One of the best things about Disneyland is the quality of all those characters walking around in flesh and blood: we saw Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Prince Caspian riding on a horse, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty…. They are amazing! They are so impeccably dressed and made up. Their mannerisms are so detailed and well-rehearsed.

Molly was in love with the princesses. She even came dressed as one! We went to Storybook Theater and got to hear Sleeping Beauty tell her own story! She was perfect! Even the Lipka boys were entranced! Then Molly and Matthew got to take a lesson with these court people on prince and princess etiquette, and they did a dance. Molly went to a special lunch where Ariel came and wished her happy birthday.

Molly’s Favorite Rides: FROM MOLLY: “Well, I liked the rollercoaster which went slow and i liked the one which went FAST! I liked it because my cousins went on that rollercoaster with me. I also liked the carousel when i rode on the elephant and the ride where the ceiling was coming down i was a little bit scared. And the one where i was in the jungle.”

Matthew got to meet Mickey Mouse and take a picture with him at his house in Toon Town. I don’t think Matthew has ever seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon, but he was IN LOVE with Mickey Mouse from the moment we got to Disneyland. Late in the afternoon of our 2nd day we waited in line for about 15 minutes to get to meet Mickey Mouse in his studio and then we went into a room with about 5 other families. All of the other children looked nervous and uncertain and were clinging to their parents. Not Matthew! He ran up to Mickey and gave him a big hug.

Matthew’s Favorite Rides: Pirates of the Carribean, Dumbo, Jumping Jellyfish, Gadget’s Go Coaster, Mickey’s House Read the rest of this entry »

We had a blast at Disneyland. I had no idea it would be such a great trip!

When Aunt Lindy invited all her nearest and dearest to a Disneyland birthday for Molly (all 7,000 of us - she has a lot of friends! :), I thought, what a perfect occasion to celebrate Molly’s birthday and take the boys on their first trip to Disneyland! Since Molly lives in Connecticut we don’t get many opportunities to celebrate her birthday WITH her. And without a good excuse to go to Disneyland, I didn’t know if we’d ever go!

Glen was less enthusiastic about it, and had just missed a week of work for Jessica’s Bat Mitzvah, so I convinced NANA to come accompany us!!! Nana is the PERFECT companion. Having her on a trip is even better than having her at your house doing laundry and re-orging your closets (Shana and Mikey, I know you hear me! :). She didn’t complain in the car, she was amenable to everything everyone wanted to do and she likes to pay for things. Seriously, we ALL had more fun because Nana was there.

Honestly, the kids are SO LUCKY to have such loving family all around them. This trip was amazing solely because of, but could have been disastrous without, the support of Nana, Aunt Lindy, Uncle Daniel and Carol Greenwald. On the first day at Disneyland we had 5 adults for 4 children. Without that ratio the experience would have been different for my children. But it wasn’t just their presence - Aunt Lindy and Uncle Daniel engage with their nephews in the most loving ways. They are attentive and generous and you can just tell the kids know they are loved.

Carol, Lindy’s step-mom, was of course there as the adoring grandmother of the birthday girl. But that didn’t stop her from taking a side trip with Jared when the Matterhorn freaked him out. And as we know, Jared is not easy to get along with when he’s freaked out! But Carol turned him right around.

Poor Nana! She was the one who sat with the strollers while Molly and Matthew took 2 hour naps in strollers. She was the one watching all of our stuff while everyone else was on a ride. She was the one who almost took Matthew’s hand off from gripping it so hard on the 30 second Tune-Town kiddie roller coaster ride that Molly rode over and over again with her hands in the air!!! Nana had the patience of a saint, as always.

I’ll post separately about each child’s experience, because for each of them it really WAS a magical kingdom. Who knew?

Smile Disaster

Ethan’s smile took a hit yesterday, but was then glued back on. About 15 minuted before the end of Little League practice, a ball took a funny hop and whacked off half of his two front teeth. Literally about 50%. It looked like the outline of the ball to me. Glen described it to the children’s dentist as an “upside down smile.” (Later the dentist said to me, that was a great description although Glen may not have realized it was. I didn’t bother to tell Dr. Lau that, no, Glen thinks all of his descriptions are great. (And they are honey.)

At first it looked like just his lip was fat, but then they realized the teeth were gone. Luckily 2 of his teammates found the 2 pieces. I was away picking up Glen, but also luckily, friend and fellow CPNS board member Eleni Hulman was there and she called me on my cell and gave me the news right away. Ethan was crying and pretty scared and upset. All of the parents who were there and our fantastic Coach Barney Fahey were so caring and concerned - I really appreciated knowing Ethan had that love and support around him when I wasn’t there.

At first Glen and I thought we would wait until the next day to go see the dentist because dental is SO expensive and emergency anything is SO expensive and it all comes out of our HSA. But we looked online and decided to call Ethan’s dentist, Dr. Terrence Lau.

