Milestone

If you look hard, you can see the new space in the bottom of her mouth. Grace is so happy she finally lost her first tooth. (Yes, I know this is a horrible picture, but I needed to get close up to see that hole).

It popped out at dinner tonight, after been hanging by a thread for the past day or so. And unlike cousin Joey, her tooth actually came out of her mouth, rather than going the other way.

Fun website

My favorite local blog posted today about Walk Score, a website that calculates a neighborhoods "walkability rating" from 0 to 100. It is very fun - I found myself plugging in all sorts of addresses of people I know. And old Vickery Place doesn't score too badly - we just barely made it into the "Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car" score. And from plugging in all my friends and family, only my dear sister ranked higher, and then only by 7 points.

Now the site readily admits it has it's limitations. The basics of safety, public transportation, topography, freeways and bodies of water (among other things) are not taken into consideration. But still a fun little online diversion (aren't there just so many of those!).

Kathy, I'd love to see what your old Seattle address ranks. I'm sure it's right up there at the top.

Winding down

Activities are starting to wind down for the kiddos. Alex had his last day of school on Friday, though he only has a week off before his summer session starts on June 2 (before Grace is even out of school yet). Grace had her last dance class until her dress rehearsal this coming Friday and recital on Saturday. And both kids had their last swim class last Monday.

Swim class was interesting this year. Our class started out with only three students, with two of them being my kids. It was nice that Grace and Alex could be in class together - I had to bribe Alex the first day with the promise of a new toy to get him into the pool. And then Grace was a lifesaver encouraging and comforting him the entire class. And both kids LOVED swim class. Alex would get disappointed when he found out the next day wasn't a class day.

Grace still loves swimming; in fact, she has decided that in the fall she no longer wants to take dance class - she wants to continue swimming. But by the time we hit the last month or so of classes, Alex decided he no longer liked it. I don't know if it was the addition of more kids; we went from our class of three with one teacher to about twelve with four teachers. I don't know if it was the expectation of him putting his head under water, which he really doesn't like. But he started fussing so much that for a few classes I actually had to leave the building because otherwise he would sit there and fake-cry for me while he could see me.

But we made it through the semester and had the little "swim show" the second half of the last class. Here's a few pictures from the pool.


Big girl Grace gets ready to show off her swim moves.


She's swimming so well, I can't wait to get her into the pool tomorrow to show off to Jim.


Alex was a little more interested in looking at me than paying attention to the teachers.


Alex floating on his back, with a little help.


Grace almost has the backstroke down. She's got the floating and flutter kicks, but it's hard to coordinate those arms in with it.


This is how Alex ended the session, pouting and refusing to get out of the pool and jump in like everyone else (you can see his white back and green shorts hanging on the edge of the pool). The two white rectangles are actual tables they put in the middle of the pool. Makes it just far enough for the little kiddos to practice swimming to, and gives them a nice place to rest while waiting for other people to take their turn.


Alex just wanted to put on his dinosaur costume when we got home. I think he's holding his right hand up because that is the glove with the tiny dinosaur roar button in it. I'm glad he was open to having his picture taken, because he just looked so darn cute.

Birthday parties are fun

Grace had her "Pucca" birthday party this weekend. Don't know what Pucca is? Well, you can check her out here and here. Once again my child had chosen a theme not readily available for a party, so I had stocked up on Chinese New Year decorations and hand made the rest. And the addition of the generic bounce house just tied it all together. It was insanely humid, but for the third year in a row the rain didn't arrive until the party had ended.


I have to show off my Pucca cake. I made it by looking at a picture printed off the internet, and considering my lack of experience with cake decorating I think I did a darn good job with it! Her pigtails were two Ding Dongs. Grace and Alex had never tasted Ding Dongs until they ate these, and of course LOVED them (who wouldn't?!).


Even with the good camera it is really tough to get a good photo of kids in a bounce house.




Luckily younger brother Kenny stuck around so Alex had a friend to play with during the party.


Everyone loves the Twizzler.


Gabriel seemed to not care (or even notice?) that a bunch of 6-year olds were crawling all over the car.


Waiting to play "Pin the Heart on Garu."


The rest of the waiting line. Notice how sweaty everyone is after all the bouncing. Now you can just imagine what my bandana felt like after wrapping around those thirteen heads. Yuk.


Taking a water break with Kate.


The Four Musketeers. It will be really sad if these girls aren't in the same first grade class next year.

Little Gracie Lu Who is way more than two

Just a Dr. Seuss reference there in the title.

Happy birthday to my sweet girl! Six years old now.

I would have posted this yesterday (actually on her birthday), but I was up until almost midnight working on stuff for the party today. I'll get some pictures of that up in the next day or two.

