Hoop Dreams

He shoots...

He scores!!!!!!!!!

As you can see we finally got our basketball hoop put up today! The guys came this afternoon to put it together, narrowly finishing before it was time to go get Ben from camp.

Progress

Today was a great pool day, and we spent much of the day there. Ben is making definite progress with swimming, after his first week of lessons at camp. He'll now go under water much further than he would ever go before. He used to not want to put his head under, or if he did he would put it under barely far enough to get the top of his head wet. Today he was dunking under and touching the bottom of the pool with his hand (granted he was in the 3 foot end of the pool, but still -- his head was several inches below the surface). He also was showing us how he could swim -- sort of -- putting his face in the water and swimming for a few strokes. Unlike previous attempts he actually got his legs up to the surface of the water this time to kick. Good job Ben! With seven weeks of lessons to go, we might have a full-fledged swimmer on our hands by the end of the summer!

Girl, Interrupted at Eating Her Dinner

Riding The Rails

Yesterday morning Joel had to work and Ben informed me he was "sick of the pool" (because he'd been there every day at camp this week). So I had to think of something else to do with the kids. We decided to ride the light rail uptown to Imaginon, followed by a pizza lunch before riding the train back home. It was fun, but I think today is going to be a pool day!

Nothing Much

Here is a random picture I took of Rebecca this morning while she was watching Sesame Street. Whenever I take her picture now she says "Cheeeeeese!" and then she comes over to see the picture I took. When I show her, she pokes the camera and says "Becca! Becca!" and laughs.

Ben's favorite part of his first week of summer camp so far was making an erupting volcano yesterday out of laundry detergent, baking soda and vinegar (or so he told me). Also re: camp, I discovered the down side to those spray cans of sunblock... I sent Ben to camp with one of them this week, and yesterday when he came home I noticed the can was almost empty already. I asked him what happened to all his sunblock and he said "Uuuuhhhh... me and Harris had a sunblock fight in the bathroom." I obviously need to pack him a less entertaining form of sun protection.

Joel put the kids to bed last night because I was at a Mother's Night Out with some of the moms in Ben's class. When I got home and checked on the kids I found them both asleep in long pajamas (it's 90 degrees out). This in spite of the fact that I had already bathed Becca and put her in her pajamas before I left, precisely so Joel wouldn't have to do anything except put her in her crib. So he undressed her and redressed her. I cranked up the upstairs AC and left her alone. Ben got up 3 times in the middle of the night last night, and at some point in there changed his pajamas himself.

Joel and I opened the basketball hoop box the other day and confirmed that it is way beyond our technical expertise (i.e: requires more than a screwdriver to assemble). So it is scheduled for professional installation on Monday. I'm not terribly optimistic though because I arranged it with the company that the sporting goods store recommended, and I had to tell the woman on the phone 4 times that it was a basketball hoop and not a treadmill and that I don't live in New York. Someone in New York may get a treadmill on Monday, but we'll see if I actually get a basketball hoop.

That's all I've got for today - nothing much.

Summer Camp

Today was the first day of summer camp for Ben. After two years at the JCC's preschool camp, he graduated to their "real" camp this year. Today's activities included a tennis lesson, swimming lesson, israeli dance lesson, arts and crafts... some other stuff in there too that I don't remember. I saw on his schedule that on Thursdays he has archery. I am glad I'm going to be nowhere around a bunch of 5 year olds pointing bows and arrows, that's for sure.

Anyway his first day was a success except for car pool at pick up time, which was very aggravating because of how slowly it moved. Considering that pick up time is 3:45-4:00 and I have to leave my desk to go get him and bring him home so I can get back to work, I am going to have to figure out a way to speed it up like by getting there early and/or walking in to pick him up instead of waiting in the car pool line.

Judging by how much he ate at dinner (a lot) and how tired he was when I put him to bed (very) he's going to be burning some serious calories this summer. He has not an ounce of flesh to spare on his body, so I hope his good appetite continues!