He is a GREAT dentist. Pediatric dentistry has come so far from when I was a kid, but Dr. Lau is really outstanding. He also charges an arm and a leg and we haven’t seen him for a year because our insurance had changed. Luckily, it recently changed back. He really makes the children feel at ease, explaining everything he is doing and using language that is accessible and safe. When he gives a shot he doesn’t let them see the needle; he just explains that he has to hold the lip so can see and sometimes it might feel like he is pinching too hard because the lip is so slippery to hold on to, so just tell him. That kind of calming technique and the movie (last night was Surf’s Up which Ethan had never seen) on the ceiling really made Ethan feel at ease.

We called Dr. Lau at 6:45 and he told us to meet him at the office - he would drive back from SF. And over the next 2 hours, with no help, he carefully and meticulously bonded Ethan’s missing pieces back onto the stubs. The medical prognosis is good, but we’re not out of the woods. If the nerves in the teeth are damaged, they could die and then Ethan will need a root canal. He put medicine directly on the teeth and also prescribed an antibiotic. He said we could still go to Disneyland next week.

Can’t Stop Smiling

Matthew is a smiler. He smiles all day long. He is always smiling! Almost all of his expressions include smiles. He has his angry look, where his mouth and eyes are smiling but he wrinkles his nose and forehead. He has his surprised look where he opens his eyes and mouth as wide as he can, but the corners of his mouth are still hinting at happy. He has his scared look, where he shakes his head slightly and hunches his shoulders and blinks his eyes, but is still smiling.

Smile though your heart is breaking - learning to smile again

4 was a hard year for Jared. His last year of preschool was really difficult and Jared somehow came to the belief that the world was against him. For a while he could find nothing to be happy about. I would ask him to name some good things that happened to him at the end of the day and he couldn’t.

That’s when I started the behavior modification. That included chocolate in the morning if he could name good things before he went to sleep at night. (Some might call that a bribe, but I call it conditioning.) It also included smile therapy. I felt like I had to teach him how to smile all over again. Opposite of Matthew, he seemed to not allow himself to smile under any circumstances. Now he knows that his smiles are a gift he can give me every day, and he showers me with the gift of his smiles first thing every morning and throughout the day.

We’re still working on the whole world-is-against-me belief, but we’ll get there.

Announced excitedly by one boy to 2 friends: “Hey, did you hear Lucas asked Ashleigh to be his girlfriend!”

2 friends: “Really?!” “No kidding!?!”

“Yeah, but she said no.”

Disbursement of trio.

And so it begins. But at least they felt comfortable discussing it directly in front of a mom!

The boys recently went to the east coast for their cousin Jessica Lipka’s bat mitzvah. Glen took them all by himself!!!! Yay Glen! He said he realized that I usually take care of 90% of everything that needs to be done on these trips. That was nice. I had rehearsals for Magic Flute opera chorus at Opera San Jose so I couldn’t go.

Allegedly, the boys were great! Energetic as always, but well behaved overall. They got to see Nana, who was visiting from Florida, and Shana, and stayed with Bapu and Susu and Auntie Abigail and of course saw Aunt Lindy and Uncle Daniel and cousin Molly. They got to play with cousins Genessa and Elizabeth. All of these adults tell me that the boys were great. I think it’s a conspiracy. How could they be well-behaved without me there yelling at them and mutchering them?

Matthew had a fantasy that he had to share with everyone. He is going to the moon. He is taking a rocket to the moon. There will be a party. There will be a swimming pool and a flag. There are many details to this fantasy. It is specific. Abigail asked, “How do we get to the moon, do we take the elevator?” Matthew rolled his eyes at her and patiently explained, “No. You take a ROCKET to the moon.” He did not stop talking about this plan of his the whole trip!

Unfortunately when they were in DC for the celebration, the line for the Air & Space Museum was toooo long. Man, that would have been a perfect place for them to visit!

They all had a great time and I was so sorry to miss it.

Go to Chuck E Cheese and have cake.

Come home and play on the Wii with friends.

Go back to Chuck E Cheese and have more cake.

Come home and play on the Wii some more.

Go to the park and have a pinata.

Come home and have a triple sleepover (that’s 3 nights in a row…)

So, we made it to Chuck E Cheese, he played on the Wii with friends, he went to the park, he had cake. He even got to open presents, blow out candles and hang out at daddy’s office! We’ll do the pinata when we have a party in a couple weeks. Not bad!

But I have to admit I begged him not to turn 6. 6 is such a turning point. You’re not a little boy anymore. There’s not a trace of baby fat left. (Not that these kids ever had much of that.) You’re just a boy, well on your way toward awkward teeth, violent video games and less cuddling with mommy. *sigh*

He thought my begging was very funny and refused to accomodate me. I think he is quite pleased to be 6!

So I’m singing chorus in a small production of Pagliacci (with an amazing conductor!).