It boggles my mind when I look at her sometimes. She's just turning into this long, lanky kid, with all her little elementary school friends that she runs off and giggles with on the playground after dumping her backpack on me.

She woke up yesterday morning and commented that she didn't feel like she was six years old. I explained that since she wasn't born until 5:20 in the evening that technically she wasn't six yet. This seemed to satisfy her, and by the end of the evening she DID feel like she was six. All in all I think she had a good birthday. I came and read to her class that morning (I usually do that two or three Fridays a month), Jim was home so he got to go eat lunch with her for the first time this year, I was back that afternoon with donuts for the class, and we ended up at Chuy's for her birthday dinner of choice - pretty nice because it means that in addition to satisfying her craving for Chuy's quesadillas, Mama gets to satisfy her craving for a margarita.

I know I say this all the time, but boy do I love that kid.

What the hell are they thinking?

I'm totally addicted to the blog for our local East Dallas magazine. I can't wait to check it out every night. The magazine itself is a fun little read with human-interest stories and event coverage centered on our part of the city. But the blog gets much more in depth with local political issues. And the editor had a wonderful post about the city council's recent discussions about the downtown convention center hotel plans. In a nutshell, some city council members are recommending that the CITY build, own and operate a multi-million dollar hotel. I'll keep my outrage in check and not rant too much (and not even bring up the whole "buying overpriced land" issue involved in it too). I'll just give you the link here (scroll up if it pops you in the middle of the post):
Remember the Movie "Dumb and Dumber"?

It's a little long, but I promise by the end you will also be rolling your eyes and asking "what the hell are they thinking?" Sheesh.

Cinco de Mayo

Feliz cumplianos, mi hermana!

Beautiful day

We took advantage today of the "Target First Saturday" at the Nasher Sculpture Garden. It gives free admission from 10a-2p and has various activities for kids to do. Jim was hesitant about going simply because he couldn't imagine the kids (especially Alex) being able to keep their hands off the art. My argument was that if you don't take your children to things like museums, concerts, etc., they will never learn how to act in those situations. That was the theory behind us always taking our kids to "real" restaurants (not fancy ones, but definitely more than McDonalds or Purple Cow), and now they are usually pretty darn good about eating out in public.

Anyway, we couldn't have asked for better weather for enjoying beautiful art in the beautiful setting. High was in the low 70s with a gorgeous blue sky overhead. And with a sit down talk with the kids before leaving the house (followed by a reminder on the sidewalk before entering), they were better than we could have ever hoped for. I highly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity - once we bypassed the $10 parking for the meter on the street we had an amazing couple of hours for about 50 cents.


My little artist next to the one sculpture she had time to sketch in her sketch pad - Spoon Woman by Alberto Giacometti ("Oh Mom, it's because she looks like a spoon, right?").


Alex checking out one of the coolest pieces in the museum.


This is what he was showing me. Those are life-sized figures walking up the pole (Walking to the Sky by Jonathan Borofsky).


A shot looking out across the garden. Hopefully you can see what wonderful weather it was.



Another view of the garden.



One of my favorites (Night by Aristide Maillol). Just beautifully done.


Grace counting the headless men (Bronze crowd by Magdalena Abakanowicz). There are 36 of them.


Large Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon looked more like a large armadillo to Grace.


Target had a great little scavenger hunt for the kids to do with photos of details of four pieces. You had to find the pieces and write down the title and artist for each. When you turn your finished page in you got a little Target dog. Both kids have their dog tucked in closely to them right now in bed.


My final shot of Walking to the Sky as we are about to get into the car and head home.

Great day!

Boy crazy

My daughter is boy crazy.

It cracks me up. She has a rotating schedule of boyfriends - about five or six in her class that are constantly shifting in and out of her current three boyfriend spots (apparently three is her magic number). Now before I start getting comments of the apple not falling far from the tree, I'd like to point out that I certainly don't remember having boyfriends in kindergarten. I remember having boys chase me in elementary school, but can't remember the exact grade it started (nor do I remember doing much of the chasing).

One memory I do have is of liking Brian T in 2nd grade because I remember we had the same favorite song ("Wildfire" by Michael Martin Murphey; BT, remember that song?).

Grace has always liked the boys; never one for just playing with the girls. She's also gotten a little embarrassed with talking about it to Jim. She'll whisper things to me and starts blushing if I bring it up again within earshot of her dad. It's very sweet, but also a little scary. Growing up so fast!

But at least she likes the good boys. When I asked why she likes one of her favorites (Quinn), she said "Because he's really smart. He's the best one at math in the class!"