pumpkin head family
October 31, 2008, 9:22 pm
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We've had all kinds of Halloween fun this week and it finally came to an end with tonight's neighborhood festivities. First we trick or treated down 181st Street to all of the stores and got more candy than any of us will ever eat. After that we had dinner at the pizza parlor with 100 of our closest friends, followed by the world's most fun parade down Pinehurst Avenue and ending in Bennett Park where we played in the dark playground. While walking around in our Pumpkin Heads, unable to really breathe or hear, I could slightly see through my tiny triangular nose many people looking us over and shouting, "OH MY GOD! IT'S AN ENTIRE PUMPKIN FAMILY! I LOVE IT!" Troy wore his Pumpkin Head the most (with me in a close second and Huck in a distant, far away third) and he posed for lots of pictures with children he didn't know. Now we're home with glowing jack o'lanterns, Charlie Brown on TV, and an almost asleep little boy with a full tummy.
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[ 6 comments ] ( 34 views )boo at the zoo
October 27, 2008, 9:18 pm
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[ 4 comments ] ( 24 views )pumpkin heads
October 27, 2008, 7:49 am
For the first time Huck chose his Halloween costume all on his own, and thankfully he has a daddy who is more than happy to create whatever he chooses. This year Huck and Troy will be Pumpkin Heads. For the last few weeks our apartment has been a laboratory of papier mache and orange paint as Pumpkin Heads slowly come to life. After trying on one of the pumpkins I decided that I too want to be a Pumpkin Head. (This declaration got lots of applause and cheers from my enthusiastic family.) So now they're hard at work on my costume. Stay tuned for awkward family pictures.;)
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[ 6 comments ] ( 31 views )
library
October 25, 2008, 9:53 pm
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[ 10 comments ] ( 22 views )my favorite day
October 19, 2008, 8:00 pm
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Yesterday was our neighborhood's beloved Harvest Festival, something all of us look forward to every year. Bennett Park fills up with pumpkins, hay bales, games, crafts, music, pies, cupcakes, coffee, scarecrows, prizes, and over 100 volunteers. It's a completely free event sponsored entirely by neighborhood vendors and run by parents. The amazing women who started the festival six years ago were ready to hand it over to a new set of slightly less tired women, and I was lucky enough to be one of them. Armed with a fanny pack and walkie-talkie, I quickly realized the hard part was organizing everything and yesterday was mostly about having fun. Troy even got to sing on the big-time stage, because volunteer nepotism is okay.
Thank you, Troy and Huck, for letting me take on this huge project. Troy of course helped out in more ways than I can count and quickly became a valuable member of our steering committee. Huck is now an official Harvest Festival Kid, which means that for about a month he has to deal with a whole lot of divided attention from his mommy. One downside: while I was busy sorting prizes he fell off a rocking chair and got a horrible bump on his forehead. Two perks: he got to sample those prizes and even take a few home days before the festival, and he was the very first kid to get his face painted by our music teacher Donetta.
Troy got free cookies.
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[ 4 comments ] ( 34 views )little einstein
October 15, 2008, 9:59 am
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Everyone knows their children are geniuses. As parents, every single new thing a child learns seems like magic. It never gets old witnessing your kid figuring things out and getting smarter and smarter everyday. Huck is right now exploding with new learning, and some of it seems to have happened overnight and on his own, again proving that he is, indeed, a magical creature.
First of all, the other day while playing with the world's largest box that Troy found in our building's basement (and which took up most of our apartment), Huck decided to write his name on it. So he took a marker and with me telling him what letter to write next, he wrote “Huck's Box.” We haven't taught him to write letters beyond H-U-C-K. He doesn't go to school everyday without us. As far as we know, he's not sneaking out at night to attend letter writing seminars. But somehow, he's figured it out. Now he's my little traveling freak show as I take him from place to place and ask him to write random words or names (like “Rosie” yesterday), and while there is the occasional letter he's not exactly sure how to put on paper, he mostly gets them all correct. MAGIC!
Secondly, out of the blue he loves math. He certainly didn't learn this from his mother. He knows how to add all the numbers between zero and ten. All day long he asks me, “What's two plus two? Give the wrong answer.” I answer wrong and he says, “No! It's four!” He's mastered the art of using his fingers for the trickier ones (two plus three), but most of them he's memorized. What the?
