Reminiscing about our teenage years

This past Friday, Lester and I met up with Stacey and Hugo to go to the St. Pius X festival, a small community fair held by a local school/church community.

It was a beautiful Friday evening, and there were a ton of families out, enjoying the fried food and ice cream, fair games and spring weather. There were rides and cupcakes, a book sale and a flea market. It was just perfect!

Hugo and Cary, firefighters on duty.

This one wanted no parts of the rides.

Dean and Hugo loved this helicopter ride.

But Cary was happy just to do the train, safe, on the ground.

They had so much fun!

 

There were also a zillion teenagers strolling around the grounds and hanging out on the steps of St. Pius X high school. They gathered in groups or meandered in pairs, couples all immersed in starry-eyed young love. Seriously, there was so much lust and hormones in the air, it was almost palpable. I felt like I needed to shower after all the heat generated by those kids.

Lester and I found ourselves staring at these kids -- most of whom were taller than I am (that's not hard, but still) -- and we were hit by so many of the same thoughts.

Look how old these kids look. Can you believe our kids will be this big one day?
Look how young they are!
The pheromones in the air are off the chain!
They think they're so cool -- remember when you cared about being cool?
They look so cool!

At one point, Lester said to me, "I can remember being these exact kids, walking around a festival just like this. I remember having thought about what I was going to wear for days and days. And when I was there, with my fresh new sneakers on, I thought I was the flyest thing at the festival. I distinctly remember feeling that all eyes were on me -- and that every move I made was for someone else's benefit."

I so totally remember that feeling! Being at a carnival with my friends and thinking half of every second, "There are BOYS here! Are they looking at us? Is [insert cute boy's name] here? I hope he comes!" Or being at an amusement park with my boyfriend and thinking, "How should I stand so I look my most adorable and cool and like I like him but I'm not, like, OVERLY liking him?"

Boy am I glad I'm past those days! Just thinking back on that time period makes me exhausted! But also, so, so weirded out to imagine that one day, our boys will be walking through the St. Pius X fair, checking out the girls and looking like mini-men.  One day, our daughter will be one of a gaggle of adorable girls, tossing her hair and trying to look disinterested in the "immature" boys who are walking through the fair, checking them out.

One day, our kids won't want us to walk around the festival with them, snapping photos and waving as they ride the kiddie rides. We'll be an after-thought, an ATM, an enforcer of the curfew.

As much as I complain about my kids being crazy and defiant and tantrum-y and irrational, Lester and I looked at those teenagers at that fair and saw our pasts -- and our future.

And it made us oh-so-grateful to have a few years more in our present.
 

Happy post-Sandy Halloween!

Lester did a yeoman's job preparing for the storm after all (I should have known he would) and caulked up some cracks in our outside walls, as well as stocked our house with food and baby formula and other actual necessities like Papa John's pizza and Pillsbury slice 'n bake cookies. I bought batteries and bottled water, and filled up our downstairs tub with water. We had the flashlights at the ready.

In the end, we survived nontropical Sandy, or whatever she ended up being called, with very little damage to speak of. In the three days we were stuck in the house a little bit of water seeped in through the basement, but other than that, we have nothing significant to talk about. Especially not when compared to the devastation in NY/NJ and other parts of the Northeast.

My prayers go out to all of those who lost loved ones, and I pray that people will be able to get back to their normal lives as soon as possible. I know it is a very "1st-world" problem to be so majorly inconvenienced by power outages and public transportation stoppages, but still. This sucks.

In other news, it is Halloween, and I hope the boys and Clair will get at least some trick-or-treaters tonight, as they are crazy excited about wearing their costumes and handing out candy. And since school was closed again today, they missed out on their Halloween party and likely tomorrow's fall festival, too. So since this is it for them, trick-or-treaters better come a trickin' and a treatin'!

We at least got out as a family before the storm and went to the Patterson Park Lantern Parade on Saturday, which was awesome. We ate festival food and saw marching bands and amazingly-creative paper lanterns and kids in costumes and our friends Antwyne, Mari and Antony and Stacey and Hugo. Dean was a little freaked out by the scary costumes -- at one point he said, "Mommy, nooo! The dinosaur is going to eat me!" -- but he still had a really good time. The highlight of the night was definitely the marching bands. My boys LOVED them. See for yourself (this video is 2 minutes long and worth every second!):

And here are some cute photos of them in their costumes, which they thought were the best things ever.

Mater Truck and Lightning McQueen reporting for duty!

