Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Victoria

  • 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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  • Ode To Joy

    Both me and my five year old love this…

  • Tubes In

    So Victoria got the tubes put in her ears today. It was a very interesting experience.

    We get to the hospital and go through the obligatory paperwork. Then we end up in the pre-op area. Here a doctor a nurse and an anesthesiologist ask us basically the same questions and give us basically the same briefing on the surgery. OK, nothing wrong with some redundancy and saying the same things over and over.

    Then they give Tori an oral sedative. At this point they tell us that in 15 minutes she’ll be going in. Of course 15 = 30 at a hospital. But we get to watch Tori get drunk.

    Can you remember the first time you were drunk? Me neither, but try to imagine it. Tori starts slurring her words. And she’s aware of the fact that she’s slurring. Which is hilarious to her. So for about 15 minutes straight, she’s just cracking herself up.

    20 years from now, if I ever go out drinking with Victoria, I now know that she’s a very happy drunk.

    It was the funniest thing ever. And finally it really is time for her to go in. I have to carry her because she is in no condition to walk.

    So then we wait.

    Thankfully not for very long (especially since they had declined to heat the waiting room). The doctor came to tell us that everything went well and she’d be ready for us to go see her in a little bit.

    Then came the hard part. We were warned that kids come out of anesthesia very agitated and can be upset for the next hour. I was assuming that they were giving us the worst case scenario.

    Maybe not.

    Tori was upset, wanting nothing except to go home, and cried for about 45 minutes. At first we tried to figure out things that would soothe her, but it clearly became clear that this was just about waiting it out. And when it finished, it was like night and day.

    We had Tori back.

    She suddenly shifted gears and started joking and laughing. It was fairly instantaneous when the anesthesia finally worked its way out of her system.

    And that was it. She is already saying she can hear better. She is totally fine. Ready for school tomorrow and a flight to Florida the next day.

    So an interesting day.

  • 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…

  • The Family that Hikes Together…

    With some spectacular weather in New York last weekend, my wife thought it would be a good idea to go hiking as a family. Pre-kids, my wife and I did a lot of hiking together.

    Being spur of the moment, we checked the web for hiking spots close to Brooklyn that wouldn’t be too hard for a 4 year old. That’s a bit of a crap shoot if you don’t know the spots, so we rolled the dice and headed to the Cranberry Lake Preserve in Westchester. Figuring a lake hike can’t have too many hills and there were a few short hikes so it looked like a good call.

    And it was.

    My wife was afraid that it might be too easy, one of those paths that are more like walks than hikes, but it wasn’t that. There were ups and downs and you had to scramble over logs and streams. There were some rickety wooden bridges that added some fear factor and even one that had been washed out forcing us to turn back and try a different path. Tori started out holding my hand for support, but about halfway through she started taking off on her own (and only fell once).

    Just the right amount of challenge to make it fun but not discourage the girls. They are now both really excited about going hiking again.

    The obligatory pictures:

    My girls on the Bent Bridge
    The Bent Bridge – this was a sturdy one
    Waterfall
    Snacks by a waterfall
    Climbing Rocks
    Climbing a big rock

  • Atlantic Antic 2011

    Regular readers have heard about the Atlantic Antic, Brooklyn’s largest street fair (biggest in NYC, I believe) and right outside our front door. They close Atlantic Avenue (our street) for the day and it’s a mile long. They say a million people come to this fair.

    To me what makes this street fair great is that the local bars and restaurants come out. Atlantic has some great bars and restaurants with crazy ethnic diversity, so it’s not just the typical NYC street fair food.

    It’s also very kid friendly, which works well for us.

    We like to start the day by taking a stroll before it actually opens. My girls love the fact that they can walk on the street, so we head out around 10:30 am to check out things getting set up. This is what it looks like. The fair goes farther than you can see in this picture.

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    The NYC Transit Museum is just off Atlantic and they block off a side street for a block and bring in a bunch of old buses. This is fun because it’s open before the rest of the fair starts cranking.

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    They also provide arts and crafts for the kids, making buttons and cardboard buses.

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    Since at this point the Antic hasn’t even started yet, we head home (picking up some corn on the cob on the way) to pick up my wife for the real eating.

    For me it’s all about the food. Among the things we ate:

    Not to mention some great beers and sangria along the way.

    Of course, for the kids it’s all about other things. Face painting:

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    Random kid stuff (this guy actually lives in our building):

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    Random kids games:

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    And we all love the music. About every other block a band is playing. This was a great blues band.

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    On the way home we saw these street dancers/acrobats literally in front of our building. I really should have taken video of these guys.

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    It was a truly great day. And it reminded us what a great age our kids have hit. We were out from about 10:30 am until 5:00 walking with our 4 and 8 year olds (almost 5 and 9). No issues. Taking our kids places has become easy.

    And fun.

  • The Muppets

    We watch plenty of Disney Channel at our house and tonight there were several commercials where you just saw the Muppets doing an updated version of the old Muppet Show theme song. With no reference to what it is advertising.

    My daughters know Sesame Street but not the Muppet Show. So I had to point out that it was a great show back in the day, and explain Kermit, Miss Piggy, Animal, the Swedish Chef, and all the great characters.

    Which of course leads me to Google to see why that commercial was there. Apparently there will be a new Muppets movie around Thanksgiving.

    But going to Google leads you to YouTube. So I have to show my girls old music clips from the old show. Tori loves it. And finally I get to the ultimate Muppets classic:

    Tori doesn’t even know the original song but it doesn’t matter. She is captivated.

    Let’s face it, the Muppets rock…

  • A 9/11 Remembrance

    The crowd going to the 9/11 reunion for our folks was simply huge so we had to go. I would have totally regretted not going.

    But I wasn’t going to go without my girls. So around 2:00 the whole family hopped into a cab and headed to a dive bar in downtown Manhattan. I warned my daughters that they were likely to be bored. It would be a bunch of grown-ups talking. Victoria asked, “will they have toys there?”. Sorry kiddo, not that kind of joint.

    We were quite late (it was officially 1-3) so when we got there, everyone had already arrived. We had pretty much the entire bar. It was fairly amazing. I spend ten minutes saying hi to the people in the front of the bar and Danielle is saying, “are you done?”. I point to the rest of the bar and tell her, “I’m friends with all those people”. I think she was a bit surprised.

    It was a bit dull for the girls, but they were largely great. Of course everyone was happy to see them and Danielle heard “I can’t believe how big she is” a million times. Kevin Mei was particularly fun with the girls (he convinced Tori that he’s 15).

    They picked out songs on the juke box and the bartender threw in extra money for them. He gave them free chips and the waitress brought Tori extra French Fries (she is a serious French Fry girl). The New York State “no kids sitting at the bar” law was not enforced this afternoon.

    Aside from that, I got to see people I haven’t seen in years. Some more than 5 years. We had people from way out of town, really an incredible gang. It shows the power of Facebook because that’s how this whole thing got organized. One of the old gang, Eileen, even put together a photo book via Shutterfly with old pictures of the folks we lost.

    So we remembered our folks and had a great reunion at the same time. Bittersweet, but overall a really good time.

  • School Begins

    One thing I’ve noticed while riding my scooter is that an old guy riding a scooter gets some odd looks.

    But an old guy riding a scooter and holding hands with his four year old who is also scootering gets nothing but smiles…