch from 7:30-9:30 pm at Grafton Lake State Park. Free; call to confirm if it’s overcast.

Saturday, April 2nd:

• At Thacher Nature Center, get an up-close look at some of the animals being cared for as part of their Wildlife Program today.
• At 10 am, there’s a free public tour of Proctors including an organ demonstration. Just show up.
• From 10-11:30, do some Bud  Burst Training at Grafton Lake. Learn how to monitor phases of plant life to be a citizen scientist. They say it’s for all ages, but I think it sounds best for upper elementary school age plus.
• At 11 am, Round Lake Library is showing the movie A Series of Unfortunate Events. Free, with snacks.
• Find out How the Albany Pine Bush Got it Sand at 1 pm. It’s $3/person, $5/family.
• At 1 pm the Art Department at SUNY presents  the Youth Movements Festival, including The Country Bunny and From Bangor to Bangkok. It’s free.
• From 1:30-3:30 pm, it’s a Maple Sugar Open House at Five Rivers.
• The Wood Theater in Glens Falls will be showing ET at 2 pm today. Tickets are $6.
• From 2-3:30 pm it’s another Tang Family Saturday, designed for kids 5 and up. Today’s is on Mountain Climbing. It’s free, but register ahead of time.
• Opera to Go is presenting Jack and the Beanstalk at 2:30 pm at the Schenectady Civic Players. It’s free.
• From 6-9 pm there’s a Light it Up Blue Ice Cream Social at the Ben & Jerry’s on Lark Street in Albany in honor of World Autism Awareness Day.
• The Albany All Stars are having a Roller Derby Bout at the Washington Avenue Armory. Whistle blows at 6 pm, it’s $12 at the door, $4/kids 12 and under.

Sunday, April 3rd:

• From 11 am until noon, general admission to the Schenectady Museum is free on the first Sunday of the month! Why haven’t I ever noticed this? There’s also a science demo at noon, and they’re celebrating Nano Days.
• The Glens Falls Medical Mission is having its annual FUNdraiser Fiesta at Glens Falls Civic Center from 11 am until 4 pm. Food, games, face painting. Admission is free, but they’d appreciate donations of children’s toothbrushes or liquid or chewable vitamins, and you should cough up some dough for raffle tickets. They raise money for medical care in Guatemala.
• From 12-4 pm, the Congregation Gates of Heaven in Schenectady is having its annual Jewish Food Festival. $15/adult and absolutely free for those 17 years old and younger, buys you admission and all you can eat. Now that’s a lot of blintzes! I’m sorry: this just made me laugh. I’m envisioning parents dropping off their adolescent boys.
• Adirondack Ballet Theater presents Alice in Wonderland–Our Looking Glass Ballet at the Wood Theater in Glens Falls at 12:30 and 4:30 pm. Tickets are $14.
• From 4-5:15 pm, it’s the final Family Dance of the season in Delmar, with music by Tame Rutabaga and caller Paul Rosenberg.  Suggested donation $5/adult, $1/child.

My girls love to be tickled. I mean, they really love it. It is just about their favorite thing. I find it mystifying. I’m incredibly ticklish, and I hate-hate-hate to be tickled. I tend to flail in a wild and out of control manner, which can cause injuries. Come to think of it, I broke a car windshield in high school when a guy  tickled me. It was totally his fault. Also, his car.

So, anyway, I don’t love tickling, myself, but my children would happily spend an hour doing nothing but squealing, fighting off my tickling fingers, and then exposing their armpits in a wanton manner. And part of the game is “banana.”

We started using banana early on with our little friends. I borrowed the idea of a safe word from S & M subculture. No, no, no: that’s not my cup of tea. But you can’t live in New York City for years and years without being aware of general concepts, right? Anyway, the girls say “banana” when they mean “stop and I mean it.” But it’s become their favorite part of the tickling game. A couple of years ago, they added “orange,” which basically means that they’re ready for tickling again. So when they say “banana” I’m not allowed to tickle until they say “orange” again. So there’s all sorts of banter, like when they say “banana-orange-banana-orange-banana!” really fast.  Or when I try to trick them by asking them to remind me what color’s between red and yellow in the rainbow. Or when they say, “ooooo—rrrrr—aaaaaa–ngutan!”

The other day M said, “I want pineapple. That means you give me a foot rub.”

No way, man. She’s taking this fruit thing too far.

I went to a Board of Education meeting tonight, where I heard about the various budget cuts. They include a plan to combine 4th and 5th graders into one class, which will also increase class size from about 20 to about 27. Yowza.  Honestly, I think that a combination class might be good for M, but the class size issue really irritates me, and. . . you know what, I’m just not going to start ranting. We’ll see what happens.

