Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Family

  • Memorial Day with the girls

    Our niece graduated from Yale this weekend (smart girl, got a full scholarship), so we didn’t have any big plans. On Saturday we all went up to see her. That was partly because the actual graduation was early on Monday morning and there was no way we were going to make a 1 and 5 year old sit through a Yale graduation (strangely, Tony Blair speaking holds no interest for them).

    So on Monday my wife took the train up to New Haven (it’s her niece, I’m the in-law) and I had the girls. The day couldn’t have been more beautiful. Cool morning, high around 78, nothing but sun.

    So we spent the day in the park. Of course for city folks, “park” means “playground”. There’s something about city parks. I don’t know if this is true across the country, but around here when I drive in the suburbs I see these gorgeous park/playgrounds with wonderful brand new equipment. The only problem is that no one is actually there.

    I didn’t grow up in New York, so city parks are a relatively new thing to me. I love them. Sometimes we have pizza delivered right to the park so the kids don’t have to stop playing. And of course the ice cream truck drives right up.

    So that was our day. Wake up. Park. Lunch. Different park. Home. Though actually, since it’s Memorial Day weekend most people have left the city. So the parks were actually very quiet. The city is kind of peaceful on holiday weekends.

    Before hitting the park I picked up water balloons. Danielle had a field day. (all pictures via phone, my wife had our camera at graduation)

    IMG00070 Stocking up.

    IMG00073 Getting ready to throw (at me).

    If you aren’t a city person, the blue thing behind Danielle is one of the sprinklers. There are four around that blue circle on the ground. When the weather is hot, they will spray throughout that blue circle.

    Tori wasn’t exactly sure what to do with a water balloon. She got one with a tiny hole in it and thought it was the best.

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    Tori wanted to try the big girl swings

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    And Danielle had fun taking her down the slide

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    Sidewalk chalk is always fun at the park. Tori is eating cantaloupe and drawing (thankfully not eating the chalk)

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    I have no idea what Danielle is making…

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    Of course there was ice cream and Italian ices. Danielle rode her scooter all day and everyone was exhausted by the end of the day. Since my wife wasn’t back yet and we don’t have a grill, Memorial Day dinner was Chinese food. Not exactly traditional, but yummy all the same. And both were asleep by 7:30. A very nice day.

  • A day at the park with Tori

    As all parents know, until you have more than two kids, you can play man-to-man defense. Once you get to three you have to play zone. We only have two and because Danielle has always liked doing active things with me, we typically pair off (when pairing off is needed) with me being with Danielle and my wife being with Victoria.

    This afternoon we wanted to get Victoria outside but Danielle was tired (getting over a cold) and just wanted to stay home. She wanted to stay home with my wife. So for a change, I went out with Victoria, just the two of us.

    Victoria is finally at the age where the park (what city folks call a park, really a playground) is big fun. She’s 17 months, climbing on everything. There are a ton of parks near us, but there’s one that is totally designed for her age. So here are the obligatory pictures.

    Tori on the move:

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    Determined to go up the slide:

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    Cheerios in hand. The five second rule is about to be applied:

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    Two fisted. Milk and cheerios:

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    And of course, smiling as usual:

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  • No news

    I haven’t blogged in a while. There just hasn’t been that much going on. Some highlights:

    • Isiah Thomas is no longer the coach or GM of the Knicks. Perhaps there will be watchable basketball at Madison Square Garden someday soon.
    • I did pretty well in my NCAA pool, but had UCLA all the way. Oops.
    • Baseball season has begun. That’s not really news. Just a great thing.
    • My daughter had a substitute teacher for her soccer class last Sunday. This is a 5-7 year old class (Danielle is 5). The instructor had played for the Jamaican national team. He was unbelievable. Only in New York…
    • My nephew is having problems with his geometry homework (he’s a freshman). Wikipedia is a great source of refresher information. I now recall all of the principles of triangle congruence.

    That’s about it. Oh yeah, it’s spring. That is the most beautiful thing of all…

  • Visit with my Mom

    I took a trip with Danielle to visit my mom, who has Alzheimer’s. This was the first time Danielle and I had traveled just the two of us. She likes to fly and she’s a good traveler.

    Danielle had been asking about visiting her Nana and I hadn’t seen my mom in a while so it was time. It’s hard because my mom’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse. When I talk to her on the phone I can’t really tell if she knows who I am.

    But the visit was pretty good. They have my mom on some different medication that keeps her much more even. Alzheimer’s patients often have "sundowner’s syndrome" which basically means they get a lot worse in the evening. Mom used to be that way, but she really wasn’t this time. She knew who we were. We went to a children’s museum that we have been to before and Mom pretty much stuck with Danielle (the last time she seemed to be confused about which child she was there with).

