Results tagged “activities with kids” from Momtourage: Blogger Knows Best

  Tonight, it's Friday and for the first time in a long time, this Funny Mom comedian doesn't have a gig!!  Yes, for a change I'm going to be home and I'm sooooo loving it.  So tonight, we've made a plan to do pizza and bowling with our 6 year old.  She's bringing her friend Madison along so it should be fun.  I know, Madison, not a fan of the name either but the kid is great.  I also don't like the name Brooklyn...I'm like really?? which neighborhood??  What's next, here's my daughter Park Avenue??  Our son Murray Hill??  Which is just an expression people there are no hills in Manhattan so get rid of all those SUVs for gods sake!  Any rate, bowling is cheap (and I have a coupon...so sexy) so it should be a fun night.  My husband can kick back and enjoy a beer.....or as our daughter refers to it....daddy soda.  We're in a recession and he just started his new part time job (there are no full time ones available yet....hello, can you say lagging economy??), so bowling with a coupon will just have to do.  No wonder Netflix stock keeps going up.  Don't our lives sound glamorous?  Just like a TV show?.....yeah Roseanne.  But it'll be fun.  As long as we're together we'll have a good time.  What inexpensive activities are you enjoying with your family these days??

Not to sound like Kate Gosselin with all her self-interviewing last week, "Could I have been nicer to John...yes."  ("Am I annoying....yes.")  But yes, honestly, my daughter's after-school schedule is jam packed with activities.  However, if you read my blog last Friday, you can understand why....there's no one to bloody play with out here!!  Like I said last week, once the kids in this neighborhood get off that bus you never see a living soul again (and play dates seem also to be an impossibility).  I call them the phantom children.  Therefore, we need activities every day to keep Lily occupied.  Luckily, she doesn't come home until 3:35 so there's not too much time to fill before dinner.  One of my neighbors with college aged kids read last week's post and was surprised at how many activities Lily participates in: horse riding; girl scouts; soccer; gymnastics; lacrosse; twirling; etc....and I signed us up for a time management class as well but we ran out of time.

  Playdates these days seem harder and harder to come by.....specifically in the suburbs.  You know, when we lived in Brooklyn, getting together with other children was much easier.  We just used to meet in the playground after school.  Easy enough.  You got to meet the other kids and their parents (good or bad) in a matter of minutes and from there it was on to the greener pastures of individual play dates....or you could just put them on your personal 'do not call list' or click your imaginary 'ignore' button on your face-to-face book.  I really miss that ease of socialization that one gets in an urban environment....it's one of the few things I do miss....the noise, the crowds, the perpetual freak show aspect of New York City, being hit on by the homeless and the constant dog poop under my shoes I do not.  

We're on our fifth straight day of rain here in the northeast so that means another indoor play date.  Today, one of the other mothers offered to have all the kids over to her house!  Yeah!!! Finally, someone else has stepped up to the plate.  I don't mind having the kids over but between the noise and the constant rain, I'm done.  I'm tired of playing hide and seek and decorating cupcakes already.  They really need to run around outside too but it's just too darn wet and chilly for that.  What are you doing to keep your kids amused during this latest weather set back???

Lily got a hold of my camera this week and has been taking photos like crazy the fact that it's digital makes it so easy to delete most of the shots anyway.  It's not like years ago when you went to take a photo with your parents' camera and they flipped out because you'd be wasting film.  Here are some of her shots...she takes many of the television and some you just don't know what they are........

At least three days a week after school at the playground, we buy Lily (and at least 2 of her friends) popsicles from the ice cream truck.  They're pretty cheap - only $3.00 a day for 4 small popsicles.  However, since my husband was laid off....again....I've been taking a hard look at our finances.  Fortunately, I've been busier than ever however, we need to be more careful with money.  We still have $3 for popsicles but should we be spending $9 a week on popsicles from the truck when they're cheaper to buy from the supermarket? I don't think so. 

We took Lily to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this week to see the annual Hanami or Cherry Blossom Festival.  This is one of our favorite things to do and this year, with all the constant bad news we really needed a little pick me up, especially since I had just mailed the IRS a check for $3000.  It's okay, I just made it out to AIG (too bad we couldn't just write them off as a dependent)..  But seriously, we didn't participate in any tea bag temper tantrums - I thought that was the realm of my overbearing mum.  Honestly, who do these people that protest taxes think is going to pay for our way of life: the road fairy? the school fairy?  Grow up already.  These are probably the same people who voted for George Bush....not once but twice.  It came as no shock to me that it was all coordinated by the Fox News Channel.

Lily is skating so well this year.  That figures though - she's 6 now.  We started her in lessons when she was 3.  That was kind of useless....she spent most of her time on her tush..she appeared to enjoy it though.  She used to ask me all the time, "Kating?"  She couldn't even say it forget doing it.  Ahhhh memories.  They grow up so fast...makes me sad.

As I posted earlier today, my husband is very anti-Christmas including the decorations.  So, to reduce seasonal stress I try to use ones that won't depress him too much and cause him to fly off into one of his 'it's so commercial' rants (I call them Blitzen Fits).  See our peace frog and Christmas Lobster....definitely not Kosher for my side of the family.  One thing we both agree on:  we both detest those giant, outdoor, snow globe things that use a fan to blow bits of styrofoam around encased Santas or Snowmen.  It's like, "Oh look, Santa's got respiratory problems."  Weird and such a waste of electricity.