Meanwhile, M came home today toting cupcakes from her after school enrichment class on Greek Gods, which is taught by the lovely Pam of story time at the Mohawk Commons Barnes & Noble. I thought that they were super-cute and easily recognizable.

Medusa

Just frosting, M&Ms, and strips that are reputedly from Sour Patch Kids, although I couldn’t find a link.

Cyclops

She’s liking the class very much, and they’ve even managed to suck her into the Percy Jackson books. Which I’m excited about, because I’m hoping that it will be a gateway drug to get her into Harry Potter. Cute W and I both love Harry Potter, and so far M’s resisted all familial and peer pressure. I don’t know why.

I was catching up on my Google Reader and trying to think of what to blog about. First, an easy link: Albany Kid posted about Easter Egg Hunts already. Someone was just asking me if I’m going to update last year’s post, and that’s still my plan, soon-ish. But if you’re chomping at the bit, check it out.

Anyway, I was reflecting on our ski weekend at Mount Snow, and what really struck me is that my kids rock. They are freakishly stoic. They know how to suck it up. Oh, yes, they have their whiny moments, but they’ve got to be in, like, the 98th percentile in non-whiner-ness.

Riding through the winding Vermont hills, poor M got sick. Twice. As I was fussing and swabbing at her chin the second time, I clucked something about how we were having a bad trip, and M said, “Well, this is way better than driving to Georgia.” Cute W and I both laughed and exchanged a quick our-barfy-little-girl-rocks glance.

Then on Friday, we were rushing to get out on the slopes. Because when you pay so much for your lift tickets (and you’re incredibly cheap), you want to squeeze as much fun as possible out of the time allotted. As I put on J’s helmet, she said that it felt tight. I paused, thinking that I didn’t really have a great solution. “It’s okay,” she said, mostly because I seemed a bit stumped on what to do next, and we all wanted to get a move on.

We skied for about an hour, and then J said, “My head and eyebrows really hurt.” I pulled off the helmet and she had dents in her turtle fur thing. Apparently her head’s grown lately. Cute W, who is far more clever than I, pointed out that there was a little dial to adjust the inside of the helmet.  So I could have just dialed it bigger that morning. Instead, she’d been skiing for an hour with her head in a vise, and she only mentioned it when she thought that she couldn’t possibly take it anymore. What a badass. Sure, some mothers might decide to dwell on the fact that through their own negligence and product ignorance their child practically could have sustained some sort of brain damage. Pooh-pooh. Here’s what I’m taking from it: that child rocks.

And of course, this is accentuated when you go skiing. It seems inevitable that there’s a poor, pathetic, sobbing child on the slopes with a poor, pathetic frustrated parent losing it trying to get the kid all the way down the hill. On Friday there was a dad yelling at his son that he’d spent $240 today already and they were all going to ski, dammit! It didn’t seem like this line of reasoning was particularly effective, but of course the easiest solution–outsourcing–would have cost even more money. And you can’t even feel smug, because we’ve all–okay, I have–been there, frustrated and losing it and saying stupid stuff.  It just made me extra-grateful that we were having such a wonderful day.

Eventually, the girls did get tired out, but that first day, J lasted for 5 hours of skiing, M for 6 hours. Which, hello, they totally rock. And then, even better, we were with family, so both days we had Nana or an auntie whisk them home while Cute W and I skied on. No wonder we were all so exhausted!

I had no new skiing pictures. So here's M riding a mechanical bull. Like a badass.

Were you concerned that I dropped off the face of the earth? We skied all day on Friday and Saturday, then stayed up too late both nights hanging out with family. We got home at 11 pm last night, so there was still unpacking the car and the obligatory laundry-palooza today. Except for Cute W, we never left the homestead, although the girls did spend quite a bit of time playing outside.  I don’t know how they managed to collapse from exhaustion. I always say that that’s the difference between kids and adults. Kids never want to take a nap, and adults always think a nap sounds like a lovely idea.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve found for this week.

All Week:

• There’s already an Easter Bunny Land at Crossgates.

Monday, March 28th:

• From 10 am until 12:30 pm, it’s Family Place Workshop at the East Greenbush Public Library.  It’s a free program for caregivers and their children ages 18 months to 3 years. Pre-register.
  

Tuesday, March 29th:

• I didn’t see a dang thing. Seriously. Check What about TODAY? if you’re in dire need of an outing.
  

