Archive for Bragging

Lillian the Ballerina

Lillian had a dance recital Wednesday night, and she did great!

We’ll be getting a better quality video of the whole performance in a couple weeks. In the meantime, here’s the footage that we shot at the recital… while you can’t clearly see their faces, it’s still adorable.

Lillian is the first girl to chassé onto the stage as they circle, then the first to chassé and kneel in line. She got distracted while kneeling, and was trying to find us in the audience (but didn’t have a chance, it was dark and we were a few rows back), and didn’t notice when everybody stood up. Oh well, she figured it out soon enough…

All the girls had a wonderful time and did a good job. We were worried that one had too much stage fright (the last dancer to chassé in the circle) but she came through!

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And the winners of the gas game…

When you rent a car, you have two choices: buy a tank of gas up-front at current average market prices, or pay a premium (usually almost twice average market price) for the fuel they need to refill the car with once it is returned.  The “game” to play when doing this is buy the full tank of gas up-front, then see just how empty you can get the car before returning it.

I hereby declare us to be the winners of that game.  We managed to run out of gas 0.2 miles from the rental agency, and had to push it in to return it completely empty of fuel.

Gas Game

Mind you, this is a very stupid game; if we had run out just 0.1 miles sooner, we would have been stuck on I-190 in heavy traffic. That’s 0.003 gallons of gas.  0.3% of a gallon.  That’s ridiculous, and it was a not-so-gentle hint that we probably shouldn’t play stupid games with gasoline levels with two small children in the car and a plane to catch. (Even at the intersection where the car died, we shouldn’t have been stopped; there was a PA system that kept saying, “Drivers please return to your vehicle.” I ignored it, because we had to push, and I figured the worst that would happen is the state police would show up and help us push.)

(All the same — we won, we won!)

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I feel so green!

Brett and I noticed one of our neighbors had a kitchen table set sitting out by the street. Hmm, we thought, this is nicer than the dinky tile-top table and cruddy chairs we have had for eons. We asked the neighbors if it was indeed up for grabs; they said they were moving, and wanted to get rid of some stuff, so it was either free to a good home or the garbage men would take it. (The reason for asking was mainly to meet them, since nobody just puts their furniture out on the sidewalk to give it some fresh air and a change of pace; unfortunately, since they were moving out, it was a pretty futile gesture.)

So, we’ve rescued a glass-top table and four chairs from death in a landfill. With a bit of repair (there was a bent fastener brace) and glass cleaner, it looks pretty decent. Lil likes it more than our dining room table, although I don’t know how long that might last.

Our old table and chairs, I plan on posting on Freecycle so they can also have a new home (they’re in fine condition, I just don’t like them). We don’t need to invest in brand-new something made of non-renewable materials, we’re reusing what somebody else no longer wants… yay us!

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Sibling Anti-Rivalry

I couldn’t be more proud of the way Lillian is handling her new role as Big Sister. Of course, it’s not perfect. She does get upset that she isn’t getting as much attention as before, and that it is slower in coming. She’s also begun to dread being alone, which can include sitting at the dining room table by herself while everyone else is on the couch (ten feet away). But there’s a critical point which makes me feel better about this — she blames us for the perceived lack of interest, and doesn’t blame Reuven for drawing us away from her. I can tell because if she’s sobbing over a minor injustice, she will go to him, give him a big hug and kiss, and immediately begin to feel better.

Whenever I pick her up at school, the other kids (from 1 1/2 years old up to 4) crowd around wanting to hold him. Lil makes sure to point out that she is his big sister, and is very helpful and keeps him safe and happy, so she gets to hold him all the time. She also finds noises he makes to be uproariously funny: “Mommy, he BURPED! Mommy, he FARTED! Mommy, he said MNNnnnrrrggg!” (Such things are fascinating to toddlers. I find a fair amount of amusement in him myself, to be completely honest.)

Big Sister

The downside of her being so close to him: they will be more apt to team up against me and Brett, and they’re just smart enough for that to be very, very dangerous…

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