Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Danielle

  • Happy New Year

    A bit late, sure, but I’ve been busy.

    On New Year’s Eve I was thinking about 2009 and 2010. Of course I was amused by the all the articles written in my youth expecting flying cars, etc. by 2010. But mostly I was thinking about 2009.

    Was it a good year or a lousy year?

    This, of course, depends on who you are. If you won the lottery in 2009, it was probably a great year. For me I tend to lump the year into four categories, world, sports, work, family.

    The world is mainly stuck in a lousy economy so overall I’d have to say not a great year. Sure, the economy is improving, but pretty slowly. And nothing particularly great happened in 2009 in the world. I suppose nothing horribly bad happened either, but that’s not a glowing recommendation. We have a historic new president but it’s too early to say how that will turn out. Overall my rating here is moderately blah.

    For sports it’s easy. The Yankees won the World Series. It was a great year. A+.

    The work evaluation is trickier. I had a lot of fun working this year. Money was a bit tight though. I’m very happy with where our product ended up after a year. But I expected more clients by this point. But the overall reaction to our product has been very positive. I think I have to grade 2009 as an Incomplete. We’ll know if 2009 was worth it depending on how 2010 goes.

    So that leaves family. A mixed bag here. I lost my mother this summer, though she had been battling Alzheimer’s so it was partly a blessing. My wife had a lousy stressful year working at Marsh and the relative uncertainty of Origami Risk didn’t help our family stress levels.

    But our girls are great. Tori is a total piece of work at 3. She gets into everything. She will quietly disappear somewhere in our apartment. To the question, “Tori, what are you doing?”, she will answer, “Nothing”. It is never nothing. She can drive you crazy, totally not listening, grabbing everything that doesn’t belong to her and getting upset when you don’t let her use the screwdriver by herself. But she captures your heart with her laugh and smile. She laughs all the time. And she already has the tilt her head, bat her eyes and smile look down pat. She will clearly be dangerous.

    Danielle is just  turning into a tall beautiful girl. She’s the more responsible older sister, but hugely creative, constantly drawing and building things. And totally daddy’s girl.

    So was 2009 a good year? I have a great family, so every year is a good year.

    and Danielle is turning into a big girl at 7.

  • A Photo Essay

    Danielle got a real camera for Christmas.

    PC250036

    And she got a skateboard

    PC250046

    And a stuffed Jaguar

    PC250052

    And a sign for her door

     PC250054

    But her favorites are clearly the skateboard

    PC250045

    And the camera

    PC250042

    Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and I hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year…

  • Happy Holidays

    Under the assumption that between now and Christmas I’m unlike to post anything, I’d like to wish everyone Happy Holidays and if it applies, a very merry Christmas.

    Sometimes in the stress of the season, we forget what it’s all about…

    HangingOrnaments

  • Pandora for Kids

    I’ve been liking Pandora more and more. Tonight I created a station for Danielle and Victoria. I just added their Disney favorite singers to the Pandora channel, Mylie Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. They loved it and we went the whole night with no TV.

    I’m not paying for Pandora, so we get the occasional ads. It’s interesting how targeted the ads are. Pandora knows my zip code but the rest it has to infer from the music. When I’m listening, it’s generally jazz. I get ads for MOMA, which makes sense to me. Apparently Pandora thinks that jazz listeners are older Jewish folks, because I constantly get this ad for a Jewish old folks home on the Upper West Side. OK, not a good match for me, but they’re playing the odds, I get it.

    But why did my Pandora channel with Disney singers produce ads for Heineken?…

  • No Scalpers?

    Danielle went to see Mylie Cyrus at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island last night (note to self, do not go to concerts in Long Island – traffic was ridiculous). The Mylie Cyrus tour is selling their tickets via TicketMaster using a new paperless, supposedly scalper-free method.

    You put the tickets on your credit card and when you go to the concert you have to swipe the exact credit card to get the tickets. Hidden in the fine print was the fact that you also have to show photo id.