Happy Birthday Ben (Again)

We spent the vast majority of another really hot day at the pool today. We got to the JCC around 10:30 this morning. They had a Father's Day party going on with food, music, and games. Rebecca enjoyed both pool and splash park equally, though she is quite a handful in the pool. She likes to belly flop into the water, whether you're ready to catch her or not. So you have to keep an eye on her every single second. (At one point I turned my head just for a second to see where Ben was, and SPLASH! I grabbed her just as her head went under).

Since we had arrived in separate cars (me via the grocery store and Joel via the gym) I took Becca home around 2 so she could take a nap, and Joel and Ben stayed until about 3. There were several of Ben's school friends there and he was having so much fun that getting him out of the pool was practically impossible. He was finally lured out when he realized that Joel's parents were already at our house waiting for him (with birthday presents).

It was Ben's choice for dinner tonight in honor of his birthday, and he chose PF Chang's, for the sole reason that they bring you those three kinds of sauces that you can mix together with the vinegar and whatever else, and Ben's favorite thing in the world is mixing his own sauces and then making the rest of us taste them (with a glass of water close at hand). We brought his birthday cake with us and had the waiter bring it out after we ate. It was an Iron Man cake, but as you might notice in the video the Iron Man cake topper fell over at some point en route to the table. Ben was not shy about blowing out his candles this year (Or singing happy birthday to himself).

99 in the Shade

I think "99 in the shade" is the title of a really old and not very well known Bon Jovi song, from the album New Jersey maybe? Anyway, that about sums up the weather this weekend. This morning we went to the farm exhibit at the nature museum, where the kids got to pet all their favorite farm animals (like rabbits and guinea pigs? hmm... not the first farm animals that come to mind, but definitely a hit with the kids).

We were home by lunch time, and while Rebecca took her afternoon siesta Ben suited up and washed Joel's car (being outside without some type of water activity was not an option). We finished up our day with a playdate with Ben's friend Jared (spent indoors) and then we went with Jared's family out for dinner, ice cream, and to listen to music at the plaza at Stonecrest.

There is a band at Stonecrest every Friday and Saturday nights during the spring and summer, and tonight was the first time we'd managed to go this summer. Rebecca did not disappoint -- she danced and clapped and danced some more, all with remarkably good rhythm considering who her parents are. She even got a song dedicated to her by the band ("My Girl") and they invited her to go on tour with them (she declined). Random people were taking video of her dancing, so watch out -- Rebecca might end up as the next YouTube sensation. I, of course, didn't bring my camera but I definitely will next time we go! We ran into another couple that we're friends with from Ben's school while we were there, so it was a veritable CJP reunion.

For those of you wanting to know:

1. No the basketball hoop has not been assembled yet;

2. Ben stayed up until almost 10 pm last night and got through all of Jurassic Park 3 and about 3/4 of Jurassic Park 2 (apparently deciding the trilogy is viewed best in reverse chronological order).

Farm Day at the Nature Museum

Celebrating Five Years...

...Of getting woken up bright and early every morning. Happy birthday Ben!

I put his presents out in the living room last night before I went to bed, and at 6:45 this morning he was parading each one into our bedroom to open in front of us. The basketball hoop has not been put together yet -- I am hoping Joel will be able to do it tomorrow morning (before the temperature hits the forecasted 99 degrees!) Ben still has not noticed the box in the garage. Not the most observant kid.

We're doing a birthday dinner and birthday cake on Sunday so that Joel's parents can celebrate with us, since they're away today and tomorrow. Today Ben brought cupcakes to school to share with his class -- in addition to being his birthday, today is Ben's VERY LAST DAY at CJP! I might cry. Summer camp starts Monday, and after that, Kindergarten.

To continue the birthday festivities tonight, Joel is going to bring home Chinese food and a birthday treat for dinner. Then I am letting Ben stay up as late as he wants to watch movies and eat popcorn. One of his presents was a DVD set of all 3 Jurassic Park movies. Ben has seen the original Jurassic Park several times on television, and loves it -- it doesn't even scare him, strangely enough. I doubt he'll get through all three movies -- or even two -- tonight, but I figured that in honor of his birthday I'd give him the option. For a kid with a VERY strict bedtime, he is totally thrilled at the idea of being able to stay up as late as he wants. I'll let you know how it goes - I may very well regret it!