Wednesday, March 30th:

• Take a Wetland Hike at Moreau Lake from 10 am until noon. It’s $2/person.
• From 10:30-11:30 am it’s Rain or Shine it’s Reading Time at the New York State Museum. Free.
• From 11 am until noon, it’s Baby Bookworms at the East Greenbush Public Library. Registration is required.
• From 6:30-7:30 pm there’s a Teddy Bear Sleepover with Diane Payette at the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library. Bring your bear!

Thursday, March 31st:

• Stories that Dance is showing at Proctors for a 10 am school days performance as well as at 7 pm tonight. $9/adult, $7 or 8/child depending on showtime.
• At 3:30 pm, there’s a Teen Scene at the Duane Branch Library for grades 6-10. Usually I don’t list this event, but today’s is a Duct Tape Festival, which just sounded like fun. I’m pro duct tape.
• There’s a Children’s Circle Storytime at the Bethlehem Public Library. It’s designed with children with special needs in mind.
• Cohoes High School is presenting You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at 7 pm tonight. Tickets are $5 each.

Friday, April 1st:

• It’s Story Art at 11 am at the New York State Museum. Free.
• Look for Signs of Spring at the noon First Friday Hike at the Albany Pine Bush. It’s $3/person, $5/family.
• Celebrate the Easter Bunny’s arrival at Colonie Center from 5:30-7 pm.
• Cohoes High School is presenting You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at 7 pm tonight. Tickets are $5 each.
• Sarah, Plain and Tall continues this weekend at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts in Averill Park. Tickets are $16/adult, $10/child.
• Go on a Star Watch from 7:30-9:30 pm at Grafton Lake State Park. Free; call to confirm if it’s overcast.

I hope you got outside today–sunshine and blue skies, even if it’s not exactly balmy yet. Sometimes I feel like I just have to step outside every couple of hours to make sure that I’m not missing any good weather.

Here’s what I’ve found for this weekend. As always, please add anything interesting that I missed in the comments.

All Weekend:

• It’s the Capital District Garden and Flower Show at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy. $10/adult at the door, kids 15 and under free.
• You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown concludes this weekend at Steamer 10 Theatre. Tickets are $12 at the door, or get the 10-ticket Steamer 10 Pass for $90.
• Bethlehem Central High School is presenting Seussical the Musical, and tickets are $10/adult, $6/child. You can make reservations online.
• Sarah, Plain and Tall is opening this weekend at the Sand Lake Center for the Arts in Averill Park. Tickets are $16/adult, $10/child.

Evening of Friday, March 25th:

• It’s Troy Night Out from 5-9 pm, with special kid-oriented activities at the Capital Region Center for the Arts. The main website isn’t updated, so I haven’t been able to confirm, yet, if it’s an entire kid-themed event.
• A reader reports that the Niskayuna Girl Scouts are holding a Juliette Low Nickel Carnival at Craig Elementary School from 6:30-8:30 pm. No admission, and games cost a nickel.
• At 7 pm, find out Is it Spring? with a walk outside at Five Rivers.
• There’s a Barn Dance in Delmar at 7:30 pm. Suggested donation $6-8/adult, $0-3/child.

Saturday, March 26th:

• From 9 am until 2 pm, it’s the Childrens Guide’s 2nd Annual Mom’s Retreat. It’s $40/person.
• West Mountain is hosting a Family Fun Day from 10 am until 5 pm. Slush pond skimming, cardboard sled contest, barbecue, and more.
• Learn about Backyard Maple Sugaring from 10 am until noon at Grafton Lakes State Park. $2/person or $5/family.
• There’s a Kids Hike and Eagle Watch at Moreau Lake from 10 am until noon. It’s $2/person, $5/family. Call to reserve and bring binoculars.
• At 11 am, Opera to Go is presenting Jack and the Beanstalk at the Albany Institute History & Art.
• There are special free activities to celebrate NanoDays at the Children’s Museum of Science & Technology from 11 am to 4 pm.
• There’s an It’s Electric! science demo at noon at the Schenectady Museum. It’s free with admission.
• They’re Maple Sugaring at 1 pm at Up Yonda Farm. It’s $4/person, plus $4 to park. A friend took her family there and reported that it was well worth the trip & money.
• Take a Mud Pond Hike from 1-3:30 pm at Moreau Lake. $2/person.
• From 1:30-3:30 pm, it’s a Maple Sugar Open House at Five Rivers.
• From 2-3:30 pm, it’s Family Saturdays at The Tang, and the craft is Faces in a Bottle. It’s for kids ages 5 and up, it’s free, and you should call to reserve a spot.
• There’s a drop-in Cabin Fever Storytime for the under-6 set at the downtown Schenectady Public Library.
• At 3 pm, it’s a Family Wonders presentation called Comedy Pet Theatre at The Egg. It’s $20/person, $16/child.

