As my friend and former colleague Morgan, who is way younger than me, said in response to my telling her we were going to take Leila to Lancaster, PA to do Dutch Wonderland last weekend: "that didn't exist when I did that family trip." I was initially surprised to learn about this pleasantly refreshing amusement park too, but anyone who's on the DC area parents' blogs and listservs does know that it exists. Now I had plenty of fun back in the day at Kings Dominion as a tween and teener, but my perspective on amusement parks now (all those large, sweaty, sticky people in jean shorts and fannie packs crushed together in hours' long lines...) probably tends toward the negative. And that is why I refer to Dutch Wonderland as pleasantly refreshing. I'm glad we didn't take Leila at any younger than age 3, but I can see her enjoying it for another 5 years or so. The park is nicely contained and laid out with plenty of shady trees. We started on a miniature version of the Strasburg railroad that looped around the park so we could get an idea of where the rides, shows and concessions were laid out. Yeah, the map would have given us that too, but the train's the first thing you hit once you go through the castle walls to enter the park. It took Leila a little while to get her stride, and the Frog Hopper ride she next went on traumatized her a bit (think a mini-bungee effect.) She probably would have been fine had one of us been on it with her, but I didn't think the shoulder harness would clear my frame. She adamantly refused to get on many rides after that, but she came back around after seeing the "Frog Prince" show, which combines the typical Princess kisses the frog and breaks the spell story with some pretty spectacular (even to an adult) diving routines. Actually, she probably enjoyed the shows more than anything else, but we got her on the log flume with us after that, then the merry go round and the sky gondola thing that crosses the park etc... It was crowded, but we didn't wait more than 5 minutes in line for anything but the log flume, and that was only about 15. I had her bathing suit in a back pack, but we did not venture into the water park. Cesar and I didn't have our suits on, and I couldn't see her doing anything by herself aside from maybe standing in a fountain, and that just didn't seem worth the hassle.
We did spend the night there because I wanted to take her on the real Strasburg Railroad and see some countryside on Sunday, but the trip from DC and back could totally be managed in a (long) day. Especially with the GPS in the car - man I've learned to love that thing and follow it with blind faith in a very short time after denying Cesar one for years. We also wanted some time to hit the outlets. We stayed at the Country Inn and Suites, literally across from the park and next to the Tanger outlets. It was more than we should spend on a weekend, but perfectly reasonable for 2 Queen beds and a living room suite. We wanted to watch the Olympics Saturday night, so I found us a sports bar in downtown Lancaster in an old tobacco warehouse that had individual TVs at each booth. For a sports bar, the food wasn't half bad. We shared fried mozzarella that was coated in pretzels instead of breadcrumbs and served w/ dijon mustard sauce and I had a "Pittsburgh Salad", which was greens topped with flank steak and french fries(!!) is that perfection on a plate, or what?
The only downer to the weekend was coming home Sunday when Leila finally announced to us at 2:30 that she was hungry for lunch (we'd downed a bag of kettle corn around 12:30) and it had to be McDonald's of course, so we stopped at one in Timonium, MD. MICE. MICE. MICE. In broad daylight in the indoor play area. Lord only knows what was in the kitchen, but it was about the grungiest McDs I've ever been in. I refused to take Leila in the bathroom. Thankfully, I didn't see the vermin, but trust Cesar's reporting. I'd already done my best to curb Leila's interst in the play area b/c those places just creep me out as a rule. Cesar took her in while I waited for the food to prove to her it was too dirty then came back to me to say he'd seen 3 or 4 mice peaking out of the equipment. EWWWWWWWWWW.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
National Book Fair Sept. 27
Think that's the date at least, but due to my small brain content at this hour of night, I may be off a digit or two from the time I read Sunday's Book World (on Wednesday) to the time I got upstairs to write this. It's whatever the last Saturday in September is. I haven't yet been to this annual event, despite the fact that my adopted Godmother spearheaded it in its first two years, but this is the year. Here are just a few of the participants: Phillipa Gregory (gasp, sigh, gasp, mmmm... The Other Boleyn Girl), Geraldine Brooks (made the plague truly fascinating and March, about the absent dad in Little Women, amazing as well), Salman Rushdie (!!! Favorite. Author. Ever!!!) Neil Gaiman (and I'm not a comic geek, but loved the mythology of American Gods) David Maraniss (yeah, don't think I can claim to reading one of his full length books, but still..) Anyway... that is a pretty amazing lineup and yes, I'm a book geek, but I'll be begging my dad to go with me. In the meantime, Cesar is blaming me for encouraging librarian tendencies in 3 year old Leila by taking her to the library one night a week. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than Barnes & Noble I say!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
A Husband Funny
Cesar looks at me at dinner last night while Leila's in the midst of a face turning purple temper tantrum b/c she was corrected for showing us the couscous on her tongue repeatedly and says for the 2nd time in as many days: "Babe, I think we need to go to church." And I say, "OK, we can check out St. Rita's sometime. They probably have a Sunday school." And he replies in all seriousness, " I think we need to go to church because she has a devil in her." Yep, and that devil is named "THREE." I'm totally open to visiting a church for the community and ritual of it, but for exorcising my normal (I think!) toddler, not so much!