Raggedy Ann (actually Raggedy Andy, because I wanted her to have pants.) Yes, my daughter is a cross-dresser. I love and accept her no matter what. :-)

Daddy and Raggedy Ann(dy) at the Patterson Park Lantern Parade. Clair was a huge trooper, especially considering that it got kinda chilly out and it was way past her bedtime.

Every day since Saturday the boys have asked to wear their costumes. And I told them they could wear them on Halloween to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Which is why those darn neighborhood kids better high-step around all the downed tree branches and come eat all this candy I bought!!

 (Seriously, people, I ate so much junk during the storm sequestering, I neeeeeed this candy out of my house!)

Packed weekend yet again (vegtivals, trees, music, friends and meltdowns)

Saturday, we went to a festival in my neighborhood, with live music and popcorn and slushies and hula hoops and tons of kids. One little girl recognized C & D from school. She's in the 3s class, and came right up to them, saying, "I know you! You go to my school!!" Cary and Dean looked puzzled and a little bit nervous, but the girl was delightfully cute. Turns out I'd met her mother more than a year ago at Mother Goose on the Loose at our local library. We'd even exchanged phone numbers back then, but never called one another. Isn't that funny? I told her we definitely should link up.

The boys loved the Fall Festival! They still keep asking me about going back to the "vegtival."

 After the festival, we went to a park and climbed a tree.

I still remember when we came to this park when the boys were newish walkers, and they had trouble navigating the ground because of all the roots and sticks strewn about. And now they are attempting to climb the biggest tree at the park!  Wow. This blows my mind.

This was August 2011 at the same park. They could barely walk! I remember being nervous that they were going to trip and kill themselves.

On Sunday, we went to their first music class, and saw a couple with twin girls, Abby and Maya, who we met the day before at the vegtival!!  What a coincidence! Turns out their girls are a month younger than C & D, and they live just a few streets over. So perhaps we'll link up.

(That's two couples I'd like to get to know better. Will I ever link up with them? I don't know. We shall see. Making friends at this age is so...bizarrely hard. It just seems weird to call up people we don't know and say 'Hey! Let's be friends!' But I do want to know more people in my neighborhood. So I'm going to try to get over my reticence. I'll let you know how it goes.)


We also went out to lunch before going to visit my friend Stephanie. This was one of those lunches that goes down in the annals of "Worst Outings Ever."

It started off wonderfully. It was a beautiful day; we sat outside. We ordered food we thought we could eat the bulk of, but keep the boys happy with, too. Turns out, Cary and Dean don't really like fancy grilled cheese sandwiches with apple slices cooked in. Or fancy chicken salad sandwiches with golden raisins. Or butternut squash soup with crabmeat and shrimp. Turns out, they get really mad when it's lunchtime and there's really nothing for them to eat. So that started the shift in the day's happy mood toward Grumpville.

Then, I gave Clair a piece of bread to suck on. She loved, loved LOVED it!

When it was getting close to time to go, I took the soggy chunk of grossness from her to clean her up. She LOST HER EVER-LOVING MIND. We're talking bucking, kicking, screaming, crocodile tears streaming. And it was LOUD. I was shocked!

Then I went to pay for the food at the counter and saw that, as it was a day before Rosh Hashanah, they had samples of kugel. I brought one back to the table for Cary and one for Dean. As we packed up our things, Cary asked for more "macaroni." We told him there was no more and it was time to go. He LOST HIS EVER-LOVING MIND! We're talking screaming, kicking, falling on the ground, crocodile tears streaming. And it was LOUD. I was shocked!

People were giving us the serious stink eye so we tried to hustle on out of there, with Clair in her stroller screaming and Cary in Lester's arms, kicking and screaming. To keep Dean from joining in the meltdown ('cause believe me, he was looking a little left out), I asked him to help me push the stroller. Zealot that he is, Hercules Davis rammed the stroller into the table in front of us. I actually started laughing, because it was just like, "Are you kidding me?"

The people trying to eat at the table were. not. amused. We could not get out of there fast enough.

In other news, Clair has decided that she can't sleep without her pacifier. She wakes up three to four times a night for it. I am exhausted.

And we decided to get a cat. I cannot deal with the mice in Baltimore. And nothing else has worked.

Neither one of us really wants the responsibility of a cat. And I have a bit of an allergy. But I seriously can NOT deal with the mice anymore. Have I said that already? I CANNOT deal.

I'll let you know how it goes.