My dread? Oh yes. I’m talking about soccer. Both kids start in April. Ada is gung-ho. Jay, not so much, but I’m being really one of those moms and making him try it at least once. My kids do not get to gripe about things they have never done. Ada, I’m hoping will be able to balance both tennis and soccer. She doesn’t want to stop her tennis lessons, but they interfered with her getting on an indoor team because her team couldn’t change practice days which they happend to schedule at the last minute at the same time as her tennis lesson. Ada is on a U7 recreation league team and Jay is on … well, a side note first…

Jay is going to be a ring bearer in May. We started joking around with him and calling him Frodo. Then he saw parts of The Return of The King and freaked out. He now vehemently does not want to be the ring bearer. This included tears. I think that there is nothing more memorable for a wedding than watching the ring bearer being pushed down the aisle while he is crying and yelling that he doesn’t want to walk into Mordor. I realize that other people don’t think the same as me, so I didn’t order a Frodo costume and tell Jay his ring bearer suit was here as a joke. I also apologized ahead of time to the bride and groom, so they both know what is going on.

Back to soccer–Jay is on a team called “Hobbits.” We are not telling him this. It is hard enough for me to get him outside for activities.

Ada is starting art classes this month as well. Their school added some additional classes for elementary students during late PM thanks to help from our wonderful community. The Spencer Art Museum at KU will start teaching art classes on Tuesday/Thursday. Ada took a couple of their It Starts With Art classes they offered for kids on Saturday and enjoyed it, so I signed her up. The upper elementary is getting Spanish, French and Latin classes thanks to KU’s department of Spanish, I forget who is doing French, and a retired Bishop Seabury Latin teacher. I know the art class filled up enough that the original plan just for Tuesday was expanded for an additional class on Thursday. I hope the language classes are just as popular so they are there when Ada/Jay gets into upper elementary. I hope I can manage to keep them in their school through their 6th grade year. I love it there.

I am the one that schedules these activities as well as hauls them there. It is tiring at times being the chauffer, but I bring my Kindle and get to read uninterrupted for about an hour, which is really nice, except I guess during games. I suppose I should watch and cheer and such instead of reading.

The primary kids do get to parade around in costumes as long as they adhere to this one rule: it has to be a character from a book or a historical figure. Then they get to tell a bit about who they are. This is Ada’s first year of having to do costume prep. You would think we would pick Ada Lovelace, her namesake, but I’d prefer to save that for when she is old enough to truly comprehend who she is. Plus, the dress. How fabulous would it be to get a period appropriate dress? Really fabulous.

For this year, Ada and I picked Karen from The Red Shoes–a book inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale. I remember the look on Ada’s face the first time I read the part where Karen’s mother died. It was heartbreaking. It stopped me from reading. The story does have a good resolution though, so I went on, and since then we’ve read it many times. She’d ask for that story frequently before she decided to get all Big Pants and want to start reading chapter books. The kids have both faced death–of pets and people–and they understand it enough to occasionally tell me out of the blue, “I don’t want you to die.” I usually respond, “I don’t want to either, so I’m really glad we are on the same page with this issue. But I will. Someday. Hopefully when I’m really old.” The link above describes the story well. It is one of my favorite kid’s book we own.

The part about her costume that she is really excited about is she gets to make shoes, and by make, I mean decorate a pair of Keds or dance slippers or something. We made the trip to Michael’s this weekend for the shoe decorations. For her hair, I’m going to check the costume store for a wig. I know they have wigs, but I don’t know if they have them to fit her wee little head. We may strike out on that one. For her skirt–second photo down–I’ve tapped a friend to help make. The cape^*, I’m not sure yet.

I hope Ada enjoys the process of putting together this costume. I know I will.

*Or whatever it is called. I’m sure it has a better name. I’m fashion deficient.

Ada did some weaving today. She has troubles getting the heddle in/out of the up position. She caught onto it really quickly though. The first project is the practice piece. Now we need to go out and stock up on some yarn. We’ll start with the easy project: a two color scarf. She picked pink and purple.

Other than that, we had a fabulous time. Ada made a bookmark and a Super Happy Fun Ball. She bought a new hat and a book of paper monsters from the guy who made the book. She generated electricity. She looked at the engine of a Hydrogen car. She played with robots^*, bonded with a Dalek and punched out a robot^** that just got back up and came after her. She drank lemonade and danced to the band. She explored Science City. Twice. What we didn’t do was stick around until 9:30 to watch when they wheeled out the telescope for a viewing. Momma was too tired. Ada would have been by then. We ran into multiple friends during our 6.5 hours at Union Station, taking a dinner break with some at Crown Center to eat at Fritz’s.

