Posts from — April 2011

All of us absolutely deserved a day like today after the cold yuck we’ve been enduring.

At our house, we had a great day of organizing and spring cleaning–the girls particularly enjoyed scrubbing down our playhouse.

There was some fertilizing and flower appreciation.

And Cute W. worked on making our contribution to tonight’s silent auction, wooden cardholders to go with our favorite card game, Sleeping Queens.

Hope everyone had fun outside today–I’ve got to go ready for my date with the auctioneer.

Update: okay, I had technical difficulties while trying to finish this, make the girls dinner, and get dresses, so I’m finally posting now. We had a fun night and spent slightly too much money. Usually we bid on a million things and then everyone outbids us and we’re left with, like, a dry cleaning gift certificate. Tonight our cup runneth over. Plus we got to take home cute centerpieces.

I woke up this morning to find both girls in front of the tv watching the royal wedding. As Will & Kate walked out, J sighed dramatically and gasped, “Oh, Mommy, isn’t it romantical?” Meanwhile Cute W lamented that he had perhaps unnecessarily raised their wedding expectations by turning on the news in the first place.

Here are a few random items that I’ve gathered in the last week or so:

A reader wrote me about Little Troy Park, which is actually in Charlton. She says,” Families join for the season and take swim lessons, enjoy the beach and atmosphere.   It is a very family friendly place with amazing activities for the kids.” Check the link for more information and rates.

Another reader shared that the Lansingburgh Boys and Girls Club is starting a Zumba/Music and Movement Class on Tuesday mornings at 10 am. $12 gets a Zumba workout for the grown-up and a simultaneous Kindermusik-style class for your preschooler. What a good idea. It reminds me of when I tried to join a gym when M was little. I kept visiting different places at different times over a few months, and each time M would scream so much that someone would page me or come find me, and I’d settle her down and try again, and after the third or fourth interruption, I would just quit. I can’t remember if she was still teensy or a toddler at this point. I do distinctly remember sitting in my car in one of the gym parking lots sobbing in my ill-fitting gym clothes. It was not a pretty picture. If anyone’s at that stage now, allow me to offer about three buckets full of empathy. Or if that’s not helpful, I’ll send you some workout DVD & book recommendations. It will pass.

Over at Adirondack Family Time, they’ve got a post on making simple newspaper pots for planting, which seems like a nice little project for the weekend. The weather is looking excellent for this weekend. It’s about dang time.

I’m deeply behind today. If I were more clever, I would have skipped the playground list last night and started working on this post early.   I might just pull an all-nighter and finish this post in time for the royal wedding. Noooo. I value sleep too much. I have a real talent for sleep. Actually, my particular skill is in maintaining sleep.

I managed to clean out a big pile of old toys from my garage to contribute to a yard sale at 703 Downing Street in Niskayuna on Saturday & Sunday. It’s by a girl scout troop that’s raising money for kids with cancer in honor of a member that they lost, so I’m making an exception and sharing this. I generally won’t list yard sales or garage sales, in case you’re clicking over to my email now. Seriously, just go to Craig’s List, okay?

And finally, the weather looks pretty good! The Troy and Schenectady markets move outside this weekend-woop, WOOP!

Here’s what else I’ve found for this weekend:

All Weekend:

• The Gillette Carnival is at the Wilton Mall in Saratoga Springs.
• Visit the Baby Animals at Hancock Shaker Village every day from 10 am to 4 pm.

Evening of Friday, April 29th:

• The Bethlehem Children’s School in Slingerlands is celebrating a Greenfest from 3:30-7 pm, including a performance by Ruth Pelham from MusicMobile and other activities.
• It’s Troy Night Out from 5-9 pm.
• The Siena College Chamber Orchestra is playing a free concert at 7 pm at St. Joseph’s Church on State Street. The information’s not on either site, but I got an email about it.
• At 7 pm there’s a family Poetry Slam at the Bethlehem Public Library.