    But Danielle isn’t really making any connection with her anymore. She was interacting much more with my brother and his wife. I think she sees that her Nana can’t really have a conversation with her anymore.

    The amazing thing about talking with my Mom is how good her defense mechanisms are. If you aren’t really paying attention and you didn’t know that she has Alzheimer’s you might think that she was actively engaged in conversation. She says things that make sense and are appropriate. But if you really know what she does and doesn’t remember you realize that she is totally faking it. She has mastered the use of vague terms that hide the fact that she can’t remember.

    Occasionally, just to try to understand what she really remembers I will slip into scientist mode and not give her any verbal cues or hints. But I didn’t do that on this visit. I don’t know how many more times Danielle will see her, so I wanted to keep it as light as possible.

    So Danielle got to try blue ice cream:

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    And here’s a picture of my Mom, Danielle and my brother’s wife Diana:

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    So it was a good, if somewhat sad, visit.

  • Passport Renewal – Proof I’m Getting Old

    I just renewed my passport for the third time. Since I didn’t do any international travel until after college (not counting Canada, like Canada’s really another country…) you can do the math and conclude that it’s been 20 years since I graduated. Damn, when did I get so old?

    The worst part is looking at the passport photos. Not that any of them are flattering, but I definitely used to have more hair.

    What’s cool about looking at passports is that in many ways they reveal your life. My first two passports are clearly two separate parts of my life.

    Passport 1 is musician life. It has by far the coolest stamps. There are multiple Japanese work visa stamps (from my Ringling Brothers days), a stamp from Saipan (how many people have been to Saipan? How many even know where it is?), stamps from a variety of Caribbean countries (cruise ship days), and some European stamps. At the end of musician life I settled into regular work life, but I didn’t do much cool travel so there aren’t any good stamps in the passport during the second half of this passport.

    Passport 2 is married life. The very first stamp is Tahiti, our honeymoon. With the exception of a few work trips (mainly UK), the stamps are all due to trips with my wife. British Virgin Islands (Virgin Gorda, site of a beautiful resort), Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, France, Holland. And of course the Guatemala stamp for our adoption.

    So what will passport 3 be? Hopefully it will be as fun as the first two…

  • Easter Fun

    We had a good Easter at my wife’s sister’s place. Danielle and Victoria had matching dresses. Here are the girls ready to go to church:

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    Of course there was an Easter Egg hunt. Danielle found most of them:

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    Victoria helped a bit:

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  • The Greatest Show on Earth

    Ringling Brothers is in town, so we took Danielle to see it. Victoria is still a bit too young. One of the things I like about Ringling Brothers at Madison Square Garden is that the floor is open an hour before the performance and clowns and acrobats are doing smaller tricks. So the kids can walk down and see it up close. This is what it looks like.

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    Here are some jugglers juggling around three volunteer kids:

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    Here is Danielle’s reaction to this:

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    Of course, part of going to the circus is getting treats like snow cones in a clown cup (for the bargain price of $12 – twelve bucks for a snow cone?).

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    The circus through a five year old’s eyes is pretty funny. Because she talked to one girl clown before the show she spent most of the show looking for her. She’s the one in the middle:

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    All in all, a good time was had by all:

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  • The Quasi-Cursed Vacation

    It wasn’t really cursed. For the most part it was very nice. But there were enough crazy things to wonder.

    The first issue, as reported previously, was trying to get the proper documentation so that Victoria could re-enter the country. With our Congressman’s help her green card arrived on Monday for a Wednesday departure. That is cutting it too close.

    Also on Monday, Danielle and I got sick. Danielle was sick enough to stay home from school and I should have stayed home from work (but there’s always so much to wrap up before a vacation). We were both better on Tuesday so everything seemed ok to go.

    My wife got most everything packed Monday night. That is because she was going to work very late Tuesday night. She does this before every vacation, in part because she’s a procrastinator and in part, I think, because she hates to fly and wants to be really tired so she can sleep on the plane.

    So I’m home with the girls Tuesday night. I get the last few things packed. Victoria is asleep. I’m trying to get Danielle to sleep. She has a total coughing attack. Danielle has some mild asthma and occasionally a cold can morph into a nasty asthma cough. This looked to be one of those times. So I have her under the nebulizer breathing the asthma medicine. She’s upset, her throat hurts, I’m wondering if this trip is a good idea. Finally she gets to sleep. Eventually my wife comes home and we decide to go through with it. The warm moist air of the Caribbean should help her anyway.

    We get up in the morning very early to get to our flight. Danielle is doing better and is being very helpful. It’s looking good. The car service takes us to Kennedy Airport. We check our bags. We were worried that the big one would be overweight. 50.7 pounds. Overweight but they let it slide. Things are looking up.

