It's The Final Batman!

Yes, Batman arrived in a Tardis to battle Joker riding on a giant robot. It complimented our Very Whovian Christmas--I pretty much bought out the Doctor Who collections at ThinkGeek and Hot Topic.

There were not really any big ticket gifts for the girls this year.  When I asked them what they wanted for Christmas, all I got was "band merch" and 'Doctor Who stuff."  So that is what they got.

PS also asked for, and received, "the biggest set of Prismacolors you can find."  Those are pretty pricey, but not iPod pricey.  She is becoming an amazing artist, and we are trying to be supportive.  I've said for years that everyone needs to find the one thing they are better at than most people.  It took a while to figure it out, but for PS that thing seems to be art.  It's funny, because I really pushed her into taking an art class in high school because her course load was really tough and I thought she needed a blow-off class.  She had always been pretty good a drawing, but she really blossomed over the last year or so.  And she will spend hours working on one drawing--or how to perfect eyelashes.

A few years ago we got her a Bamboo digital drawing tablet.  It sat around, mostly unused for a while. But then she started teaching herself digital art  several months ago. And I am amazed. This is one of the first pieces that she did (the weird line is my doing) and she has only gotten better since:

So, yeah, she got her fancy pencils.  And she is talking about going to art school.  Which my pragmatic, conservative self wants to rail against.  But she loves art, and she is good at art. And all I really want for my children is for them to be happy in their career and life choices. 

Christmases Past and Present

This year we spent a quiet Christmas at home, just DH and the kids and me. I like our quiet family Christmases, but I wonder if we are depriving our kids by not giving them noisy, boisterous Christmases fully of cousins and aunts and uncles.

As as kid I had divorced parents and one set of divorced grandparents.  Christmas Eve and Day were filled with visiting family, sometimes as many as five different gatherings over the two-day period once step-parents were added into the mix. After DH and I were married and we added in his families' celebrations, things only got more chaotic. We never lived in Hometown during our married life, so the holidays always meant trekking back to Hometown and staying with his parents.

And then we had kids. It wasn't so bad making the rounds with just one kid.  But the first Christmas back home with the twins and I was done.  We had six celebrations to attend over the course of two days with 6 month old twins and a 3 year old in tow.  Needless to say, it was not a pleasant experience, and with that I said no more. From that point on we would be spending Christmas in our own home.  Anyone who wanted to join us was welcome, and we would come down after the holidays to visit our immediate families.

It was a good decision.  And our parents did come to visit a time or two, when the kids were little.  But then MIL got sick, and my relationship with my mother worsened, and most years it's just been the 5 of us. Now that the kids are older we sometimes travel, like last year.

Other years are like this one. On Christmas Eve we went to church, and then opened a few gifts and played games and watched movies together.  Christmas Day brought more gifts, and a day of lounging in our PJ's, playing with our new toys. It's a pretty good way to spend a holiday.  I just hope the kids feel the same.

More Batman!

Joker on Ice

Goin' Fishin'  Pretty Sure Batman has finally offed Joker.

Pinata! Batman likes his chocolate.

Can you spot me, Bro?

Sometimes you just need a hot bubble bath after long day of villianry and crime fighting.

Mary Poppins!  PS did this one all on her own because DH and I were out that night.

Hitting the booze.

Out of ideas

Paint me like on of your French girls, Jack. (PS came up with that caption.)

Kissing under the mistletoe.  Ok, they are supposed to be dancing, but the kids insist they look like they're kissing. We love Batman no matter which team he bats for.

And the crazy award goes to...

Yesterday I had a mediation.  It was, without question, the most insane mediation I have ever attended.

As per usual, it began with an opening caucus. But instead of formal opening statements, the mediator wanted to have an informal discussion.  This seemed ok because the parties already appeared close to an agreement, with one unresolved issue. It was a commercial litigation matter, so not the high emotion that one might see in a family law or personal injury case. The relationship between the parties and counsel had been cordial.

But a few minutes into the group session, and seemingly without a trigger, opposing counsel came unhinged.  He suddenly started yelling at my client, leaning across the conference table and pointing his finger in my client's face.

I leapt from my seat and positioned myself between opposing counsel and my client and said in my biggest, meanest mom voice, "You MAY NOT speak to my client like that." He kept yelling, and I kept repeating myself.  He stood up and I puffed up and stood my ground. He is at least 60 years old had a good 6" and nearly 100 pounds on me, but I was not going to back down or tolerate his rant.

And then he started blowing raspberries.  Yes, sticking out his tongue and spitting like a preschooler. I held my ground and said (in the big mean mom voice) "That is the most unprofessional behavior I have ever seen."

Meanwhile, the mediator was trying to regain control of the room.  Opposing counsel finally sat back down, but continued to blow raspberries. I stood my ground, and the mediator hustled the other parties out of the room.

