Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Danielle

  • Learning to Dive

    Some friends of ours with real money rented a house in Nantucket for two weeks and invited us for a long weekend. The house was spectacular and had a nice pool. My daughters are both fish, so it was pretty clear the weekend would be mainly spent in the pool.

    But neither of my daughters can dive. Danielle, now 11, learned to swim very well, but always had a mental block with diving. Tori is just 7, so plenty of time for her to learn it.

    The problem is that I never knew how to dive. I didn’t grow up around swimming pools, we went camping and I swam in lakes. Not a lot of diving boards.

    I taught myself to at least dive from the edge of a swimming pool, just to encourage Danielle, but a diving board turns me into a dangerous belly flop machine.

    This pool had a small diving board about 2 feet above the water. Pretty tame. The first day I told Danielle, “three days in a pool, be a shame to not learn to dive”.

    Day 1, she’s thinking about it. Day 2 she practices diving from the edge of the pool and gets pretty comfortable. So day 3 she decides to give the board a shot. Of course she wants me to try as well. And she comes up with the best way to start (at least for us). Just walk the board to the end, don’t stop, just dive. Don’t give yourself any time to think about it.

    And it worked. Suddenly we’re both diving. An hour later, we’re getting some air, going for distance, big fun. (I have video of this, but I’ve been expressly forbidden to share it.)

    So this will be forever remembered as the weekend Danielle (and I) learned to dive.

  • Aerial Yoga

    Yes, that is a thing. For my wife’s sister’s birthday, her daughter in law organized a group class here.

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    It looks something like this. Silks are hung and you can stretch, hang, flip, do all kinds of funky things. Needless to say, my girls loved it. Victoria learned to hang herself upside down.

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    Danielle learned all kinds of moves.

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    I did it too, but there is thankfully no photographic evidence…

  • Puerto Rico Redux

    We didn’t have any imagination with our vacation this year. For the third straight year we went to San Juan. And we had a similarly great time. You could refer to either of the past posts and it was basically the same vacation.

    With older girls, there was more night swimming:

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    We went to El Morro as usual:

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    The big new thing was a rainforest excursion. We had been meaning to do this in past years, but didn’t find the time. This year we also wanted to check out zip lining. So we rented a car and drove towards El Yunque, the rain forest. First we headed here. We had no detailed information, we just showed up. It was around 11:30 and they told us the next group would zip line at 1:00. So we had some time to kill. They suggested the nearby beach, Luquillo. So we headed over there for a bit.

    We ate some great alcapurrias at a local joint and walked along the beach.

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    And then it was time to zip line. They said you had to be 8, so Victoria aged a year that day. We were worried it might be too scary for her. At first she was a little scared, but she rallied and had a blast.

    Tori getting ready:

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    And she’s off…

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    Danielle about to go:

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    And off..

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    And to give you some sense of how far these lines, go, the video below shows both girls zipping off to a final landing spot you can’t see:

    And we followed this up with a hike in the rainforest.

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    To a beautiful (and very cold) waterfall. Tori is usually my cold water girl, but only Danielle would swim with me.

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    It was a great vacation…

  • Puppy = Happy

    Sure, we’re in the early honeymoon phase with our new puppy. The girls have been fantastic with Coby. They got dressed/ready for school extra fast so they would have time to play with him in the morning. Same thing with getting homework done tonight.

    It’s day 2 and he’s (mostly) pooping/peeing in the right spot. He’s super good. The girls couldn’t be happier. The TV didn’t go on at all tonight. He’s just super cute and cuddly. I probably smiled more on a Monday night than since, I don’t know, a huge Packers win.

    Danielle likes to lay with him as he falls asleep…

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  • Coby

    It has begun. After years of pleading, we got our girls a puppy. We got a rescue dog from the North Shore Animal League. He’s a Terrier mix, 12 weeks old, and his name is Coby.