The Punch Line

Every once in a while Ben tries to tell me some jokes. This is a skill he has not quite mastered yet. Sometimes he'll tell one correctly, that he picked up from somewhere, like this:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A: To get to the other slide!

And sometimes he'll try to make one up, like this:

Q: Why did the penguin cross the ice?
A: Because he wanted to get to Charlotte where it's warm!

And sometimes I just don't know where he comes up with them:

Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
A: Because it was dead!

I sent mixed messages on that last one, because I told him it wasn't funny, while trying not to laugh.

And Then She Fell

About 30 seconds after I snapped this adorable pic of my happy daughter, she stood up in the laundry basket and toppled her and it over, falling flat on her face and banging the corner of her eye on the edge of the basket. She did one of those crying-but-no-sound-coming-out-because-I'm-not-breathing moments, and it lasted so long that I thought for sure she was going to pass out from lack of oxygen. Happily, about a minute later Ben distracted her with a toy and she forgot about her injuries. The corner of her eye is red and puffy now though.

Flash Back - June 15, 2007

It has come to my attention that this week marks our two year moving-to-Charlotte anniversary. To honor the occasion, here are a couple pictures of Ben from his first trip to the JCC and (later that same day) his first trip to eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream while watching the ducks/turtles at the lake behind Ben & Jerry's.

Pool Party

Today was Ben's end-of-the-year party for his preschool class. It was a perfect day for a pool party -- hot and sunny! Both of the kids enjoyed themselves in the water, and then ate a big lunch. Rebecca had two adult-sized slices of pizza and drank three Capri Suns.

It was hard not to notice how much better swimmers Ben's friends are than him -- some were even jumping off the diving board in the (12 foot) diving well! Oh well -- swimming lessons start in a week and I plan on continuing them into the fall, this time. I took some pictures, but was mostly busy in the water keeping an eye on Ben and his friends while Joel entertained Becca at the splash park.

Test Shot

This morning when Ben came downstairs and bounced onto the bed, I was waiting for him. ("What's that?" he's in the middle of asking, as I pointed the camera at him...)

A Kid-Free Afternoon

Joel's parents took the kids out for the afternoon/evening and Joel and I did some shopping followed by dinner and a movie. ((Shopping + dinner + movie) - kids = a great time!!)

First we went to Dick's Sporting Goods and got a basketball hoop for the driveway, for Ben's "big" birthday present. The rim is easily adjustible from anywhere between 7.5 and 10 feet so (along with a youth size/weight basketball we got him) he ought to be able to get some use out of it right away, and hopefully for many years. It's in a box in the garage right now and I have no idea how Joel's going to manage to assemble it or how Ben's not going to see the (very large) box before his birthday next Friday.

Next we went to Wolf Camera (by happy coincidence right across the parking lot from the sporting goods store) and I got a new camera -- a Canon PowerShot SD780 IS. (I got the black one).The battery is charging right now so I haven't gotten to play with it yet. It is amazingly small! Ben has a pool party to go to tomorrow so I'll take it for a test run then.

After we finished with the shopping we went downtown to a restaurant called Zink for dinner. (Can't find a web site link at the moment, sorry). We were going to see Star Trek at the IMax theater afterwards but after about five minutes we decided regular movies suck in IMax. (Besides which we'd both already seen it anyway). So we left the IMax theater and went to a regular movie theater and used two free movie tickets we had to see The Hangover, which we both thoroughly enjoyed.

That's about it for my Saturday. Hopefully I'll post some pics from the new camera tomorrow.

Puerto Rico Pictures

Got my Puerto Rico pictures finally. Didn't take a ton of pictures, as previously mentioned, since my camera began spazzing early on. Some of these pictures were taken with no viewfinder whatsoever, so bear that in mind when you wonder why some are slighly off-center/out of focus ;)

Mama Needs A New Camera

Due to my recent camera difficulties, I've convinced Joel to take me camera shopping this weekend. So my question to all of you is: What kind of camera do you use? What do you like/dislike about it? I am looking for a compact camera that takes great pictures FAST. I know all you Canon Digital Rebel fans out there -- my only qualm about this camera is the size...(And Joel's qualm of course will be the price). I don't like a bulky camera. I've been looking into a Canon PowerShot of some form, but there's so many to choose from... If any of you have any suggestions, please share them with me!