Saturday, April 30th:

• At Cook Park in Colonie, it’s the American Cancer Society’s Bark for Life from 9 am to noon. Plenty of doggy activities.
• There’s a Discover the  Great Outdoors Festival from 10 am to 2 pm at the Guilderland Public Library. Plenty of information about parks, activities, and equipment, plus story times with Miss Barbara.
• At 11 am, there are Saturday Stories at Bethlehem Public Library.
• From 11 am until 3 pm, it’s Cornell Cooperative Extension of Albany County’s  Go Green Day, with demonstrations, giveaways, and activities for kids.
• It’s the Mardi Gras Festival in Saratoga Springs from 11 am until 4:30 pm.
• From 11 am to 5 pm in Troy’s Little Italy, they’ll be playing Stickball and collecting food for food pantries.
• There are police car seat checks available, as well as kid-friendly music and activities, from 11 am to 2 pm at Depaula Chevrolet in Albany.
• At 6:30 pm, it’s the Niskayuna Co-op Nursery School’s Silent Auction, to benefit the nursery school and Quest Kids, with much-loved repeat auctioneer Cute W! He mimes it. Not really: some stuff is non-silent. Anyway, come one, come all!
• The Albany All Stars have a roller derby at 7 pm.
• At Steamer 10 Theatre, they’re showing Clinton’s Ditch at 7 pm tonight and on Sunday afternoon.

Sunday, May 1st:

• Tree Paad in Malta is hosting a fundraiser for Support One Family, an organization founded by a local mom to support families of children who have vascular malformations. From 10 am until noon, there’s unlimited play, which usually costs $20, available for $12 in advance or $15 at the door.
• St. Vincent’s Preschool in Albany’s Pine Hills is having an open house from 10 am to 1 pm.  Small, play-based, interfaith preschool.
• It’s UCare Day at Union College: free family fun for elementary-school-aged kids from noon to 3 pm.
• Celebrate May Day from 1-2 pm at the Albany Pine Bush. You must pre-register, and it’s $3/person or $5/family.
• It’s a drive, but Camp Wa Wa Segowea in the Berkshires has an open house for prospective overnight campers (ages 7-15)  from 1-3 pm.
• The Bethlehem Central HS Jazz Band is playing from 2-4 pm at the Bethlehem Public Library.
• At Steamer 10 Theatre, they’re showing Clinton’s Ditch at 3 pm.

Looking ahead: For those who were interested in the free circus stuff, the Animal Walk to the TU Center is scheduled for Wednesday, May 4th, at 6:30 am, although this is subject to change and frequently runs later. The Elephant Brunch is planned for Friday, May 6th, at 1:15 or 1:30 pm.

Did anyone else see the double rainbow tonight? Gorgeous!

Holy cow, people I just spent waaaaay too much time updating the playground list. If I had the technical know-how, I’m sure that I could make it more efficient, but as it is I have a convoluted system that includes steps with Google Documents, then Excel, then a Word mail merge, then uploading into WordPress. Along the way there are numerous false starts (for example, when I didn’t realize that I was working with April 2010 data for. . . a while. I don’t want to talk about it). To complicate matters, when folks were contributing for the circus giveaway, I received a couple of duplicates. I included everyone’s general comments (because that’s the best part) and did my best to create compromise information when it varied slightly (1 sunny all the time + 1 mix of sun and shade=mostly sunny), but occasionally people just gave totally different Information. I’d make my best guess (one person says there’s a stream, another doesn’t, but maybe they just don’t know about it?) or include both votes. So if things seem slightly different from what you put in, that’s why. If anyone thinks something’s totally wrong and off, please email me to let me know.

Anyway. . . . TA DA!  The new and improved Playground List has at least 35 fabulous playgrounds from around the Capital District! That is awesome! Thank you so much to everyone who’s shared information to create this list. I truly appreciate your help. I’m especially excited that we’re getting great geographic diversity these days, since early on it was all playgrounds that were already in my rotation, because it was just my most helpful friends and I participating. Please: if you visit a great playground, you can always share the information with us by filling out this survey.