    That last detail was a problem, because I bought the tickets but my wife was taking Danielle (with best friend and best friend’s mom). I was assuming that I could just give my wife my credit card and she’d swipe it. But I actually had to go with them to the Coliseum (hence me complaining about the traffic).

    And the photo id part seems stupid anyway. I appreciate trying to slow down scalpers. I was able to get pretty good seats at list price. But the credit card swipe part on its own limits scalpers. And what if I had the flu or something? I’d still have to drag my ass out there so Danielle could go.

    And in truth, there was still scalping going on. But when you saw tickets online, they all said “meet at venue”. So it inconveniences scalpers, it doesn’t stop them…

  • Exhausted

    Did you ever have one of those weekends with the kids when you can’t wait until Monday because work is much less tiring?

    It all started on Friday. This was the day of Danielle’s birthday party. This year, Danielle wanted to have a few girls over for a sleepover. We’ve known all the girls for years and they all play together well (mostly), and most of them had already done individual sleepovers so we agreed. As parties go, it was certainly the inexpensive route.

    Victoria spent the night at our nanny’s so the big girls could do big girl stuff.

    We told the parents that we’d pick the girls up from school and bring them to our place. When we planned this, we didn’t realize that Friday the 6th was a half day at school. So Friday went something like this.

    Drop Danielle off at school, spend the morning running around getting stuff for the party. My wife picks them up at school, brings them home to drop off stuff. I take them all to Chuck E. Cheese (it’s four blocks away) to let my wife get the apartment set up.

    Me and six girls at Chuck E Cheese. It wasn’t bad actually, you mainly hand out tokens and let them run around. So after a couple hours of that I herd them all home.

    At home it was a variety of activities. Danielle is a big arts and crafts girl, so we had a ton of that stuff ready. There was also the obligatory game of Monster Tag. I haven’t figured out the allure of Monster Tag. It’s a made up game. The rules are pretty simple. I’m the monster, doors are base. If I catch you off of a base, I pick you up and throw you in “jail”, which is a couch. That’s it. Our apartment is fairly loft-like, so there’s a decent amount of space to run. This game is endlessly amusing to 6 and 7 year olds.

    This followed with dinner, some TV, more games, and the challenge of trying to get them to go to sleep. We had them in beds by around 10:00, when they actually went to sleep is anyone’s guess. So, since they stayed up late, they slept in, right? Of course not. Up early and playing.

    This was one of those times when you have to say, “we’re staying in bed, you all play. Don’t wake us up unless someone’s bleeding”.

    But soon enough I had to get up and make pancakes and all that. Then more playing as slowing their respective parents come to pick them up. By around 11:30 everyone was gone. Exhale.

    Had that been the whole weekend I think we would have been OK. But that evening we had some other family coming over to wish Danielle a happy birthday. Then the next day we had another birthday party in Prospect Park and I had agreed to take Danielle and her best friend. You could tell by that point we were all tired. The two of them were fighting like sisters and I had negative patience. But it was a gorgeous day in the park so we had leaf fights and jumping in leaf piles and the whole fall park thing.

    That evening we really wanted to get some healthy food in Danielle, but given our energy level we ordered pizza. Reading books to Danielle last night she fell asleep right in the middle of the first book. I could relate, I fell asleep in the second quarter of Sunday Night Football.

    This morning I had just one thought. Caffeine is a good thing…

  • A Great Vacation

    I’m a bit late with my vacation update. We got back a week ago but the last week was without child care so we’ve all been a bit busy.

    Our vacation was in Cape Cod at the same beach house we rented last year. We shared it with the same couple and Danielle’s best friend joined us as well. With the kids all a year older it was much better. We had:

    • Danielle (6 1/2)
    • McKenzie (Danielle’s best friend) (6)
    • Cooper and Mariee (our friends’ twins) (4 1/2)
    • Victoria (2 1/2)

    McKenzie’s family was also staying nearby. McKenzie stayed with us four nights and Danielle stayed with them one night. The kids got along great and the weather was spectacular.