I'll have some Puerto Rico pictures up tomorrow at some point-- I stopped in at the camera store today and had the images from the memory card transferred to a CD. I just haven't gotten back there to pick it up yet.

Puerto Rico: Getting There

(Editor's note: this is part 1 of a 3 part series on our Puerto Rico trip, blogged thoughtfully in reverse chronological order so that you may read straight down for these three posts instead of bottom up. Or something).

We left for Puerto Rico at 7:30 last Monday morning. This was, of course, rush hour, and we were stuck in stop-and-go traffic for most of the 30-minute-turned-50-minute drive to the airport. As always when we travel with the kids, I was slightly on edge and worried about making it onto our 9:40 flight. We pulled into the long term lot, pulled into the first parking space we saw, and breathed a sigh of relief.

And then Ben threw up all over himself, his car seat, etc. Apparently the ride to the airport had not agreed with him. His vomiting went something like this: "[BARF] OOOH LOOK! An airplane! [BARF BARF]." There could be worse things, it turns out, than vomiting in the airport parking lot, because of course I had six changes of clothes for him within easy reach so we hurriedly stripped him, changed his clothes, and threw his dirty ones in the trunk of the car.

With that hurdle surpassed we pretty quickly made it to our gate in plenty of time. The flight was pretty uneventful except for one notable exception, which is that I noticed that Ben had a lot of white flecks in his hair, and this combined with the notice about a case of head lice in his classroom that came home in his backpack a week ago had me totally panicking and convinced he had lice. I couldn't carefully inspect his hair because he was in a foul mood at that time and wouldn't let me touch him, so I quietly (or not so quietly) panicked for about an hour before he allowed me to pick at his hair a bit and I realized that whatever it was it wasn't lice eggs because lice eggs won't come out, and after combing his hair a bit I was able to get all of the white stuff out. To say that I was extremely relieved would have been a gross understatement.

Rebecca, heretofore unmentioned, was very good on her first airplane ride*, probably because she was afraid. She quietly panicked in my lap at every sign that the airplane was actually moving, flattening herself against my chest and burying her head in my arm pit. During one of these sessions she fell asleep, and slept for over an hour.

After the 3 1/2 hour flight to San Juan we picked up our rental car, stopped at Crisi's mom's house to pick up the rest of our traveling companions (10 of us in all including kids) and set out for the beach house in Rincon, about two hours drive from San Juan. We stopped for an early dinner (late lunch for those of us who'd been traveling all day) and the drive was ALMOST uneventful until, about 15 minutes away from the beach house we heard a BANG! and realized that the windshield of our rental car had been hit by something falling from a tree (which we later identified as an unripe mango). The windshield of the rental car, unfortunately, was cracked quite nicely.

That about sums up the Getting There section of my three part Puerto Rico series... next up, Being There.

*She made up for it in spades on the ride home.

Puerto Rico: Being There

The beach house we stayed at was very big, and very nice. Even though there were 10 of us staying there (three couples and four kids of which Ben was the oldest), we were not cramped. The bedrooms were large, and there was a lot of living space to spread out in, and a very big kitchen (Oh I miss that kitchen...) My favorite part of the house was the verandah off the kitchen/living area.

Ben's favorite part was the bidet in our bathroom. About five minutes after we arrived at the house, he walked into the bathroom, walked up to the bidet, leaned over it, asked "What's this?" and pulled the handle. He was squirted fully in the face by not a small amount of water. From this moment on, Ben was enthralled... he spent quite a lot of time during the week forcing himself to go "number two" even though he didn't really have to, so he could use the bidet. Incidentally, Joel's favorite part of the house was also the bidet.

