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camping + shopping + addition + ballet
Sep. 8th, 2011 12:06 amM has a three-day workweek, thanks to Labor Day and a scheduled vacation day on Friday. We have apparently decided to celebrate this event by not sleeping this week. This idea seems to have definite drawbacks. I can't think of what they might be right now, while I am procrastinating on the whole idea of going to bed, but I have this feeling it will occur to me sometime tomorrow.
Monday, we drove all the way up to Cincinnati to IKEA (and Jungle Jim's) and we bought: one plastic drawer organizer (2.49) and one set of plastic kid silverware (1.99). This was totally worth the thirty bucks in gas that it took to get up there! ;) We also bought food products and lunch and mainly, we always have a good family day when we go so it's worth it for that. But it does feel kind of ridiculous when you leave so nearly empty-handed after such a long drive. It was convenient timing in a way, though. My parents were camping this weekend, and Evelyn mainly doesn't come home when my parents are camping. We go over during the day, but Evelyn spends the nights too. The place they camp is half an hour from here and on the way up there, and so instead of making her come home on Sunday night (they were leaving Monday morning) we just stopped in to pick her up then, and she wasn't stuck in the car for quite as long. Plus, she got to camp a bit longer. She used to spend a lot of ngihts with my parents, but except for camping, that's almost stopped. I don't think it's happened since her birthday in May. I had gotten used to a few random days to myself, for shopping or paperwork or housework or maybe even relaxation. Camping overnight trips aren't quite the same thing, since we usually don't get home until ten. :) Ahh well. Camping plus IKEA. What more can you ask for from a holiday weekend?
Oh! I taught my kid to add today. It was so cool! She knows her numbers but the idea of teaching her the actual mathematics part of it has never really come up before. She was playing this computer game with basic addition problems that she was completely unequipped for ("Mommy, what does one plus one equal?") so instead of answering her, I showed her how to figure out the answer using some of the little treasures from her desk drawer. Beads, charms, erasers, etc, placed in two piles so that she could count all of them to get an answer. She got the concept but had trouble figuring out how to set up the piles correctly at first, so I grabbed a post-it note and a sharpie and drew a plus sign in the middle and told her to make a pile on each side of the plus sign to match the appropriate numbers in the problem. That clicked right away and she can now work basic addition problems. It is absolutely amazing to watch a kid get one of those major life concepts.
M's parents are coming to visit next month, and of course, we are those people who need a deadline in order to get any home improvement/organization tasks taken care of, so we have this ridiculous list of things that need done, and of course most of it can't be done until right before they arrive. See, also? We have this insane plan to host a mini-Christmas while they're here. No clue if I've mentioned this before. It started out, in my head, as a "hey, let's exchange gifts while they're here since it sucks to ship stuff and we usually just skip the whole thing as a result" sort of way. Then suddenly we're talking about putting up the little Christmas tree, and then we decided to put up the big tree, and the decorations, and then leave them up (I feel weak just thinking about this) until real Christmas is over because there is no way I am taking this crap down only to put it up again a month later. (We decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving.) From there, it was naturally only a short leap to cooking a traditional American Christmas dinner on the day we celebrate. (FYI: Octobomas this year falls on Saturday, October 8. Celebrate accordingly.) Oh, and let's not forget that at some point in there, M pointed out that we also will need to have gifts for Evie, and thus also for each other, or it would just be weird. !!!!
That should be fun.
Anyway, my plan is to keep the gifts as low-key as possible. For one thing, Evelyn really, REALLY does not need more STUFF just for the sake of getting stuff. I'm thinking of putting together a sewing kit for her. I saw a blog post somewhere last year where the blogger had made a really cute gift for her preschooler with age-appropriate sewing items for learning/practicing/playing with. I'll have to do a little research to find where I saw that, I guess. Anyway, I thought at the time that Evie would like that, but I never followed through with it. And maybe something ballet-themed.
Speaking of ballet, that's going well. She's had two classes. Parents don't get to watch so I have to rely on what she says about it, but she kept telling me that the first class was SO short, and you know that time flies when you're having fun. She's showed us a few different moves that they do. I'd love to sneak in to the studio to watch but they're pretty strict about it--the first week, a mom stuck her head in with the camera to take a picture of the class, and they quite firmly told her that they did not permit parents in the room while class was going on. She said they were polite about it but it sounds fairly snotty to me. Oh, I am sure that I understand their point--I've seen how distracted some of the kids at gymnastics got by their parents, and how hovery some of the moms were, but STILL, the idea rankles a bit, especially since the teacher has never even walked out into the waiting room and introduced herself to us or given us any of these policies. I know. I know. It shouldn't bother me. I have heard that this makes the recital at the end of the year so much more fun, and there are a couple of practice sessions per year that parents are invited to attend. I am just paranoid that someone might be mean to my special little snowflake princess or something. ;)
Okay, procrastination can only go so far. It's after midnight so I am off to bed finally.