    We did the usual. Lots of beach. Catching hermit crabs and minnows. Collecting shells. And with the kids a year older, there were are few new items. We did several nice bike rides. And best of all, we had babysitters two nights. Actual adult dinners. Awesome.

    So here are the obligatory pictures.

    DSC01985 Danielle, Mariee, Cooper and Victoria.

    There was lots of dancing on our deck…

    DSC02024Danielle and McKenzie

    DSC02184 McKenzie, Mariee, Danielle and Cooper.

    DSC02082 Victoria, ready to catch hermit crabs.

    DSC02093 At low tide, there’s a lot of beach to cover…

     DSC02079Like I said, they got along…

    DSC02236 Maybe next year…

    DSC02255 Of course there were lobsters…

    DSC02047 The obligatory sunset picture.

    TheKids 

    Everyone had a great time…

  • Tori in the pool

    Victoria has been getting the typical second child short end of the stick in terms of early swimming. It’s much harder to take both of them, especially if it is just me, so Tori hasn’t been in the pool as much as Danielle had at this age.

    Turns out it didn’t really matter.

    It started in Milwaukee when we were there for my Mom’s memorial service. I spent a little extra to stay in a hotel with a roof deck pool. I figured the girls would need entertainment and I’d need the distraction. It was a good call. Tori has a swim suit with a floaty built in and she quickly figured out that she could float and move around by herself. So she did. At 2 1/2 Danielle spent most of her pool time with her arms around my neck. Tori would just take off by herself.

    Last Saturday the three of us went to our local YMCA which has a very nice pool. Danielle has become such a good swimmer that it’s not as hard for me to watch them both. I can focus on Tori while Danielle happily swims around.

    At the YMCA they have those backpack style floaties that just clip around your belly. It took a while to convince Tori to wear one. But she eventually figured out what it’s for and she was off.

    She would go to the deep end and just jump in. Didn’t need me to catch her. Went underwater and just popped up happily, swam back to the ladder and did it again. I don’t think Danielle would jump in the pool without me catching her until she was 5.

    We’ll be going to the pool a lot…

  • Close to the finish line

    We are finally getting close to completing the re-adoption process for Victoria. For those not familiar with this saga, “re-adoption” is a process in your home state where you change your adopted child’s citizenship from legal resident to US citizen (getting a local birth certificate along the way, and in our case a legal name change).

    We had our final post placement homestudy visit. The social worker has to write up the report, get two copies to our lawyer who then submits it to the Kings County (that would be Brooklyn – county of Kings) courts.

    It’s taken a long time, partly due to the courts being slow and partly due to us being slow (since we already have Victoria, we don’t have the same motivation to deal with courts and paperwork). But we are almost there. Soon Victoria will be a US citizen.

    On a side note, Danielle had her last swim lesson with an Olympic champion on Saturday. Anthony Erwin is going to return to California to go back to school. While having an Olympic medalist as an instructor for a 6 year old is pretty meaningless, he’s really just a very nice guy. Danielle will miss him.

  • Kids keep you grounded

    This hasn’t been a great last couple of weeks with my Mom’s passing. But I have to say that in times like this having kids is a great thing.

    You can’t lie in bed feeling sorry for yourself. Danielle and Victoria are up early and want to play. We told Danielle that her Nana had died and gone to heaven and she cried. For about five minutes. Which is actually a lot for a six year old. And then she moved on. So I have little choice but to do the same.

    I can mope a bit after they go to bed and have a beer or two more than I ought to, but that’s about it. A hangover with kinds 6 and 2? Are you crazy? That’s way too painful the next day at 6:00 am.

    My mom had a good long life. It’s all part of the cycle. And Danielle and Victoria are the next part of the cycle. They keep me going.