The beach was a short walk away, and we confirmed what we learned in Ocean Isle: Rebecca hates the beach. After the first trip to the beach, I had to leave her at the house with Joel and take Ben to the beach by himself. The house had a pool though, which both kids enjoyed.

We spent the first couple of days relaxing at the beach and the pool, and then took a couple of trips to the zoo, and to a lighthouse, and sampled some of the local cuisine. By now you're probably wondering, where are the pictures?? Since of course, a picture paints a thousand words. But alas, my camera seems to have broken. It was totally on the fritz during our trip and sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Today when I tried to download the pictures to my computer, I got "communication error." So, there might be a new camera in my future... but sadly for the moment, I have no Puerto Rico pictures!! You'll have to imagine the pictures I took of the beach, pool, fat iguanas wondering around, the lighthouse, Rebecca covered in ice cream being chased by a peacock at the zoo... *sigh*...

I learned a few things about Puerto Rico on our trip:

1. it is very hot;
2. it is very humid;
3. there is a torrential downpour every afternoon at precisely 1pm;
4. it has a lot of bugs;
5. it has adorable lizards, and the most awesomest frogs that make the most awesomest noise at night;
6. it has a lot of delicious food, like mofongo (mashed plantains) and all sorts of other things most of which is fried (fried = delicious);
7. the sun rises early, which is a problem when none of the windows have curtains (read: Ben appearing in your room fully dressed down to his sneakers at 6:04 a.m).
8. It is very humid... oh did I say that already?

Read on for the final installment of my three part series on Puerto Rico...

Puerto Rico: Leaving There

We left the beach house at 9 a.m. yesterday morning and headed back to San Juan via Crisi's mom's house where we stopped for lunch and a much needed travel break. The day went extremely smoothly -- I mean eerily extremely smoothly -- until we got on the plane. The kids were perfectly well behaved on the 2 hour drive to San Juan, the airport was not at all crowded, etc.

Our flight home was scheduled for 4:40 pm, which I have sinced learned is a horrible, horrible time to fly with a 20 month old. Rebecca missed her nap and started acting up pretty much as soon as we sat down. Being total idiots and cheap, we did not buy her a seat since she was still young enough to fly free as a lap child. Additionally we did not have with us either of the two most essential things for any flight with a toddler: Benadryl and a DVD player. Either one might have saved us, but alas we had neither. Anyway, she did not sleep like she had on the flight down -- apparently after her first plane ride she wasn't scared of flying anymore so felt no need to snuggle into my armpit like she had before. Instead she spent pretty much the whole time hitting, scratching, and pinching me. And screaming - let's not forget the screaming.

At one point, about two hours into the flight, she hit me hard across the face and I COULDN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE! I Burst into tears, and handed Rebecca to Joel. Ben took one look at me and burst into tears. Rebecca, having been relegated to Joel's arms, burst into screaming, bawling, probably-heard-throughout-the-whole-plane tears. Joel I am sure was wishing for the plane to go down in the ocean at that point -- any possible escape!

After that, we managed to pull ourselves together. Rebecca calmed down a bit as long as The Itsy Bitsy Spider was sung repeatedly to her, and her hand motions, though preferable to hitting and pinching, were dangerous because at "down came the rain and washed the spider out" she would fling her arms wide violently.

Ben, sensing the very tense mood and totally freaked out at the sight of his mother crying (poor Ben) spent two hours reading the Sky Mall catalog and the third quietly washing the window with his cup of Sprite.

Once we got off the plane, everything improved. The kids and I collected our baggage while Joel went and got the car, which got us out of the airport much quicker than we would have otherwise. Rebecca fell asleep as soon as her head touched her car seat, and barely woke up when I changed her into her pajamas at home.

After a rough flight and a long day yesterday, the kids and I slept until 8 this morning. We are all now much recovered, and glad to be home!

We Now Return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Ben and Becca have been vacationing in Puerto Rico (without internet access) for the past week. Details of their fun but tiring trip will be forthcoming in the next day or so. But right now, after a twelve hour odyssey back to Charlotte, I am just about as pooped as they are (they both pretty much fell asleep while I was changing them into their pajamas).