And lastly, Troy's been teaching him to make paper airplanes, and not just your basic kind. They make really cool airplanes that fly almost as well as real ones. This all began last weekend when Troy spent a few minutes teaching Huck to make a pretty standard one. The next morning in church Huck took the bulletin and within a few seconds showed me a perfect paper airplane. He's been doing this all week. Troy insists he literally showed him the steps once. There's got to be a use for this skill somewhere in life.
I wish we could take credit for all this. But here's what Huck has learned from us, in his own words: "You know why I talk with food in my mouth? Because you two do."
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[ 5 comments ] ( 38 views )first love
October 10, 2008, 7:48 pm
Huck rekindled an old flame with his first love Abbie last weekend! She and her new husband Ken came to New York City so that all of us who weren't able to be at their Denver wedding could celebrate with them here. It took Huck and Abbie under half a second to pick up where they left off, which is best illustrated in the first picture. We all noticed that Huck often stole quick glances at Ken, as if to check out the one who actually won Abbie's heart for real. I think he approves. We all do! But we miss you, Abbie ...;)
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[ 4 comments ] ( 24 views )meet our new dog walker
October 7, 2008, 8:17 pm
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[ 5 comments ] ( 32 views )in the heights
October 5, 2008, 9:08 pm
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As you know, Troy and I love our neighborhood. We've been here for over ten years now and absolutely think of it as our home. Part of what makes it so special is the community we've found as parents. Lots and lots of young parents live here (young as in we've only been parents for a few years), and the church has become the hang-out for many of us, thanks to a couple of play groups that Troy coordinates and the church hosts. One of them is our Thursday morning group we call FAC-PAC (Family Arts Cooperative - Parents and Children). Over the last year it's evolved into a parent-led-pre-school-type place where parents take turns being in charge. Huck and I are also part of a wonderful Monday morning group like this that meets at another church down the street, but we haven't come up with a catchy name for that one yet.
It's certainly more work than a regular pre-school would be, but it comes with incredible advantages. For one thing, I get to experience all this cool stuff with Huck and not depend on him to tell me what he did at school today, which would probably not get me very far. (No offense, Huck.) Secondly, it keeps our life full of fun activity with other people of our age and temperament. If we're not painting fall masterpieces or running through the gym hunting for bears, we're on a field trip. Last week we went to a beautiful Bronx park called Wave Hill where the kids got to run through flowers, play in a pumpkin patch and take a nature walk (see pictures), and the month before that we took a crazy ride on the Staten Island Ferry. I'm sure we're a frightening sight for the average New Yorker who longs for a quiet subway ride ...
But most important are the friendships we've made as we struggle to figure out how to raise children together while also keeping up with the latest subway changes, rent increases, and playground politics. Here's an example of these great people ... last week our FAC-PAC friends surprised Troy and I with two tickets to see the Tony Award winning Broadway musical "In the Heights," which happens to be about our very neighborhood. Words can't describe how much this gift meant to us. We loved the show and got very tickled hearing and seeing so many familiar words and characters. And as if that wasn't enough excitement for our little family, Huck got to spend the evening with Tiffany, Brian and Kadin!
Thank you friends and neighbors for making Washington Heights such a happy place to live! (We almost don't notice that we still live in a one bedroom apartment.)
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[ 3 comments ] ( 27 views )what's not to love?
October 1, 2008, 10:12 am
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Some things I especially love about Huck these days ...
He says "yeshterday."
He desperately needs everyone’s attention all the time and to make sure he has it will do a loud roll call of our names, including his. After he gets to his name he lowers his voice slightly and answers, “Yes?”
He asks me, "Mommy, what was I going to say?" when he forgets.
He often says he has a secret for us, and after much mysteriousness finally reveals some regular old fact that isn’t secretive at all. He told our friend and next door neighbor Brian the other day, “I have a secret for you,” and then whispered to him in his best Sarah Jessica Parker voice, “I love your shoes.”
He excitedly shouts “Hey, I just realized something!” several times a day.
He is unbelievably shy in music class, and this makes him stand out next to all the unbelievably non-shy kids in music class, which reminds me of myself as a child. In fact, it makes him look a little like an old English professor, and I like that in a three and a half year old.
He says, "Tell me that story," after I've told the entire story to someone with him standing right there.
He apparently forgot the word “boys” the other day and said “little kid mens” instead. Later he rejected my vegetarian sausage and said he wanted “men’s sausage” instead, because he thinks only women are vegetarians. I’m beginning to think he’s right.
He says the red letters in the Bible are Spanish words.
He truly believes he is magical.
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[ 4 comments ] ( 37 views )