Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Danielle

  • The End of Kisses

    Well, it was inevitable. I take Danielle to school every day on the way to work. She’s 9 and all during third grade the kiss goodbye was becoming more and more infrequent. Now that I’m dropping her off at her summer art camp, she just says “bye” and heads over to her friends.

    I knew the day was coming. Kissing your dad in front of your friends is not cool and cool is starting to matter.

    I still get kisses at home and she still wants to hold my hand while we scooter to school (scootering one handed is a vital city skill). So I’ll take it.

    Like I have a choice…

  • Ballet and Bounce

    I haven’t posted any pictures of the girls in a while. This is Danielle following her ballet recital, on a friend’s roof deck in Brooklyn.

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    And this is Tori with her friend Mia at a birthday party at Bounce U in the hurricane simulator. Yes, that is claiming 78 mph winds.

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    They are getting big…

  • Flower Girls, Again

    Our niece Alexandra got married last weekend, and Danielle and Victoria got to be flower girls again. They get to do it again in a month for our nephew, so they are becoming wedding professionals. I’m thinking this could turn into a paying gig…

    Anyway, the wedding was beautiful. A nice intimate family wedding in Westchester. The bride was beautiful, everyone had a good time, and my girls danced the night away.

    The obligatory pictures…

    The Setting
    Before the wedding
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    Flower Girls
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    With Alexandra

  • Puerto Rico

    We had been hoping to get a warm weather vacation this winter, but it hadn’t happened yet. Danielle gets two weeks off in March, but we had a lot going on so we weren’t sure what would happen.

    At the last minute we booked a quick 5 day trip to San Juan. We had a bit of a budget, but found a decent deal at a nice hotel.

    Pre-kids, my wife and I did a Puerto Rico trip where we drove all around the island, finding distant relatives of my wife. This trip was about the pool and the beach.

    We meant to get to the El Yunque rain forest, but didn’t make it.

    We did get to Old San Juan. And we really enjoyed El Morro. I’d been there a bunch of times in my cruise ship days, but seeing it through the eyes of 9 and 5 year olds was wonderful.

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    The hotel was very nice. My daughters are both fish, so we basically lived by the pool.

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    The hot tub had a rule about being only for kids older than 12. Oops.

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    The beach was good. San Juan is not the best beach place by Caribbean standards, but this hotel had a pretty good beach. And occasionally I get in a picture…

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    It was hard to leave, but overall a nice and very relaxing vacation.

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  • Jupiter and Venus

    Thanks to Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait, my daughters saw Jupiter and Venus from our roof tonight.

    Google Sky Map helped me make sure…

  • Cookies

    My daughter Danielle is a Girl Scout (well, a Brownie, technically). This is her first year doing this and it’s cookie time. Of course I hit up all my friends, but we live in a large apartment building so she wanted to sell in the building.

    I did some fundraisers back in high school. I recall selling Christmas wreaths. That was a tough sell. So I told Danielle that some people won’t want any but you have to say “thank you” regardless.

    Everyone loves Girl Scout Cookies.

    Seriously, it’s the easiest sell ever. Not a single person said no.

  • Muppet Movie

    Quick Sunday night movie review. A bit hit. Danielle (9) has commanded me to buy it on DVD and Tori (5) loved it as well (is watching Muppets on YouTube as we speak).

    Mahna mahna…

  • Fractured Fairy Tales

    Danielle loves her new Kindle Fire. We were already Amazon Prime members, so she can stream any of the videos and TV shows from Amazon Prime for free.

    Frankly, I checked out the lineup prior to buying the Kindle and wasn’t that impressed (especially for year old tastes), so this wasn’t a huge selling point.

    But Danielle checked it out and found something called Fractured Fairy Tales. They are basically short cartoons that are silly versions of the classic fairy tale stories. She loves them. Bonus.

    Of course, now Victoria wants to watch them on my Kindle. So I set it up and watch the beginning with her. As I watch the beginning it dawns on my that I know these cartoons.

    They came from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. I saw those when I was a kid (and they were old then).

    So here’s my 9 and 5 year olds, streaming 50 year old video to their brand new Kindles.

    Technology rocks…

  • Trapeze

    Danielle turned 9 yesterday and for her birthday she wanted to go to a trapeze place in Brooklyn. She had been there once before at another birthday and had a blast, but it was the first time I had seen it.

    It was pretty awesome.

    First you get a safety belt:

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    Then you practice:

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    Then you fly:

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    In two hours, they try to teach you to swing to the end, bring your legs up over the bar after one pass (it’s all timing, if you do it at the right moment your momentum makes it easier), then let your arms down at the end of the backswing of that pass and you fly upside down. Then you bring your arms up and drop.

    The goal is to get comfortable enough with that move so that you can actually swing upside down to another guy who grabs your arms and truly pass from one bar to another (again, all about timing). Could we learn that in two hours?

    Just getting that first part is tricky. Only a few of us did it. And ultimately I was the only one to attempt the full upside down catch (took two tries, but I got it). But Danielle did do a simpler ankle pass (apologies for the blurry picture)

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    Seriously big fun for kids and adults alike.

  • Nook vs. Fire

    So to me the choice between the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire is an easy choice. But Danielle turns 9 this week. She’s a good reader. She’s been asking for an eReader. We like reading and want to encourage it. While a tad expensive, when you add up all the crap we’d normally get her for her birthday, it isn’t that much more.

    So she’s been wanting the Nook Color. It’s the only existing color eReader that has apps.

    Now I also want an eReader for my birthday, which is a week later. Instant gratification is not a big deal to me. So the Kindle Fire is an easy choice for me (won’t ship until 11/15). There’s just no way Barnes and Noble can compete with Amazon as an Android platform.

    So prior to getting the Nook I’ve been doing the research. And the B&N App store is, well, lame. It’s a tiny subset of the Amazon store and has almost none of the free stuff (when Amazon does a different free app every day).

    So today, three days before her birthday, I have the discussion. How do you explain technology platforms to an almost nine year old? But there was one clincher. I had put a free texting app on her iTouch (her odds of getting a cell phone anytime soon are negative). It’s not like she actually has people to text. I asked her, “who are you going to text?”.  “You and Mami”. So for a day, she sent me text messages every five minutes.

    That app is available for the Fire. There are no text messaging apps for the Nook.

    Sold.

    So she’ll have to wait two weeks for her birthday present. For a nine year old, reasonably impressive delayed gratification.

    Long term, she’ll be happier. Sorry Barnes and Noble…