Monday, we drove all the way up to Cincinnati to IKEA (and Jungle Jim's) and we bought: one plastic drawer organizer (2.49) and one set of plastic kid silverware (1.99). This was totally worth the thirty bucks in gas that it took to get up there! ;) We also bought food products and lunch and mainly, we always have a good family day when we go so it's worth it for that. But it does feel kind of ridiculous when you leave so nearly empty-handed after such a long drive. It was convenient timing in a way, though. My parents were camping this weekend, and Evelyn mainly doesn't come home when my parents are camping. We go over during the day, but Evelyn spends the nights too. The place they camp is half an hour from here and on the way up there, and so instead of making her come home on Sunday night (they were leaving Monday morning) we just stopped in to pick her up then, and she wasn't stuck in the car for quite as long. Plus, she got to camp a bit longer. She used to spend a lot of ngihts with my parents, but except for camping, that's almost stopped. I don't think it's happened since her birthday in May. I had gotten used to a few random days to myself, for shopping or paperwork or housework or maybe even relaxation. Camping overnight trips aren't quite the same thing, since we usually don't get home until ten. :) Ahh well. Camping plus IKEA. What more can you ask for from a holiday weekend?
Oh! I taught my kid to add today. It was so cool! She knows her numbers but the idea of teaching her the actual mathematics part of it has never really come up before. She was playing this computer game with basic addition problems that she was completely unequipped for ("Mommy, what does one plus one equal?") so instead of answering her, I showed her how to figure out the answer using some of the little treasures from her desk drawer. Beads, charms, erasers, etc, placed in two piles so that she could count all of them to get an answer. She got the concept but had trouble figuring out how to set up the piles correctly at first, so I grabbed a post-it note and a sharpie and drew a plus sign in the middle and told her to make a pile on each side of the plus sign to match the appropriate numbers in the problem. That clicked right away and she can now work basic addition problems. It is absolutely amazing to watch a kid get one of those major life concepts.
M's parents are coming to visit next month, and of course, we are those people who need a deadline in order to get any home improvement/organization tasks taken care of, so we have this ridiculous list of things that need done, and of course most of it can't be done until right before they arrive. See, also? We have this insane plan to host a mini-Christmas while they're here. No clue if I've mentioned this before. It started out, in my head, as a "hey, let's exchange gifts while they're here since it sucks to ship stuff and we usually just skip the whole thing as a result" sort of way. Then suddenly we're talking about putting up the little Christmas tree, and then we decided to put up the big tree, and the decorations, and then leave them up (I feel weak just thinking about this) until real Christmas is over because there is no way I am taking this crap down only to put it up again a month later. (We decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving.) From there, it was naturally only a short leap to cooking a traditional American Christmas dinner on the day we celebrate. (FYI: Octobomas this year falls on Saturday, October 8. Celebrate accordingly.) Oh, and let's not forget that at some point in there, M pointed out that we also will need to have gifts for Evie, and thus also for each other, or it would just be weird. !!!!
That should be fun.
Anyway, my plan is to keep the gifts as low-key as possible. For one thing, Evelyn really, REALLY does not need more STUFF just for the sake of getting stuff. I'm thinking of putting together a sewing kit for her. I saw a blog post somewhere last year where the blogger had made a really cute gift for her preschooler with age-appropriate sewing items for learning/practicing/playing with. I'll have to do a little research to find where I saw that, I guess. Anyway, I thought at the time that Evie would like that, but I never followed through with it. And maybe something ballet-themed.
Speaking of ballet, that's going well. She's had two classes. Parents don't get to watch so I have to rely on what she says about it, but she kept telling me that the first class was SO short, and you know that time flies when you're having fun. She's showed us a few different moves that they do. I'd love to sneak in to the studio to watch but they're pretty strict about it--the first week, a mom stuck her head in with the camera to take a picture of the class, and they quite firmly told her that they did not permit parents in the room while class was going on. She said they were polite about it but it sounds fairly snotty to me. Oh, I am sure that I understand their point--I've seen how distracted some of the kids at gymnastics got by their parents, and how hovery some of the moms were, but STILL, the idea rankles a bit, especially since the teacher has never even walked out into the waiting room and introduced herself to us or given us any of these policies. I know. I know. It shouldn't bother me. I have heard that this makes the recital at the end of the year so much more fun, and there are a couple of practice sessions per year that parents are invited to attend. I am just paranoid that someone might be mean to my special little snowflake princess or something. ;)
Okay, procrastination can only go so far. It's after midnight so I am off to bed finally.