Now, go have some fun!

We drove down to New York on Thursday morning, checked into our hotel, and decided to go for a little walkabout. As I’ve mentioned, we’ve taken the girls into the city before, and they (mostly) didn’t have strong opinions about what to do. so we thought that we’d poke around some places that were new to us (we moved to the Capital District from Brooklyn nine years ago). We visited Chelsea Market (see fabulous cakes below)and the cool new Highline Park that’s been built on the old elevated subway. Along the way we stumbled on the Good Stuff Diner, where we refueled with a little ice cream and nachos.

Then it was on to the big attraction for the girls: the American Girl Store. Oh, man. It was way too overwhelming. So overwhelming that at one point, J just sat in the corner trying to collect herself. So overwhelming that we didn’t even make it to the third floor. The girls had brought their entire savings, but in the end they each decided to spend only half, which seemed remarkably restrained. It helped that the really colossal items weren’t stocked in the store.

We  decided to check out restaurants for dinner as we walked home and ended up at Darbar, which was deeply yummy Indian food. Plus Cute W remembered that one of the perks of eating out in the city is that you can drink to excess without driving home. Of course, we were exhausted, and these days we’re lightweights, so we only managed three drinks between us.

On Friday we decided to try out the Queens Hall of Science. We’ve already done the Met and the Museum of Natural History, and when we ended up with an East Side hotel, we figured it was worth a try. Plus there’s a zoo right there, too. As it turns out, the train ride out was one of their favorite parts of the whole trip. We were in the almost-empty first car, and the subway is above ground once you’re in Queens. I always forget how much the kids enjoy the subway.

The Hall of Science was fun, but we’ve been to many science museums, so it seemed a bit dated, honestly. I’d choose the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City over this one. If you’re considering visiting either or any science museum, you should check into the Association of Science-Technology Centers passport program, which I’ve said before. Anyway, the girls had plenty of fun. Their favorite section was sports, where they could pretend to surf, arm wrestle someone over the internet, and race with regular vs. streamlined wheelchairs.

The huge building blocks were also a big hit. J’s in pink, building, and M’s peeking out through a window of their fort.

The zoo was a short walk away. It was a bit small for the money, but the aviary was beautiful

On the subway ride home, the girls spotted their first subway rat, my whole family defied death by leaning from the platform,

and the girls examined graffiti in search of new swear words!

We spent Saturday morning visiting family, then took a nostalgic drive through Park Slope and hit the Chip Shop for lunch on our way out of town.

We’ve already got our next city trip half planned: the Statue of Liberty (this was M’s top choice, but apparently you have to reserve way ahead of time these days), a meal in Chinatown (even though we’d suggested Chinese and no one seemed interested, J became interested when we drove through), and a visit to the Tenement Museum (interesting, close to Chinatown, and Cute W theorizes it will be a reminder of how good the girls have it). Good times had by all.

I dropped by my neighbor Mary‘s today to introduce her to the splendor that is Taylor Ham, and she informed me that Easter Monday used to always be a holiday. Sounds good to me. We absolutely could have used a recovery day after several days o’ fun. We went down to NYC on Thursday and stayed until Saturday afternoon, when we visited my sister in New Jersey. She does an annual Easter Egg Hunt that is super-wonderful. She has this lovely yard with all sorts of fun-to-explore things like stone paths, a fountain, statues, and a hammock, and she packs it with roughly 2 jillion eggs. Yesterday’s kid crowd ranged from toddler to junior high and somehow each and every one of them happily hunted for a good ten or fifteen minutes and ended up with a full basket.

We arrived home at 8:15 pm and the girls just changed into pajamas and climbed into bed without a peep. Or, more importantly, a sob. I have to tell you: I am loving this stage of kid-dom. A year or two ago, any busy day or late night out would inevitably end with at least one child sobbing uncontrollably before passing out. Now they  sink gratefully under the covers just like I would, if I didn’t have bags full of dirty laundry and leaking containers of leftovers to get under control.