My husband hates Christmas decorations so in order to keep the peace in our home over the holidays we have to put up lights that barely have anything to do with the season.  Our daughter is just glad that we have any lights up whatsoever so she's oblivious to the obviously out of season Diving Dolphin light at right.  Just the ritual of putting up the decorations was enough excitement for her.  What concessions are you making this holiday season?

Drums to his own beat? Non-Conformist? Sullen? My son was never one of those babies who cooed when you smiled at him adoringly, rarely ever hammed it up for the camera. To the contrary, he has cultivated a pout when asked to "perform". And I can totally respect that. But would it hurt the kid to smile for posterity, on camera, just once, for Halloween?

I've written about it before in past blogs, juice boxes are full of sugar.  Lily's class is going to have a little Halloween party next week.  I was elected to bring the juice boxes.   Now considering how much sugar these little munchkins will be consuming later that day and at the party (with all those sugary, frosted baked treats), I'm bringing lowfat milk and wateroos instead of juice boxes.  I'm sure none of the kids will be like, "It's not apple juice?!"  Well if they do who cares anyway?!  What's the matter little Johnny?  Need a fix?  Juice boxes are like a gateway drug for meth.

I'm a bad Jew. Always have been. In fact, if anything I am a Buddhist. See?! Bad Jew! But when I married a Protestant and had our child, I promised myself to re-ignite the awesome Jewish traditions I've only read about it in books as an adult. It was my responsibility to present my family's faith tradition to my son. And with our move from the Northeast to Austin, Texas soon after his birth, holding onto that tradition became more important. In New York you feel you've done your Jewish duty just because you take a Personal Day from work to fast mid-September and/or know the difference between nova and belly lox.

This ride was symbolic of the emotional roller coaster we were on with Lily and all her female cousins this past Sunday.  We spent the day at a wonderful (and expensive) amusement park but still....very few of the female children were happy or allowed us to see them being happy.  They're all budding divas and drama queens no matter what their birth order.  It was a day of crying, sighing, demanding, threatening, door slamming, ultimatums, foot stamping and that was just the five year olds.  I was like who wants Midol?  By the end of the day, I felt like Lindsay Lohan's personal assistant.  Do you suffer from little girl drama??  Do tell.

We went to a great swimming pool/sprinkler/waterslide park in the burbs over the weekend. They had something there to keep children ages 6 months to 16 years happy. It was wonderful except for the kiddie/baby pool. I'm really not a fan of these. Now this little pool, no deeper than 12 inches, did have a fully functioning filtration system but the pool itself was loaded with babies in sagging swimmies. The water temperature was 88 degrees too as we've been experiencing record temps here in the northeast....great breeding conditions for e coli. It was disgusting. I think we're all just better off taking the babies in the big kids pool for short amounts of time.

It wouldn't be summer in Brooklyn, or any other borough in New York City, without another sleazy street festival.  My favorites are the fatty, food-inspector-free sausage and peppers and safety-inspection-free rides.  I always look forward to seeing the callow, greasy, disinterested, often too-busy-texting teenagers they have operating the rides as well.  It's enough to make me pop a Zantac...and a Zoloft for that matter.  (Check out the sign for the slide it reads F Slid.  I rest my case.)  The best part is that they're usually run by church dioceses as well!  I guess they say a few prayers ahead of time and hope that will cover them.  I happen to be one of lesser faith....I believe in insurance.

Here are some pics from the one we just had in our neighborhood.  Thank god it's over.

I took Lily to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan last week.  She's only five but we managed to actually look at paintings for almost one hour!  I spent several days really prepping her with books and online photos of famous impressionist works.  She was really thrilled to be able to point out the Van Goghs and a few other Impressionist works.

However, nothing topped her delight (not including the orange popsicle purchased from a street vendor afterwards) like the Jeff Koons rooftop installation work entitled Balloon Dog.  A great twist on an old favorite.  It's like being at a birthday party except I didn't have to buy anyone a present.

OMG!  I just had to share this photo with you.  I took Lily and her friend to the New York Hall Of Science the other day.  They have a great discovery playground with a huge spider's web for climbing.  From a distance, it looks like I dragged a net through the water and caught some children.  Crazy right?  It didn't occur to me till I looked at it on the computer.  Love it. 

Try to find Lily in the net.

One of the many great things about NYC is our free summer concert series.  Let me stress once again - FREE.  In this economy anything helps.  Larry and I try to attend at least one a summer.  We pack a salad dinner, snacks, drinks, bathe Lily ahead of time and we all trek off to see (or rather hear) whoever is playing. 

I wear sunscreen all year long on my face and in the summer I wear SPF 50 every day just to be on the safe side.  Believe me, my friend puts sunscreen on her son he's just got the benefit of Melanin in his system.  He's the ultimate Coppertone Baby.  He even makes Lily look pale and I thought she had a nice color.  Check out his tan line.....left photo.  I love kids with tan lines and opposing white cheeks.  That is just the cutest.  Brian is definitely a handsome little munchkin.