Sunday, March 27th:

• Again, it’s a drive, but the Farmers’ Market in Cooperstown has another Sugaring Off Sunday from 8:30 am until 2 pm.
• Kids ages 6 and up can learn about Nano in Your Food at the Children’s Museum of Science & Technology. Call to pre-register, and it’s $2/non-member.
• At 1 pm at Thacher, it’s a Junior Birders Club Nest Box Monitor Training. This is a “Citizen Science Project” suitable for adults and kids ages 7 and up. Call to make reservations.
• From 1-3:30 pm, it’s Italy Day at the National Museum of Dance, with a Zona Bambino for the kids. It’s $5/non-member.
• There’s a free Bluegrass Concert at 2:30 pm at the downtown Schenectady Public Library.

We’re headed to Vermont for the weekend to see family and hopefully ski. I am not ready at all. Cute W, however, has purchased a car-top storage thingy for the occasion. This is excellent, because we are a van-free family, so until this purchase we’ve been shoving skis into our small-ish wagon. Frankly, it’s uncomfortable and potentially hazardous. Have you ever gotten the police to check your carseat? You can totally do that, by the way. There’s usually someone quite nice and competent who really likes to perform this invaluable community service, so call them.

Sorry. There I go again, getting off track and finding more stuff that I think that you should do. But what I meant to say was, whenever I’ve done the car seat inspection, it’s usually accompanied by a safety schpiel in which I’d learn, among other things, that in the event of a car accident, the sippy cup that I  allow my child to hold while I’m driving will turn into a Deadly Missile. So then I’d drive home, and even though my child is more securely fastened than usual, I’d find myself terrified of possible imminent catastrophe until I’d park in my driveway and breathe a ragged sigh of relief.  So, clearly, I know that having this jumble of skis and poles rattling between my two precious daughters’ skulls is a bad idea. Glad it’s over.

Anyway, the point was, I’m not going to be particularly informative today. But I did find two links to share. One is that a recent Motherlode included a little essay from Anna Quindlen in which she tells us that the best is yet to come.  If I had the technical capabilities, I’d surround her name with fancy curlicues and hearts and flowers because I love her.  Which you might already know because I linked to her for last year’s Mother’s Day Weep-Fest Triple Threat.

All Over Albany also recently posted about local milk delivery options, which I thought some of you might want to know about.

I spent an inordinately long amount of time folding laundry tonight, so now I’m blogging when I should be sleeping instead. So I’m going to make it snappy.

‘Tis the season to start thinking swimming lessons if you have small, non-swimming-yet children. If your kids are extra little, getting them used to the idea of the pool now will help ensure a fun summer. I mean, we all know that kids can be slow to warm up to an idea, right? I remember one beach vacation when my nephew refused to allow the ocean water to touch him until the afternoon of the last day. And then, of course, he loved it. And it was time to pack.

If your child is pro-pool but not a swimmer yet, why not get a jump start on it now? 8 or 12 weeks of swimming lessons will be perfect timing for the summer. I started to look for excellent links to swimming lessons, but most aren’t updated too well. Okay, a few are, like the super-thrifty Rotterdam Boys and Girls Club, or the special-needs-friendly College of St. Rose. But you can also check my Big Ol’ List of Links for the Pools and Swimming Section, or if you know about an indoor pool that’s close to you at any high school, college, or fitness center, give them a call and see what they’ve got. Did you know that you can also contact your local Y about organizing swimming lessons in a backyard pool? Start thinking of friends to recruit (including one with a pool) so that you can line something up early!

We’ve done swimming lessons at Union College, a Y-arranged backyard session, &  Rotterdam Boys and Girls Club, and I think that all of them were helpful. But there’s nothing like just spending a bunch of time in the water with other kids who are a little bit better at swimming than your own kid to cause exponential advances in the swimming department. For both of my girls, their hugest improvements in swimming happened during week-long vacations with their cousins at a house with a pool in the backyard. So even if you don’t want to do swimming lessons, you might think about inviting friends and doing open swim occasionally while you’re waiting for it to get warm enough outside.

What’s your favorite pool around here? Any that people should know about?

After my recent stern lecture to winter, the snow on the first day of spring naturally led me to an extended metaphor. Why is Winter bullying into young Spring’s territory? Or, should I blame Spring? I mean, freakin’ assert yourself, don’t be a doormat! Winter’s not the boss of you!