This morning poor J was worried about getting back to school after sickness and the break kept her away for two weeks, but as soon as she left my 10-foot radius she squared her shoulders and girled up.

Today was also our first day of soccer. Cute W is once again coaching, and it makes for a crazy Monday, because both girls do art from 4:30-5:45 pm, then J’s game is 5:45-6:45 pm & M’s game is 7-8 pm. Yikes. When, you might wonder, are we supposed to eat? Well, we’re working the kinks out. Today the girls had thermoses of soup (and I’m willing to bet mine were the only kids eating potato-leek soup and crusty bread with goat cheese on the sidelines), but that wasn’t too convenient. Next time I’m going with sandwiches, I think. Speaking of things that didn’t work out, due to, as W calls it “a failure to communicate,” I ended up running up to W with the team t-shirts for the 5:45 game at approximately 5:48 pm. Auspicious beginning.

They all did great. J was somehow under the impression that they were only going to practice, so she had a mini-panic attack when she realized that they’d be playing a game, but she recovered and hustled quite nicely, thank you. W was like a Zen Master, especially when one little boy threw a fit when he wanted to go back in when it wasn’t his turn–he kept getting louder and more frantic, and W just got calmer and quieter until the kid’s dad yanked the boy away from the field for a less Zen-like encounter. And finally, M scored the very first goal of the season, which thrilled her.

Phew! That’s what’s going on at our house. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about where we went and what we did in NYC.

Happy Easter! We had several days of fun, and we haven’t quite recovered yet. Here’s what I’ve found for this week:

All Week:

• The Gillette Carnival is at the Wilton Mall in Saratoga Springs beginning on Tuesday and continuing through May 1st.
• Visit the Baby Animals at Hancock Shaker Village every day from 10 am to 4 pm. In case this makes you wonder, Baby Animal Days at Indian Ladder Farms begin May 7th.

Monday, April 25th:

• Not much is happening, really.

Tuesday, April 26th:

• At 9:30 am at the Guilderland Public Library, they’re running a program entitled, “This is Not the Life I Imagined: Grief and Coping Skills for Parents, Caregivers, and Educators of Children with Disabilities.” Registration is requested.
• It’s Preschool Naturalists from 2-3:30 pm at Saratoga Spa State Park. Pre-register; it’s $3/person or $5/family.
• Go on a Frog Watch from 7:30-9 pm at Saratoga Spa State Park. Pre-register; it’s $3/person or $5/family. Bring a flashlight.

Wednesday, April 27th:

• Terrapin Puppet Theatre presents “Boats” at The Egg at 10:15 am. Tickets are $6.
• Kids in grades K-2 can make Hot Dips at Guilderland Public Library at 4 pm. Folks from the Honest Weight Food Co-op will help participants make fruit and veggie dips; registration required.
• At the Clifton Park-Halfmoon Library, children ages 3-8 can drop in and learn about Wonderful Worms with Diane Payette.

Thursday, April 28th:

• The O!baby Consignment Sale begins today and continues through Saturday.
• Take an informal walk at Five Rivers at 9:45 am.
• Learn about the Science of the Circus at the Schenectady Museum from 4-5:30 pm. Free with admission.
• The Siena College Chamber Orchestra is playing a free concert at 7 pm on campus.

Friday, April 29th:

• At Proctors, there’s a school days production of Beakman on the Brain at 10 am. Recommended for grades 2 to 6. It will be showing again on Saturday.
• From 1-2 pm, it’s a Tree Party for Arbor Day at the Children’s Museum at Saratoga.
• The Bethlehem Children’s School in Slingerlands is celebrating a Greenfest from 3:30-7 pm, including a performance by Ruth Pelham from MusicMobile and other activities.
• It’s Troy Night Out from 5-9 pm.
• The Siena College Chamber Orchestra is playing a free concert at 7 pm at St. Joseph’s Church on State Street. The information’s not on either site, but I got an email about it.
• At 7 pm there’s a family Poetry Slam at the Bethlehem Public Library.