    This is us leaving the shelter. Wish us luck…

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  • Chromebooks and the Cost of Complexity

    This is a very good post. My 11 year old daughter got a Chromebook for Christmas and price was certainly a factor. But she also uses Chromebooks at school and really does nothing that isn’t on the web, so it was a natural choice.

    I generally do tech support for my entire extended family. Other than trying to figure out if she could play Minecraft (sadly, no) she hasn’t asked me a single question about how to use her computer.

    She loves it. So do I…

  • Tori’s Birthday Party

    Victoria got to celebrate her birthday in style at a rock-climbing, obstacle course, general athletic fun place. Below are the obligatory pictures.

    We got there early, so Tori and Danielle hung out together

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    The obstacle course part was well done. They started out small:

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    And about every 10 minutes, they’d add on something at the end. So next they had to use the springboard to get up on the wall.

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    It was freezing in Brooklyn that day. Danielle was still cold, though I don’t think vaulting with a scarf is recommended.

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    Then, as they kept increasing the obstacle course, they took two kids at a time to climb the walls. So the kids were never waiting, they were always moving.

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    No problems getting to the top.

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    Danielle’s long legs give her a big advantage.

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    The usual pizza and cake followed, with some time left over for parachute fun.

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    And finally a dance party (can’t really tell with the flash, but it was dark with disco lights and smoke).

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    A very happy birthday for Tori and friends.

  • Random Fun

    A catch-up kind of post, since I haven’t posted pics of the girls recently.

    A couple weekends ago we went apple picking. A little late in the season, but it was a gorgeous day.

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    Danny likes to climb the trees:

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    The farm also had a playground. Tori likes to climb too:

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    And the obligatory Halloween picture. Danielle was a Cereal Killer, Tori a cat and I’m apparently wearing a large rodent as a wig.

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    Of course, Tori had to try on the wig…

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    And Danielle celebrated her 11th birthday with 9 other girls. It was a sleepover. Sleep was not actually involved.

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    Today we are all recovering…

  • Scooter Time (and Theft)

    School has started for my girls so that means Citi Bike goes away and I’m back to the scooter. I prefer biking, but when taking my girls to school the scooter works better.

    But a couple of weeks ago, we had a bad city experience. Our nanny had taken the girls on a play date. The friend’s apartment was a new building in Brooklyn Heights. If you don’t know Brooklyn, that’s a really nice neighborhood. They had Danielle’s, Tori’s and my scooter (I think my nanny’s daughter Mia was riding mine). They told our nanny that leaving the scooters in the lobby would be fine.

    Oops.

    Two of the three scooter got stolen. Everyone was shocked. My nanny was horrified. She thought I’d be really mad. The parents offered to pay for our new scooters. But honestly, stuff happens. We’ve lived in Brooklyn forever and never dealt with theft. It’s a huge city. It happens.

    The only good part was that of the three scooters, they took the two oldest (mine and Danielle’s). We had been talking about getting Danielle a new one anyway. Mine wasn’t that old, but I’m hard on scooters.

    And the new Razor A5 comes in a cool blue. So Danny and I have new scooters. Tori is jealous.

    I’m out a chunk of money which is no fun, but it’s all part of living in the big city. With how great our neighborhood is, one theft every 15 years is not that bad.

    Now the only issue is that Tori always wants to ride my scooter…

  • Go Cyclones

    A friend of ours gave us tickets to see the Brooklyn Cyclones last night, so I took my daughter’s and one of their friends. This is single A ball. The baseball park is at Coney Island and is quite nice.

    The Cyclones are a Mets team and they were actually playing the Staten Island Yankees but at the Single-A level, I’m rooting for the home team.

    It was a good game. The Cyclone’s pitcher threw a one-hitter for 6 innings with 9 strike-outs. Danielle liked that because they play the Law and Order sound after every strike out and that amused her.

    The girls cared more about the cotton candy than the game and we only lasted 7 innings. But a good time was had by all.

    And it was jersey night…

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    Jessie, Vicotria and Danielle