In the end, the case settled and I got exactly what I asked for.

While it makes for an amusing story (much better when told in person), I  wonder about the impact on my professional reputation. Opposing counsel isn't an attorney I come across often, but the mediator's firm is a peer firm in our niche industry.  I hadn't worked with the mediator before, but he is well known in our niche industry, and I've worked with other attorneys in his office.  I have never yelled at another attorney before, and I don't want that story going around in a way that makes me seem like the crazy one.

Parenting Fail

I generally think we're doing ok at this parenting thing.  Our kids are liked and well mannered (at least in public).  They don't get into serious trouble and they do well in school.  They think about other people (unless those other people are their sisters). The time I felt the most incompetent was during potty training.  Until now.

PS's grades dropped severely this year.  She has historically been an A student, although she has struggled a bit with math for the last year or two.  This year she is all over the place in all of her classes--even English which should be easiest for her.

Since she is in high school, I generally expect her to fight her own battles, but her grades dropped to the point that we needed to intervene. We met with her AP history teacher several weeks ago and got a much better idea of his of his expectations and how she needed to be studying.  That class is truly preparing her for college-level work, and I have since worked with her on better study techniques (like how to create flash cards and a super detailed outline, instead of pages and pages of block notes). That grade went up, but the others kept falling, even though PS studies for hours every night and we hired a math tutor. So we finally called a meeting with her counselor to help figure out the problem and how to fix it.

The counselor was astonished when she saw PS's schedule with 6 PreAP/AP classes. She said nobody takes that many, especially sophomore year.  (PS swears that all her friends do, but all her friends are the robotics super nerds and in reality they probably are not taking the non-core Pre-AP classes.) And the counselor thought that her grades were ok, given her difficult course load.

But poor PS is overwhelmed.  She studies constantly, and has little free time. My normally stoic daughter was in tears last week because of her grades in relation to the amount of work that she is putting in.

And, of course, who do you think pushed her to take this course load? Yes, that would me. The mom who wants to give her daughter every opportunity to succeed and go to the best school possible. But it is coming at the risk of her mental health.  I see how overwhelmed she is.  I see how hard she is trying.  She often puts in longer days at school than I do at work, and then hours more studying at home. (I honestly think she studies more than I did in law school.)  She simply has more work than she has time for.

And so she is dropping a couple of the PreAP classes.  Her mental health is more important than showing a potential college that she can hack a super tough schedule.  And that tough schedule isn't really demonstrating anything if her grades are mediocre.

But I shouldn't have pushed her so hard.  We should have figured this out before now.  The first child truly is the guinea pig.  We won't make the same mistakes with her sisters.  You can talk Tiger Mama all you want, but kids need downtime. And frankly, teenage depression scares the shit out of me after a rash of suicides we have had in our community. I don't think PS is depressed, but she absolutely needed a reduction in stress levels. And reducing her stress levels reduces my stress levels.

Here's hoping the new year and new schedule brings some relief.

Batman on the Shelf

I've been quite disappointed over the last couple of years that my kids are too old for the Elf on the Shelf, that is sweeping Facebook and Pinterest.  He looks like so much fun! So this year, I decided that we needed to do our own, teenager version of the Elf on the Shelf.  So I got online and ordered an allegedly poseable Batman and a Joker, in case we wanted to mix it up a bit.

Batman and Joker arrived rappelling from the ceiling fan on dental floss with this note, and have proceeded to display their antics everynight:

Playing Battleship--although the girls pointed out that none of the hits actually matched where the ships are.  Oops.

Breaking into the Lucky Charms (By the way, I had no idea we even had Lucky Charms.  The twins went to the grocery store and I let them pick from the cereal that was on sale and obviously was not paying attention to what they threw into the cart.  But it is a great late night snack.)

The girls wanted to know how Batman was able to spell out HELP when he doesn't actually have superpowers.  Could they be a little less analytical, please? (No, the table's not dirty, just beat up.  Yes, I need to replace it.)

Anyway, I was driving the twins and their friend to an event last week, and they were showing the friend our Batman pictures (and one of TT posing with Satan while in New Orleans, and one of PS pretending to cut her dad's head off  with a saw at the Christmas Tree far) and the friend said, your family is...interesting. 

I think she meant it as a compliment.  At least, that's how I'm going to take it.

Ice Day

We don't get snow days around here, we get ice days.  It was 80 here on Wednesday--we've seen a 50 degree drop in 24 hours--crazy!

There's little accumulation on the ground, but what's there is solid ice.  My tree is one giant icicle and my neighbors crepe myrtles are now hanging all the way into my yard, over the 6 foot fence, and onto my rose bushes--I hope it is only the weight of the ice and that the branches haven't broken.

