snippets from the week

I overestimated both how much knitting I could get done while watching soccer, and the temperature during the game. Or maybe I underestimated that. Or not. Anyway, it was really too hot for wool hats. But just barely.
Queen of the soccer hill.
My parents are in town so we are getting to play tourist, which is fun. Briton has many, many things to show them. Many things.
Last night we went to see the Lion King which was pretty freaking amazing. Although, it was almost as fun to watch the kids watch the show as it was to watch the show ourselves.
Lots of fun, but a late night. Someone fell asleep before we even pulled out of the first station.

Have a wonderful weekend!

the magic basement provideth

I couldn't pass these up. They were waiting for trash day down in the basement and, although I have no idea what I'm going to do with any of these things, they just looked too interesting to leave down there. I also found the foot of a clawfoot tub which is now a bookend in the living room, awaiting paint to spruce it up, and some really nice Tupperware tubs that I'm planning on using for small crafty items (I don't like to use found stuff for food, even when I've cleaned it to death, probably weird but better safe than sorry) I also spotted a rather large flat screen TV with a big cracked dent in the middle of the glass. But I don't think any amount of craftiness could save that.
So any ideas? The silver tub is about the size of a bathroom trashcan and I'm pretty sure I can get the tape all the way off with a little elbow grease. But what then?

soccer mom

When I was pregnant with Briton, I used to daydream about what it would be like to have a 5,6,7-year old boy. Would he play basketball like his dad? Love reading like his mom? Would I be the mom who always had the snacks that kids want in the house? Would I drive (gasp!) a minivan and haul my child and a crew of friends to soccer each week? I'm not sure why this image of myself persisted. I should probably blame it on car commercials. Or some kind of commercials. I'm sure it was their fault, somehow.
Of course it never turns out quite the way you imagine. Because before your a parent, no matter how much babysitting or how many little brothers you have encountered in your young life, despite reading every book available about parenting, you really can't ever know what it is to be a parent until you are one.

I could go on and on about this, as I'm sure you can too, if you are a parent (or maybe even if your aren't) but this isn't about parenting,really, it's about soccer.

As it turns out, I'm not much of a soccer mom. I don't really like soccer. I definitely cant tell you an off-sides from a corner kick (Ok, I know what they both are, but I suck at identifying off-sides and I don't know when you have a corner kick and when you throw it in, nor do I really feel the need to know this). Add this general ambivalence to the sport to the fact that neither of my kids have really shown much interest in it and that I was more interested in sleeping in or working on the house than showing up for a game on a Saturday morning and we never really got into the soccer thing.

Until now.

We are currently heading off to soccer THREE TIMES A WEEK these days. Zero to three. Just like that.
Again, it's a combination of factors. Briton has a sudden interest in the game. We got a chance to put him on a team with an old friend from Charlottesville who lives here as well. There is no house to renovate, in fact there is no house to run around in so being out in the open running off some Saturday morning energy is now a big plus. And there is a regular homeschool soccer time in the middle of the day on Wednesday, just about the time that both Briton and I are getting squirmy. So we have soccer practice through the city on Mondays and soccer at Chelsea Pier on Wednesdays and soccer games in Central Park on Saturdays. It's a lot of soccer. But in a good way, as it turns out. Briton makes friends. I make friends. Will get to stretch his coaches legs a little. Evie gets to try to fall off the back of the bleachers repeatedly. We're all having fun.

The funniest part for me, however, is that, in a round about way, I'm doing the whole soccer carpool thing after all. It just looks a little different. Instead of kids packed in a van, we have this
So after all, I guess I am a soccer mom.

I asked Evie if she wanted to play soccer next year and got a "Ew no!" stare followed by a (dramatic) "I want to DANCE!" So apparently I'm going to be a stage mom too. Oh lordy.

with love

A year ago today, my father in law passed away. And even after a year, it's hard to know what to say, the words are never quite right. So I thought I'd share a collection of sorts that I've started. Some of them I've posted before, some not. All were taken in the city, things found by chance. Messages of love left on the sidewalk.