We decided to head down to NYC for a couple of days before heading to my sister’s for Easter. And I’m lamenting that I didn’t auto-post this, because the hotel where we’re staying charges for internet access, which just seems, like, so 2003. I mean, seriously? I can get wireless at freakin’ McDonald’s and not at the Hilton? So, yes, I’m bitter, and I’m not likely to post tomorrow.  But here’s what I found for this weekend:

Evening of Friday, April 22nd:

• At 7 pm, they’re showing Ferngully: The Last Rainforest at Guilderland Public Library.

Saturday, April 23rd:

• The Twin Bridges Rotary will have a Breakfast with the Easter Bunny including three hunts, photo ops, and other activities.  It’s from 8:30 am to noon at the Elks Club on McElroy Road, and it’s $6/adult, $3/kids 6-12, kids 5 and under free.
• From 10 am to 2 pm on Friday and Saturday, George’s Nursery in Latham will have live bunnies. If it’s pretty you’ll have good photo ops with all the flowers.
• Learn about Woodland Wildflowers at 10 am at Thacher Park.
• Joyful Jumpers has a free community Easter Egg Hunt from 10:30-noon.  Please call Cindy to pre-register at 396-7885 by April 16th.
• People all over will participate in The Great Cloth Diaper Change, hoping to set a world record. Locally it’s led by Sonrise Diaper Service, but it’s also part of a Natural Parenting Expo from 11 am to 2 pm at United Calvary Methodist Church in Latham.
• At 11 am, it’s the Great Schuylerville Egg Hunt.
• Afrim’s in Colonie and The Children’s Guide will have an Easter Egg Hunt from 12-2 pm.  $3/child.
• There’s an Earth Day Festival from 1-4 pm at Five Rivers.
• From 1-4 pm, there will be Japanese items for sale, calligraphy, and an origami workshop at the Niskayuna Library organized by the folks from the U Albany Japanese Relief Fund.
• Danceland in Latham is hosting a fundraising event for Japanese Earthquake Relief from 1-7 pm. Dance, martial arts, and crafts. It’s free, but you better take some money to give.
• From 2:30-5 pm, there’s a workshop called I, Robot at the Bethlehem Public Library. Sign-up is required, it’s for 6th graders and older, and it’s taught by UAlbany computing folks.

Easter Sunday, April 24th:

• From 10 am to noon, Saratoga Chabad will be hosting a Passover Fun Activity Day.

Perhaps you’d think that after a health department shutdown at the Ciccotti Center in Colonie, I wouldn’t want to bring my precious darlings back. Ummmm. . . nope. I definitely follow the “let’s strengthen their immune systems”school of parenting.

We had an excellent time. The kids played for 3 1/2 hours, and the older kids probably could have lasted longer. We’d been to the Ciccotti Center before, but that was before both my girls were swimming. If you’ve got very little kids, there’s still plenty of fun, including zero entry areas, the small playground you see below, and a few small and not-scary fountains. My girls couldn’t decide if they liked the lazy river or the big slide this time. I liked that the grown-ups could sit in the hot tub while surveying the kids, which you could do if your kids are swimmers like mine or if you have enough parenting management skills that you can enforce a perimeter.  The cost for non-members is $12/person, and since we’d scored free passes, it cost the three of us $12 instead of the normal $36. My friend and I were pondering the worthiness while sitting in the hot tub. At first I thought, “Nah. . . I’m too cheap.” But then she pointed out that the trip to the movies with snacks had cost us more. And we absolutely had more fun longer than we’d had at the movies, along with a ridiculously easy time getting everyone to bed tonight. So I’ll revise it to worth it once in a while.