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The House
I guess I haven't reported all that much on our digs. I'm rather happy with our additional space and the location and I was pretty much able to move my Moroccan souk decor right in with nary a coat of paint. Our kitchen is fab, built-in bookshelves even faber. Basement play and rec room space is great and I don't even find it creepy to be down there alone at night watching the night before's Daily Show on the DVR (YES, I finally have DVR!) Our yard/patio is flowering, though the mosquitoes have pretty much kept me out of it. I can see myself taking more pleasure in it in the fall. But....
.... It wouldn't be Lisa's house w/o some little disturbances starting to make themselves evident. I'm home today waiting out the plumber's 4 hour window. Also took the opportunity to go to the Dr. to get some drugs to alleviate my sinus infection's pressure. We have a leaky bathtub faucet. Leaky to the point that a bucket is full in an hour and the entire tub full in 8. Didn't want to wait until the water started pouring through the lovely recessed lighting in the kitchen. Let me back up to critters for a second b/c this all sort of ties in. Last year at this time we were dealing with mouse genocide and water bugs at our rental. Part of what geared me up to move and enter the housing market. Which is sort of counter intuitive I guess, because now the pests are all my own to deal with w/o a property manager in between. Anyway... We have German cockroaches in this house, which I haven't been too freaked out about b/c I've tended to find them dead or dying from commercial bait discs. The former owners treated for them last summer and we'll do the same if necessary, but still, I've been kind of OK with them b/c they're itty bitty compared to the big narsty water bugs I'm used to - the kind I'd spray half a bottle of raid on, then if I had to, crush with my swiffer b/c I can't stand any closer contact. So, I'm handling the occasional bug, but not nearly ready to face mice again. Saturday night, after getting Leila to bed at 10:00, I'm walking downstairs, look back up towards her room for a sec and spy a mouse dropping at my eye level on the landing under the stair rail. Ok, mouse dropping in a utilities closet in the basement... wouldn't be happy with it, but might be able to put it out of mind for a bit. Mouse dropping on the 2nd floor where we sleep at night across from my daughter's doorway, pest control will be getting a call sooner rather than later. Even still, the occasional dropping I might be able to push back and convince myself that the critter/s have since slunked away into a neighbors unit if I don't see them again. It's when the bodies start showing up in traps that I get more than a little freaked. So, back to the plumbing. When we got home last night Cesar went up to fiddle with the tub to see if there was any self remedy before I scheduled the plumber. He opened up the square board outside the bathroom that conceals the pipes and started fiddling about - in the course of which he reversed the hot and cold water - a repair the former owners made before we moved in - and in shining his flashlight around discovered... that's right, a dead mouse on a trap. Now that victim could have been there for a while, who knows, but the fact that there was a trap in there that we did not set only verifies that there have been vermin problems here in the past. While all this is going on, Leila is dancing around me chirping read me Angelina Ballerina and thankfully not making the association b/t the rigid little thing in the trap she'd asked to see and the little dancing mousies in her book.
And in closing, just for that icing on the cake effect, I was out on the front stoop with Leila while she ate her freezer ice at 7:30 - I'm about to go get one of those myself as I don't think the sinus pressure on my jaw will allow me to bite much - when Cesar comes out, looks down into the grass and says oh my god, look, a baby snake! By the time we looked and he looked back down, whatever he saw was gone, but he's beyond observant so if he claims to have seen a baby snake, he probably saw a baby snake. Yay, Lisa's animal farm begins anew!