With love.

snippets from the week

The fall weather hit last night. Boom. Just like that. On Wednesday we were sweating it up with 85 degrees and the kind of humidity that makes it feel more like 95 and by Thursday evening it was 56 degrees and dropping. Ummm, lovely.
This means that, as of today, we have jumped from lightweight t-shirt and skirt to tights and sweaters. Except that sweater vest right there? The one I whipped through so that she would have it when it got cold? Not really warm enough already. We need sleeves. Sigh.
Remember in Friends when Monica and Rachel could look out their window to the apartment across the way and watch Naked Guy? We do not have Naked Guy living across from us (which is good, since we have children and all) Instead we have an assisted living facility which means that our neighbors are exceptionally quiet. As in we never see or hear them at all. Except for this week when they had a very loud party in the courtyard featuring a guy who sounded nothing like Buddy Holly singing Buddy Holly. There was even some dancing. Sort of. Dancing while sitting down kind of dancing. But good for them.
I'm testing the whole overdying thing for my sweater on the leftover yarn. So far I've managed to only lightly stain my tub green.
I fall in love with this place more and more with each passing sign, I mean week.
On Monday, as previously mentioned, Briton and I went way the heck over to the other side of Brooklyn to the Harbor Defense Museum to look at really big cannon and cannon balls with a bunch of other nine year old boys. But the view walking from the train to the museum was worth the trip. (ah the things I do for my children)
Will happened upon a 1920's subway car that pulled into the station where he was waiting this week. He didn't ride it (nutball!) because it wasn't going where he was going (again, nutball! I would have ridden at least one stop! Right?)

Have a good weekend all, we have our first Soccer in Central Park experience tomorrow (and I have yet to go find a size four ball, shin guards and turf shoes. You know what? Kids, they are expensive to keep!

fyi for the superheros out there

Made my day to see this in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine Newsletter.

Only in New York.

(not) scheduled

Homeschooling is an interesting little fish. I've been wondering what the results would be if some kind of study was done on homeschooling parents to see if they tended to be a certain type of person. I'm not talking about the reasons they have for homeschooling, more of what their personal style of getting things done.
In case you hadn't guessed, I'm a type A kind of girl. Shocked? No, I didn't think you would be. While I've mellowed considerably since having children - for example, I no longer own a lablemaker, so my house is not neatly and uniformly labeled anymore. I think I may have worn it out in the end and then Will refused to let me have a new one. It was getting out of hand anyway. I didn't actually ever label my husband, but the thought crossed my mind- I'm still pretty organization-oriented-need-things-my-way most of the time. I love lists. I love schedules.

Which makes homeschooling, or at least homeschooling as I'd like this year to be, a little...interesting. My gut instinct is to set up our weeks in a nice,regulated, organized way. Scheduled out just the way my classroom was. And homeschooling can certainly be like that. But between two homeschooling yahoo groups, Mommy Poppins and just living in this city, there are amazing, once in a blue moon opportunities to be had every single day. There is a part of me that wants to just chuck any kind of structured learning and just go and then there is the other side that wants to have field trips on Mondays and a regular pace of subjects on the other days. Somewhere in there I need to find a balance that makes this year interesting and exciting but also at least partially routined. Because even though he would tell you he dislikes routine, Briton is also schedule oriented. He works best when he knows what's coming.

Yesterday we took the subway allllllll the way across Brooklyn (yes, I know, Brooklyn is part of New York City, but it's also big and wide and getting from the top of Manhattan to the bottom of Brooklyn takes three transfers and more than an hour) to take a tour of the Harbor Defense Museum, located just under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at Fort Hamilton. The Fort has been active continuously since the days of the War of 1812, so it's an oldie, and a key part of the history of New York.

I didn't know it even existed until I saw an announcement about the tour on Sunday. In this instance it fit neatly into both my history plans (Early Settlement of New York to the Revolution this fall) and my schedule (Field Trips on Monday) and was the perfect outing as it was attended exclusively by nine and ten year old boys. Go figure. The tour was capped off with a musket loading lesson care of the show Mail Call which had the boys on the edge of their seats and the mothers staring wide eyed at the crazy shouting man on the screen.

In addition to the tour, we used the two plus hours on the subway to read the next chapter in a book, ask and answer comprehension questions and work on some math puzzles. We also spent the hour before we left for our trip working on some silly writing prompts (care of this fantastic book) in a cafe.

It was a great day. A fantastic day. Math, history, reading, writing, plenty of exercise as we sprinted from the subway station to Evelyn's school to pick her up in the nick of time. But also looked NOTHING like the schedule I planned last week.
It's going to be a balancing act, this year. More than I realized. And busy. By the end of the day I was more exhausted than I think I ever was teaching in a classroom. But I also had more fun than I ever had in my teacher days. Not all days can consist of Rocket Math on the D train and a tale about a toe shaped hat in a cafe. If they were I think we'd both be burnt out by Christmas, but that tendency to say, "no, it's not in the schedule" is going to have to get shelved, because tomorrow there might be a once in a lifetime chance to hear a favorite author speak downtown or feed the monkeys at the Bronx Zoo or parachute off the Empire State Building (Ok, probably not that. I'm afraid of heights). And while math is important and all, eh, it's math, you can do that any old time. But you can't always feed monkeys. Right?