The one bummer was that you’re not allowed to eat food in the swimming area, and you can bet that kids who are running around like crazy for three hours are going to get hungry. You’re only allowed to eat in the lobby, but in order to hang out in the lobby, you have to have dry clothes instead of swimsuits. Now, it’s quite possible that there might be some sort of unsavory work-around, like, for example, stuffing several people into the family changing room and turning the diaper-changing station into a buffet table. But that would be way too gross. For, you know, normal people with some  dignity.

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Someone asked about Easter crafts and/or egg decorating  for very little kids. I talked about a fun little kit last year. Worked great for us, but might be slightly too ambitious for the toddler set.  I also did a post about a decoupage vase that you could use on plastic eggs instead. Another idea is those foam sticker kits that you find at craft stores. Someone gave the girls some stickers years ago, and they loved decorating the eggs. Then we strung them up on a pretty string to make a garland, and I still wish we’d made more of them, because they’re sweet and festive. I hang them from the chandelier over our dining table. Here are a few of them:

Anyone have any other fun Easter crafts for little ones to share? Please add them to the comments.

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And, finally, the winner of our second Circus Family 4-pack of Tickets is Jen O, comment #12!  Thanks to everyone for participating. I’ll be updating the playground list within the week, so hopefully we can all benefit from the contest with all the new playgrounds added. When I first ran the randomizing thing, it came up with #20, but that was me, so I did it a second time for #12.

If you want to buy tickets to the circus on your own, here’s the link.

After spending yesterday doing nothing too interesting, the girls and I were up for a treat. Our friend had scored some free passes to Ciccotti Center in Colonie, so that sounded perfect. I dumped the ice skates out of our big canvas bag and filled it with towels and goggles instead. Hooray!

Except that some time between the morning confirmation call and our actual arrival, the fabulous pool area was shut down by a health inspector! Dang! Four children in bathing suits, pressing their noses against the glass to look at the looks-fine-to-us-because-we-don’t-have-microscopes pool area. There were some tears. We needed a Rapid Response Plan B, so we ended up going to see  Rio. Both grown-ups were pretty grouchy, because chit-chatting while our kids ran around having wholesome and physically active fun had been our plan, and now we were reduced to eating Milk Duds in front of a large screen. And yes, of course we had to buy the Milk Duds. Wonderful: if you can manage to go to the movie theater without eating popcorn and Milk Duds, I am happy for you. But not so happy that I want to hear about it, okay?

The movie was cute. We skipped the nausea-inducing 3-D option. M, who recently saw Hop at a birthday party, liked Rio better than Hop, in case you’re pondering your options. Because the weather forecast calls for Continued Crappiness for the foreseeable future.

However, I have had a Domestic Triumph, at least. For weeks I’ve been trying to find a cabinet for tucking away some of our many, many games. Cute W loves games. He’s always getting new games. And he wants them to be quickly and easily accessible in the living room. I’ve struggled with this for a while, as you can see from a photo I posted over a year ago. More recently, I’d tried to pare down the games and store them under our coffee table. Here’s how that looked:

Yeah: not so good. Anyway, I have this odd little space in my living room where I could put a cabinet, but they were all too small inside or too heinous outside. But lucky for me, I was killing time at Target, where they choose to put a bunch of furniture in one place, and then some other furniture in an entirely different place so that you don’t notice it at all unless you are just standing around because your children could look at the Littlest Pet Shop toys all day.

And since I wasn’t clever enough to pick up a magazine before heading to the toy section, I found the answer! Looky-look-look!

These baskets contain 23 games, 8 puzzles, 50 movie DVDs, and eight seasons of Little House on the Prairie. I know, can you believe it? Cute W assembled the shelves and I organized the stuff last night, but the real triumph came late this afternoon, when my daughters spent an hour and a half playing several different games. First, there was an hour and a half of harmony before any drama set in, but even after the drama, the living room looked fabulous. Because they put everything away perfectly. Now if only I could conquer the rest of our house, maybe I could vanquish chaos forever. Probably not, but a mama can dream, right?