.... It wouldn't be Lisa's house w/o some little disturbances starting to make themselves evident. I'm home today waiting out the plumber's 4 hour window. Also took the opportunity to go to the Dr. to get some drugs to alleviate my sinus infection's pressure. We have a leaky bathtub faucet. Leaky to the point that a bucket is full in an hour and the entire tub full in 8. Didn't want to wait until the water started pouring through the lovely recessed lighting in the kitchen. Let me back up to critters for a second b/c this all sort of ties in. Last year at this time we were dealing with mouse genocide and water bugs at our rental. Part of what geared me up to move and enter the housing market. Which is sort of counter intuitive I guess, because now the pests are all my own to deal with w/o a property manager in between. Anyway... We have German cockroaches in this house, which I haven't been too freaked out about b/c I've tended to find them dead or dying from commercial bait discs. The former owners treated for them last summer and we'll do the same if necessary, but still, I've been kind of OK with them b/c they're itty bitty compared to the big narsty water bugs I'm used to - the kind I'd spray half a bottle of raid on, then if I had to, crush with my swiffer b/c I can't stand any closer contact. So, I'm handling the occasional bug, but not nearly ready to face mice again. Saturday night, after getting Leila to bed at 10:00, I'm walking downstairs, look back up towards her room for a sec and spy a mouse dropping at my eye level on the landing under the stair rail. Ok, mouse dropping in a utilities closet in the basement... wouldn't be happy with it, but might be able to put it out of mind for a bit. Mouse dropping on the 2nd floor where we sleep at night across from my daughter's doorway, pest control will be getting a call sooner rather than later. Even still, the occasional dropping I might be able to push back and convince myself that the critter/s have since slunked away into a neighbors unit if I don't see them again. It's when the bodies start showing up in traps that I get more than a little freaked. So, back to the plumbing. When we got home last night Cesar went up to fiddle with the tub to see if there was any self remedy before I scheduled the plumber. He opened up the square board outside the bathroom that conceals the pipes and started fiddling about - in the course of which he reversed the hot and cold water - a repair the former owners made before we moved in - and in shining his flashlight around discovered... that's right, a dead mouse on a trap. Now that victim could have been there for a while, who knows, but the fact that there was a trap in there that we did not set only verifies that there have been vermin problems here in the past. While all this is going on, Leila is dancing around me chirping read me Angelina Ballerina and thankfully not making the association b/t the rigid little thing in the trap she'd asked to see and the little dancing mousies in her book.
And in closing, just for that icing on the cake effect, I was out on the front stoop with Leila while she ate her freezer ice at 7:30 - I'm about to go get one of those myself as I don't think the sinus pressure on my jaw will allow me to bite much - when Cesar comes out, looks down into the grass and says oh my god, look, a baby snake! By the time we looked and he looked back down, whatever he saw was gone, but he's beyond observant so if he claims to have seen a baby snake, he probably saw a baby snake. Yay, Lisa's animal farm begins anew!
Understatement of the Year
The kid looks up at me from the bath the other night and says: "I say a lot of good words" - pause - "I talk a lot." Bwah ha ha ha... Yes, sweetie, you do. And that contributes to 99.9% of mom's exhaustion at the end of the day.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
You know the part in Tom Perotta's Little Children...
... book or movie adaptation - when the Kate Winslet character, Sarah, I believe her name was though it's been some years since I've read the book, is caught on the playground unprepared with a snack for her little moppet and one of those playground mom's makes a big overproduction of having her child share her goldfish? If you're a mom, you probably get the general scenario if not the direct reference. I had one of those Kate Winslet/Sarah moments last night. Took Leila to the library for our weekly book and DVD exchange just before 7. Noted a dad bringing his daughter in wearing her PJs and thought, wow, what's their secret for getting the kid all ready for bed before a library dash at 7:00. Then we hit the kids' section and lo and behold, more kids in PJs - indeed, about a dozen of them - gearing up for story night. Didn't get the memo! Will my kid be scarred for being the only one of her peers remaining in her day clothes?? I did encourage her to go into the reading room to participate and after some hesitation and looking around every 30 seconds to be sure I was planted in my spot outside the glass door, she seemed to have a blast. Though I did get a firm, "NEXT time! I'm going to wear my pea-jamas (as she pronounces it)" as we left. At 7:30. At which point she had yet to be fed dinner. Oh, bad mom I am. So she got spaghettios as soon as we got home. Again, bad mom of processed food products on emergency reserve in the pantry!!
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