My younger daughter is very cautious and deliberate about trying new things. We’ve been encouraging her to attempt skiing for a few years but she protests. I don’t want to be a Tiger mom so I would just occasionally suggest it, gently, as a possibility but there has been zero interest. Until Monday. When she declared that she was going to learn to ski on Wednesday. Not wanting to miss this opportunity, I packed her up, brought her over to the mountain, rented her skis and expected to spend an hour picking her up repeatedly until she called a hot chocolate break. This is not what happened.
This little dynamo tired of skiing the baby hill I had her on so quickly and set her sights on the Jbar. Completely unintimitated. I said, “You need to learn how to get up when you fall first.” Within minutes that was accomplished. “Let’s watch the kids get on the Jbar so you know how to do it” was met with 5 minutes of intense study followed by queueing for a go at it. I told the Jbar operator that it was her very first time and he gave her terrific instructions and off she went. When a new snowboarder caused the line to stop, my girl briefly entertained second thoughts but my encouragement prevailed. I don’t know how she mustered the courage to ski herself down that hill but she did. She popped right up after every fall and within 3 hours of the very first time she ever put skis on her feet we were timing her descents (20 seconds) like she was Lindsey Vonn. I’m not sure how I didn’t burst from the pride but I am in awe of her little courageous self. And I may be opening a ski school soon.
Any man who wants to be President is either an egomaniac or crazy. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
I was selected by the nominating committee of an organization I belong to to serve the next two year presidential term. This is one of those new things that is going to lead to boat loads of other new things. Score!
I went to my church’s annual meeting for the first time and voted for the board. They couldn’t find my name in the registry but we sorted that all out (I’ve officially been a member since February 1999). Anyhoo…boring but new.
I don’t know why but I love Gilbert & Sullivan. This comes up more frequently than you might imagine. For a few years, a friend and I have tried to book a date to one of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players productions but it’s never worked out so when her club was hosting a concert by the Blue Hill Troupe, she invited us to come along. It was a fun mix of Ruddigore and Sondheim and we all enjoyed it. It was Prime Rib night at the club so we had a delightful dinner following the show. I realize I’m a boring blogger but I’m trying to figure out how to write about my life without including any actual details about it. Also, I need to take a WordPress class. Also I have a cat sleeping across my arms.
Links
I learned how to create links in WordPress (see previous post). You might not think this is much of an accomplishment but I know zero about computers and blogging so it took me three-ish hours to figure out. I may have gotten a little carried away but I feel like a blog princess wizard on a unicorn right now so please indulge me.
Movie Theater Innovations
Because my 6 year old daughter was so astonishingly cooperative and well behaved at her older sister’s gymnastics meet, I let her be in charge for the rest of the weekend. The first thing on her agenda was to see “Frozen“. I haven’t been to the movies in a while so I was confused when the ticket purchaser thing prompted me to select my seats but oh boy! was I bethrilled when I saw the reason….BARCALOUNGERS!!
Have you SEEN these things?!?!? They are cozy and wonderful and waaaaay overdue. They were so comfortable and sleep inducing that I actually dozed off providing my darlings with the opportunity to get free refills at the new Coke machines which are also noteworthy. And who knew there is Raspberry Coke? Delish.
Gymnastics
You know you’re a mom when you’re getting up at 4 AM to pack lunches and prep for a schlep to the middle of nowhere so your 9 year old daughter can compete in her first gymnastics tournament. I didn’t realize how long a gymnastics meet lasted….3 1/2 hours seems like a lot to expect a parent to endure. My precious won a 4th place medal for the uneven bars and 5th for floor exercise so the payoff was an incredibly happy girl and, ultimately, 3 1/2 hours well spent. Please indulge me while I gush for a moment. This event highlighted a bunch of things I already knew but don’t take the time to appreciate enough. This kid is incredible. Resilient. Happy. A great friend. She did a face plant into the mats on her first attempt at the vault. It looked like a real show stopper. Did she cry? No. Did she berate herself? Not at all. She shook it off, went back to the starting point, nailed her next vault and was rewarded with a good score. There’s a lot of sitting around during these things and some of the kids were squirmy or goofing around. My girl cheered her teammates on and gave them thumbs up and encouragement while sitting on the sidelines. I love this kid. If she wasn’t mine I would wish that she was. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my children experiencing joy and if I have to get up at 4 AM to make that happen, no big deal. This was my favorite new thing so far this year.
Skate with the Greats
My job has some nice perks. Occasionally, I get to go someplace or do something in the name of work and from time to time my whole family benefits. On Friday night I took my family skating in Rockefellar Center for the 20th Annual Skate with the Greats benefit for Ronald McDonald house which my company sponsored. https://rmh-newyork.org/skate My little one had a lot of concerns before we got there but took to it like a squirrel to a tree and zipped around the rink unaided overandoverandoverandover again. I hadn’t skated in years so needing to stay close to her set the perfect pace. My older girl glided effortlessly around, stopped to help the little one and smiled the entire time. My favorite thing in the world is making my children happy and if I can do it while checking off another new thing it’s bonus time. So skating in Rockefellar Center is off my list and smiley skatey satisfied children is the happy bi-product.
Running
I have a love/hate relationship with running. I love it because it’s so efficient and it gets you outside in the sunshine and because you can vary speed and distance and time to suit your mood. Pretty much everything else about running, I could live without, and if I don’t have a goal to shoot for I just end up resenting it when its the only thing I have time for and I’m jamming in a treadmill run between work and evening stuff. So I came up with this- I’m going to run an average of 5 miles per week which will end up being the equivalent of running from my home to the home of my favorite pie in the Adirondacks. Very motivating. To track my miles and stay on course I signed up for The Daily Mile www.dailymile.com and since I still need to read a manual on how to use Word Press, that link may not work but don’t be lazy…just type it in. So the signing up to track my runs is the new thing. Two down, 50 to go.
This is the 19th year I’ve made the resolution to do 52 new things. I used to keep track in my Franklin Covey Day Planner but since I’ve moved into the 21st century and migrated away from paper it’s been tougher to track so I came up with the idea of a blog which was great because it provided me with a ton of new things in 2012 (buy a domain, attend BlogHer conference, etc…) but I never got around to setting the whole thing up until just last week…in the nick of time for a fresh start in 2014. So this is it….my first blog entry in the history of ever. Because the world needs another blogger. Expect great things.