By the end of the day, she couldn’t decide if she was going to grow up and make robots that will do my laundry, be a rock star, fly helicopters, crawl around in maintenance tunnels or make balloon animals. She’s got awhile to figure that out.

*The 14 year old boy did a great job answering every single “How” and “Why” question that Ada asked.

**She’s been doing that since she first started sitting up on her own.

Ada summer hair

Today was the last day I pick up my children at two different places for the foreseeable future. On Thursday, the kids start summer school. The only thing separating them is a fish tank and an office. When the fall session starts in September, then I’ll have to go to two different buildings because Ada will be moving up to the Elementary building and her new classroom.

Also, Ada got a haircut. It is the “I can take care of my hair myself” cut–aka, a pixie cut. She’ll be swimming 2-3 times a day, and she really needs to be able to brush it out herself. She has an extremely tender head and my fine, tangle-prone hair. She also has started habitually chewing on her hair which was matting and tangling it more. Now it can’t reach her mouth, it dries fast and she will only have to deal with small tangles on her sides. I’ll get better photos of it later. I didn’t require her to do this, but I’m glad she agreed on cutting it really short when I suggested it. We looked through photos together and picked out a pixie cut, which her amazing hair-maker aunt did for her over the weekend. I hope to get better photos of it soon.

I also got new ways to make coffee. It was something I wanted to do when I was not working, but since I was not working, did not spend any money on new coffee toys. I replaced the filter on my drip machine, got a percolator and stuff to cold brew my coffee. While I do have a burr grinder on my coffee machine, I can’t change the coarseness of the grind, so I picked up a new burr grinder that lets me do that. I’ll play with these toys, and if I’m not completely pleased with my varieties, I’ll pick up a french press as well.

Until then, I get to find a home for Ada because I still actually have to work. I don’t have enough vacation to cover her days off from school. Family, friends and a few work from home days peppered in have her covered for this break. Tomorrow she is really excited because she is getting up early^* and coming to work with me. Or, my “workshop” as she calls it despite my reminders that, while it is an honest mistake, I am not an elf. She is going to hang around with me for about an hour for some work stuff and then we are meeting her aunt to spend the day with her in Kansas City. They might be going to Kaleidoscope, which I know she will really like.

Maybe I’ll start blathering on here more frequently. I got a reality check on how busy I’ve been besides just the state of disaster my house is in. I saw today that I haven’t read a single Dilbert in 27 days.

Mac is downtown again with the kids for the Lawrence South Park egg hunt. I’m enjoying the gift of silence, sipping coffee, looking through my latest Saveur and planning what I’m going to cook to take tomorrow. I’ve already decided to make some bacon wrapped scallions for tonight if we eat at home. I also decided that I must make some curried pickled cauliflower. I’m going to try two–one with sugar^* and one without. I’m hoping I like the one without. I love pickled vegetables, and I don’t know why it isn’t something that I haven’t tried making myself.

And now I’m shutting down this laptop to pop in my recently purchased RAM upgrade in 3,2,1…

ETA: That was surprisingly easy, given my bad technology juju. Now I’m running on 8GB in my laptop instead of 4GB. Also, the case underneath the hardshell has been wiped clean and the small amount of dust inside the laptop has been blown out. I need to pop the top hardshell off and clean it up, and perhaps purchase a new hardshell because the bottom one has a couple of big cracks in it in the name of protecting my laptop from Jay.

*I know. I KNOW.

Ada’s Mermaid Cake
2 tomatoes
1 broccoli
11 scoops of frosting
6 scoops of white flour
1 piece of candy (so there isn’t too much sugar, I guess besides the frosting)
1 little piece of bread (so I’ll be okay to eat it, despite the 6 scoops of white flour)
2 eggs
2 scoops cinnamon
1 raisin
12 bottles of baking soda
17 mermaids–for the surface only
6 mermaid candles

Serve with 1 big bowl of apple juice. And 17 cups. Birthday ones.

She left no cooking instructions or which mixing method to use for this cake. I have enough experience with baking to know that it is warranted given the list and proportion of ingredients.

ETA: She also told me to take note that we need 17 napkins, 17 birthday hats and 17 presents.

Ada, Jay, Mac and I are getting together with one of Ada’s classmates and her mom and dad and going to the North Pole to visit Santa. We are flying in magic sleigh way up in the sky. We are going to surprise Snowflake^*, and she’s really sorry about this, but it will mean that they will have to be up past their bedtime. Oh, and I’m driving because I have GPS and will know how to get back to Kansas.

She talked about this all last night, first thing when she woke up, first thing when I picked her up today, the entire car ride home from picking her up today, when she got in the house, when Mac got home and got in the house, at dinner, and about 5 minutes ago.

When is this suppose to happen? In about 20 minutes.

*Our house elf. More on him later.