The city is completely shut down.  Schools were cancelled yesterday before a drop of freezing rain ever hit the ground.  I wonder what our ancestors would have thought about our ability to predict the weather future? Doppler radar sure would have been handy in pioneer times.  I bet the Donner Party would have appreciated it (too soon?).

Courts, city offices, the twin's girl scout campout, and every holiday event scheduled for the weekend has been cancelled.  Except The Marathon.  The Marathon is the biggest running event in this region. The weather is generally pretty crappy for it, but if you have ever met a marathoner, you know they are all slightly crazy and will run in just about anything--especially when they have been preparing for a year or more.

DH is supposed to be running a relay leg.  He is not a crazy marathoner determined to accomplish the goal he has been preparing for all year.  He is a casual 5Ker who got roped into the relay because his company is a race sponsor. If it were only him, he would back out, but he has an entire team to consider (they are called 4 Girls and DH).

Meanwhile, he is in New Hampshire, which is quite a bit warmer than where we are, which should never, ever be colder than New Hampshire.

Anyway, I'll happily take the ice day.  I am  happily ensconced in my warm and cozy house with my girlies.  I had to foresight (thanks to that handy doppler radar)  to pick up provisions to keep up fed through the weekend, and a box of fake logs to supplement our meager firewood in case we lose power. (We already lost power yesterday, before the storms  came in,which is particularly puzzling since the power lines are underground here.)

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that DH's flight home tomorrow doesn't get cancelled. If it does, I guess he definitely won't be running in the marathon, and I'm sure as heck not filling in for him!

Back From Our Week in NOLA

We left a day earlier than we had planned, trying to get ahead of a predicted-to-be nasty winter storm. Unfortunately, the storm just followed us, and the weather was cold and rainy and a bit of a buzzkill, since most of what we wanted to do involved outdoor activities. (Yeah, you Northerners can laugh at us!)

Monday we explored the shops and art galleries in the French Quarter until the mist turned to rain, and then we bailed in favor of nap time at the hotel, rounding out our day by going to see Catching Fire (a much better adaptation than the Hunger Games).

Tuesday the weather was even nastier, so we headed to the aquarium.  We have a fantastic aquarium in our own backyard, and the Audubon Aquarium didn't quite measure up, but the twins enjoyed it. Buying a membership was the best financial choice for our family of five, so the twins and I followed up the aquarium with the insectarium (DH couldn't get in because it inexplicably had security and DH had a pocket knife, but he wasn't very interested anyway.) The Insectarium was unimpressive.  Most of the exhibits were artificial--few live specimens.

By Wednesday the rain was gone, but it was still cold.  We hit the zoo, and spent a lot of time in the heated reptile building.  The zoo was the best of the Audubon trio, although many of the exhibits were closed because of the cold or renovations. But the more cold-tolerant animals were more active than we typically see in more temperate weather. It warmed up by afternoon, so we did a scavenger hunt tour of the garden district from the Stray Boots app.  The tour was worth the modest cost of the app, and the kids enjoyed it.  That evening DH and I headed out to the swanky Irvin Mayfield's Jazz Playhouse, for some really good music and decent, interesting drinks.  I had a cucumber, basil margarita, which would have been really good if they had not added soda water.  I can't do bubbles in my alcohol. We hadn't intended to leave the kids alone this trip, but our hotel felt really safe and they were totally cool with it.

Thursday, of course, our options were limited, but the weather was much nicer.  We watched the Macy's parade from our hotel before heading out to lunch (did anybody catch the 5 seconds of robots that started the parade?  PS's team competed against two of them.) We hit the French Quarter after lunch and it was busier than we had seen it all week. It was really the first time we saw street performers.  We also caught the Bayou Classic parade, watching from Jackson Square with beignets and cafe au laits.  The girls had great fun catching beads.  That evening we finally made it to Preservation Hall.  We had wanted to do this earlier in the week, but were put off by the though of standing outside in the cold.  It was sooooooo good.  Absolutely blew the music from the previous night out of the water.  I was disappointed it was our last night, because I would have gone back.

We were headed back home Friday, but we headed back out the the French Quarter for a couple of hours so the girls could pick up some things they had scoped out earlier in the week.  The weather was beautiful and the Quarter was much more active.  We found Royal to be our favorite street in the Quarter--only a block over from Bourbon, but a totally different vibe--loaded with art galleries and fun shops. PS's dream job is to be a Pixar animator, and she was thrilled to find a gallery with original works by Tim Burton.

Overall it was a good trip, but we definitely missed out on some things because of the weather.  We had intended to do a ghost tour, but nobody wanted to be out at night in the cold.  And we wanted to spend some time exploring Magazine Street.  We're already thinking that a warmer weather trip is a must.