But luckily for you, gentle readers, I’m going to follow the advice from  Siblings Without Rivalry and stay the heck out of it.

Back on Friday, when the weather was beautiful,  we spent hours on the playground before rushing home for a quick dinner and then to our elementary school’s Learning Fair. It was particularly exciting this year, because even though we go every year, this was the first time M actually presented something.

It’s sort of a science fair alternative, because anyone in any grade can research anything: science, history, whatever. Which means that tons of kids participate, and topics range from the littlest kids setting up vast Playmobile scenes to kids bringing in pets or playing the drums or presenting an exhibit entirely devoted to a brand of candy. One little boy was buttonholing adults, using his papier mache model to explain how an insect sees, and another launched into a several-minute schpiel on Greek architecture while his mother gestured apologetically from behind him. No problem at all! They were adorable. They were about to burst with all of that knowledge that they had to share.

The Learning Fair is huge. J didn’t do a presentation, but she had a fabulous time going from exhibit to exhibit and hobnobbing with the big kids.

J and others experiment with gravity.

M decided to study Japanese-American internment during WWII. I know: heavy, right? She chose it after reading Weedflower.  She gathered up quite a bit of information and great photographs and went the “substance over style” route. But a big part of the fair is presenting the information to the people who mill around. She wasn’t crazy about that part. There were too many friends to visit and interesting things to see, so even when she wasn’t on her break, she’d wander away to chitchat with friends. Between touring around myself,  I’d shoo her back to her table and even send extra adults her way to quiz her. Because I’m mean like that.

Sorry for the weird trim--wanted to cut name and face as usual.

M did great, and she was rightfully proud.  J’s already decided that she wants to study dolphins next year. So it was a wild success. But after the marathon playground-playing and the tremendously overstimulating learning fair, we barely stumbled home. Next year, I hope it rains that afternoon so we can pace ourselves a little better.

I forget, every year, the sheer exhaustion in springtime from shifting over to all of that playing outside. I thought that the girls were going to drop into their macaroni & cheese tonight at dinner. Here’s what I’ve found for this week:

Monday, March 21st:

• From 10 am to 12:30 pm, it’s 1, 2, 3, Play with Me for children 18 months to 3 years and their parents or caregivers at the East Greenbush Public Library.
• There’s a Spring Overlook Hike at Moreau Lake from 11 am to 1 pm. It’s $2/person.
• BirthNet and the Saratoga Women’s Fest are presenting The (Local) Business of Being Born at the Saratoga Springs Public Library from 6-8:30 pm. They’ll have a panel discussion to follow a showing of The Business of Being Born. It’s free.

Tuesday, March 22nd:

• From 5:30-8 pm, the Albany Jewish Community Center is having a Purim Festival. It’s free.
  
• From 6-6:45 pm, it’s the first of three Tuesday sessions learning Baby Massage with your teensy baby (up to 6 months) at the Saratoga Springs Public Library.
• It’s Pajamarama at 6:30 pm at the Bethlehem Public Library.

Wednesday, March 23rd:

• Take a Spring Overlook Hike from 10 am until 12:30 pm at Moreau Lake. It’s $2/person.
• At 3:30 pm, it’s T is for Turtle at the Children’s Museum of Science & Technology. This program is for kids ages 2 to 5. Pre-registration is required, and it’s $2/non-member.
• At 6:30 pm, there’s a free Jazz Concert at Albany’s Bach Branch Library.

Thursday, March 24th:

• Drop in for a Family Storytime at 11 am at the East Greenbush Public Library.
• At 12:30 it’s another hike at Moreau. $2/person.
• From 3:30-4:30 pm, it’s the first in a new series of parent workshops at the Children’s Museum at Saratoga. Admission is $15 for a grown-up and one child 18 months old or older, and they’ll provide childcare. Today’s workshop is on multiple intelligences.

Friday, March 25th:

• Starting at 10 am today and through the weekend, it’s the annual Garden and Flower Show at Hudson Valley Community College. It’s $10 at the door, kids 15 and under free.
• Go on an Eagle Watch at 10 am at Moreau Lake. Program fee of $2/person.
• It’s Troy Night Out from 5-9 pm, with special kid-oriented activities at the Capital Region Center for the Arts. The main website isn’t updated, so I haven’t been able to confirm, yet, if it’s an entire kid-themed event.
• A reader reports that the Niskayuna Girl Scouts are holding a Juliette Low Nickel Carnival at Craig Elementary School from 6:30-8:30 pm. No admission, and games cost a nickel.
• At 7 pm, find out Is it Spring? with a walk outside at Five Rivers.