    We start heading to the gate. We have a stroller that we will check at the gate. There are a couple of places at Kennedy where you have to go down an escalator and then back up. So we’re taking the elevator.

    It stops between floors.

    My wife is not calm. We’re pressing the alarm button and the guy is asking us what elevator we are in. We have no clue, there’s no identifying number on it. Danielle is starting to get nervous. The guy says they’ll send someone. We need to get to our plane. My panicking wife is now telling Danielle not to panic. Very effective.

    The elevator starts up again.

    So we make our flight. It is uneventful. The girls do pretty good. We get to the Dominican Republic and get on the bus to the hotel. When we get there we are looking for the “Royal Service” check-in. This is like the concierge level with a few perks. We paid a little extra for this. But the place is totally disorganized. The “Royal Service” takes about four times longer than the regular check-in. This is after a long flight and the girls have basically eaten nothing. Everyone is getting cranky. We finally get to the room. It’s a bit on the small side for four people. Nothing is looking very Royal.

    We’re in between lunch and dinner so we go by the pool to get some food. It’s not great and Danielle is fighting it. Did I mention that everyone was cranky? We basically get through the night with no major meltdowns and that had to be declared a success.

    Then the vacation got good. The pool was great. There was a separate pool for the Royal Service rooms that wasn’t so crowded. Happiness is going to the swim up bar with your five year old. We were in the pool a lot.

    There was a kids’ club. For the most part Danielle just played with us, but one day she went and got to climb on these amazing rope bridges and also got to ride a horse. Victoria had fun in the pool as well.

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    We did the beach, we swam, I drank a lot of Presidente beer. It was always 5:00 somewhere. The weather was great. Occasionally it would rain, but if you waited five minutes it would be over. It was beautiful.

    Then on Saturday we get a call from our travel agent. “Did American call you?” “No” “You’re flight got canceled, they put you on the same flight the next day”. Now this is a problem. I wouldn’t mind staying another day, but this hotel is completely booked. We can’t extend a day. Our travel agent talks about trying to get us into a different hotel. But the thought of packing, moving, unpacking and repacking for just one day seems crazy. He mentions another flight that will connect through Miami on our original travel day. It gets in around 2:00 am. With two small children that just isn’t going to work.

    We finally conclude that leaving a day early is the only sensible alternative. We’ve had a lot of sun and swimming. Danielle misses her friends. One more day would have been nice, but a reasonable travel schedule also is nice.

    So our quasi-cursed vacation ends a day early. The trip home was uneventful which is all you can ask. And I get a day at home before I go back in to work. Which isn’t bad either.

    OK, not so cursed…

  • Victoria Update

    I haven’t posted any pictures of Victoria lately. She is doing very well. She’s taking a few steps and in general has been catching up very well in her early development. And her big sister is still being the best big sister around.

    Here’s a Christmas morning picture of Danielle pushing Victoria

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    Here’s Victoria with her cousin Michael:

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    And with her Titi (that would be Aunt for us non Spanish speakers). I think that’s my wife’s hat.

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    She’s doing great.

  • Worst Santa Ever…

    OK, I wasn’t that bad. It’s not like I was drunk or anything. It’s just that at six feet, 164 pounds, there’s some serious padding missing. And the pillows just didn’t cut it.

    Our nanny and her circle of nannies always get the kids together for presents before Christmas. They get someone to play Santa and give out the gifts. This year whoever was going to do it fell through, so I became the last minute sub.

    The danger here is that at 5 years old, Danielle has a decent chance of recognizing me. And it’s not just her, all of her friends know me reasonably well.

    I get to the house where they are doing this. I sneak into a bedroom and start to get dressed up. Then I hear two of the older boys sneaking around saying “let’s find out who Santa really is this year”. Their mother manages to shoo them away.

    So I make my grand entrance. Lots of “ho, ho, ho’s”. I hear one of Danielle’s friends say, “I think that’s Danielle’s daddy”. Uh-oh. But I stay in character and it goes relatively well. I read a story (on the right kneeling is Danielle and her best friend Cordelia):

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    I hand out presents (that’s Danielle getting hers)

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    Some of the younger ones are afraid of Santa. But Victoria wasn’t:

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    Afterwards the nannies apparently convinced the girls that Santa just looked a bit like Danielle’s daddy. The funny part was that Danielle told me later that this Santa had green eyes. I have blue eyes. So that clinched it with her that this Santa wasn’t me. Though she did say he sounded like me. But since this Santa had green eyes and Danielle knows that Santa has blue eyes (not sure where she got that, but she’s quite adamant about it) she knew that this one was one of Santa’s helpers. And that made sense because she knows the real Santa is very busy.

    So maybe not the worst Santa ever, but I need to gain weight if I’m going to keep doing this…