I rented it from Netflix. I was watching it with English subtitles while folding clothes the other day while the kids were playing with the Coadys. Erin comes in to pick up the kids so I put it on pause. Erin reads the subtitle and exclaims, ” ‘You cheap slut!!!’ … What are you watching!?!”

A little while later, at the end of the opera, the main character and his wife are acting in a play about a man and his unfaithful wife. The main character plays the cuckolded husband in the commedia - he has found out in the first act that he is indeed a cuckold in real life (see subtitle above) and he freaks out and kills his wife and her lover in the audience. Ethan and Jared were so captivated by this last scene - I mean, he kills them with a knife, it’s intense.

But I was surprised. I mean, it’s opera. It’s in italian with subtitles. They only saw the last scene. But they totally understood that it was a play within a play, even coming in at the last minute. And they were very excited and interested in that: “Did he kill her in real life or in the play? Was the guy he killed in the play or in the audience?”

Anyway, maybe it’s a good opera to introduce to OLDER children. We liked the Placido Domingo/Teresa Strata version performed with the La Scala Theatre Orchestra and Chorus under the baton of conductor Georges Prêtre. Released 2004. Recorded 1983 (I think).

Another time recently Ethan and I were watching a TV series in which the entire episode played on Alice in Wonderland symbolism. Ethan totally got it. He made the leap from the obvious visual symbols to the literary work and then started taking it further and seeing connections in the actions and words that I hadn’t picked up on. They are really paying attention around here! Glen and I have to be careful what we say!!!

Lately Matthew keeps opening up the refrigerator and pulling out the ketchup. I don’t even know why we have ketchup - probably for a brisket recipe I tried last year. The only time Matthew eats ketchup is when we go out to eat and he has french fries.

So he pulls out the ketchup bottle the other day:

Matthew: “Mama, can I have this?”

Mommy: “No.”

Matthew: “Mama, can I have this ketchup?”

Mommy: “No, we don’t have anything for you to eat it on.”

Matthew: “Pleeeeeeease.”

Mommy: “Matthew, there’s nothing to eat it on. You can’t eat it by itself!”

Matthew: “Toast! I want it on toast!”

Mmmmmmm! Ketchup sandwich!

The other day in the car Ethan, Matthew and I were listening to the part in the Magic Flute where Papageno has his mouth sealed shut by the Three Ladies. Ethan and I were laughing at how hilarious it is that it’s an opera and a main character can’t open his mouth to sing! Matthew asks why Papgeno can’t sing, and I explain that it was because he lied to Tamino - he told Tamino that he had saved him from the dragon, when really it was the Three Ladies.

Matthew: “Did the dragon want to FIRE Tamino Mommy?”

Mommy: “Ummm, the dragon was chasing Tamino.”

Matthew: “Did the dragon want to FIRE Tamino Mommy?”

Mommy: “Well, the dragon was going to GET him and he was scared.”

Matthew: “But the dragon was going to FIRE Tamino Mommy.”

Mommy: “Yes, the dragon was going to get him with his fire.”

Matthew: “And the dragon was going to FIRE him and EAT him!”

Mommy: “Yes, he was going to eat him up if the Three Ladies didn’t save him!”

Matthew: “The dragon was going to FIRE him and eat him with MARSHMELLOWS!”

Mmmmmm. Tamino S’mores!

If you are stumped and want some ideas, the boys would love:

. Light Sabers
. An electric pencil sharpener - DONE
. Wii games (yes, we’re taking the plunge - although apparently we’re not buying the game console until after Christmas)
. computer games are always popular - for all 3 ages an developmental stages. Preferably educational.
. gloves - their hands get cold
. Ethan can always use clothes
. Face paint and quality costume accessories (that won’t fall apart in a week) are always great gifts
. They still play with their knights and dragons. That collection can always be added to.
. Ethan and Jared are FINALLY getting into LEGOS. We have a modest collection. I was thinking of getting them the LEGO chess game.

More to come as I think of it!

Sometimes a project takes on a life of its own, going further in educating and providing family time than you could have expected.

Early this year we borrowed an Emeril for Kids type cookbook from the library. Ethan looked through (at my command! “you have to pick something!!!) and chose to try cooking Chicken Parmesan. It is now his signature dish!

It’s actually pretty easy to do and he can do most of it all by himself! And it scales up easily for guests. Ethan takes a lot of pride in inviting over friends and cooking for them.

One of the more detailed parts of the dish is creating a spice mix called “Baby Bam.” It uses paprika, salt, garlic powder, onion powder etc. (Baby Bam Recipe) Since we are growing parsley and thyme in our garden this year (thanks Erin Coady who gave me herbs to plant from her garden!), Ethan is harvesting those ingredients himself and we clean them and dry them together for the mix!

So if you like Chicken Parm, invite yourself over for dinner! We’d love to have you.