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A BIg First

Pardon the picture quality… I’m not so awesome with the iPhone yet.

I took Charlie to his first play on Tuesday.

It was surreal, holding his little hand as we walked up to the Orpheum doors with him asking “Where’s the picture of the elf? Where’s the picture of the elf?” As we sat in the seats, waiting for the show to begin, Charlie’s eyes were huge and a little scared, and you could see that, despite the fact that his bedtime had already come and gone, he could barely even handle how excited he was.

I remember feeling the exact same way when my parents took me to see Peter Pan at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. UNK had brought in some people from Vegas (I think? Correct me if I’m wrong!) to help with the fly system, and I remembering it just being magic.I only have a few vivid images of a scene with Tigerlily, and the scene where Tinkerbell drinks the poison . . . and also meeting the woman who played Tigerlily after the show, but I hope I never lose those memories. I’m not going to get all sappy and say that “That was the moment in which I knew I would love Theatre,” because I think that having two Theatre majors as parents and hanging out with all the cool high school kids during many nights of my dad’s play rehearsals might have had something to do with that. All I know is that I was so excited I almost couldn’t take it, and, after it was over, all I wanted to do was fly.

Charlie did surprisingly well for a little kid with more daily energy than I’ve had in the last three years combined. The music was a little too loud, but once the show got going and he saw SANTA! he seemed to settle in. He spent most of the first act on my lap, and then, after the offer of a snack, he sat pleasantly in his seat until Buddy’s angry dad made him cry right before intermission.

Womp, womp.

Luckily, after a bathroom break and some leg stretching, the musical number that opened Act II was fun enough that the show was, I think, redeemed for him. When the Santas stopped dancing, however, I could see his little head start to droop, and he snuggled his Buddy the Elf doll just a little tighter . . . and then he was out light a light. I thought about taking him home so he could sleep more comfortably, but, then I realized I would get to sit through an actual Broadway show without worrying about anyone but myself and the little sleeping face that was drooling on my arm . . . so, yeah, we stayed. The show was so enjoyable, and I had one of my favorite nights ever with one of my favorite guys ever. It was absolutely a win all around.

I really want to thank Kim, Omaha Performing Arts, and Elf for the tickets and gift package. Charlie’s been carrying around that doll like crazy, and has also been using his Etch-a-Sketch in the car as a map-drawer to help me find my way to places we need to go. Obviously, I don’t know how we navigated Omaha without it. Lucy sneaks some time with Buddy the Elf when Charlie’s not looking . . . but that never lasts long.

I don’t know if Charlie’s going to be a Theatre guy when he gets older. At this rate, it looks like he will be pursuing a career in couch cushion gymnastics, but who knows? He may love it, he may not, but I think this was the perfect way to dip his toes in the water.

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Count the Leaves

This picture isn’t an obvious match to the post, but it makes sense, I promise. Charlie and I were chasing the last few rays of daylight at the park on what was probably one of the few park-weather days we have left this year.

I’ve always thought of myself as one of those people who looooooooves the transitions into the colder seasons. I’m not terribly outdoorsy, so I generally think of bundling up in a cozy blanket with a hot beverage and a book when I think of Fall and Winter.

I’m not sure why I still feel that way, considering the fact that cold weather mostly means that Charlie will go from jumping off of things outside to jumping off of the couch cushions all winter long. What Winter means in parenting reality is that we will probably be in the pediatrician’s office once every week and a half, and my pant legs will be consistently wet all the way up to the tops of my shins once it starts actually snowing.

I really wish I would have started blogging earlier in my life, like in college. Of course, in college, blogging seemed like the STUPIDEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF EVER, so the quality of the posts may not have been the best.

If I had some blog posts from college to read, I think it would hammer home even harder the fact that November (despite all the gorgeous fall-ness) always gives me a run for my money. It seems to be a very intense month for me, despite all of the quietly beautiful things like leaves falling and the air becoming crisp. I think the fact that I’ve always been in an academic setting has something to do with it. My parents were both teachers, I went to college for an “extra” year, and now Paul is a grad student. November means that there are some VERY BIG breaks coming up, and it usually means that your weeks are going to be so filled with work that the breaks almost don’t seem worth it. They are totally worth it, the breaks, but beforehand it sure doesn’t feel like it.

What makes it harder is that, while it’s very stressful in a negative way, it tends to be equally as stressful in a creative way. I’ve been going through all of my blog posts from the past three years, and every November has proved to be the same. I’m always torn between real-life stress and the stress to make my creative goals real-life. This tug-of-war between something so good and something so stressful makes it easy to get negative.

Those other years, though, I don’t think I really had any perspective. I’ve been pretty grumpy about the fact that I’ve had to go through each of my blog posts one by one (I’ll tell you why later . . . spoilers), but really what it’s done is show me the obvious cyclical nature of my life. Every year around this time I start to feel a little panicky, and every year it gets better. Every year, November makes me feel like my quest to do something artistic with my life gets drowned in obligations, and every year I end up coming out of it a few steps closer to my goals.
But, oh my crap, it’s hard to realize that at the time.

This whole thing makes me think of our yard. We’ve got this GIANT oak tree (well, significantly less giant after this summer’s roof-puncturing fiasco) next to our house, and this is an experience that I’ve never been familiar with until we moved here. Acorns are terrifying. They fall so hard that they put dings in our windshield. They hurt like hell when you step on them without shoes on, and they are like baby magnets for small children who are at the stage in which everything goes into their mouths. And, I’m serious, it sounds like you have herds of dinosaurs or robbers straight out of Rescue 911 on your roof sometimes.

But, it seems like the tree saves up for this huge, gorgeous leaf drop, and it all happens in November. Once those leaves fall, it’s time to rake ‘em up and jump right back into them. I’d totally be a liar if I tried to make it sound like I do most of the leaf-raking, because it’s definitely Paul . . . but that doesn’t make those big ol’ piles of leaves any less satisfying to jump into.

What’s important is that there are more leaves than acorns, despite the fact that the acorns are much better at making themselves heard.

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Halloween and Stuff and Things

I’m writing in the dark right now because a moth has infiltrated our dining room and it’s annoying and I’m too short to do anything about it. Luckily the kitchen light is much more appealing than the light from my laptop.

Annnnyway, a whole bunch of life has been happening around here, and I’ve finally got the time to sit down and write about it.

This one’s pretty huge, you guys. Charlie started preschool. I was pretty adamant about not sending him to preschool until he turned 4, and I even felt a little weird about that. I mean, I never went to preschool, I stay at home with my kids, why on Earth would I want to send him out of the house to be with someone else when I could be the one with him allllllll the way up until Kindergarten? (That was the voice of Smug Lauren, by the way, who almost never knows what she’s talking about.)
One by one, Charlie’s friends started going to preschool, and the questions came in full force. “Where is my school, mommy? Who is my teacher, mom? Is that bus going to take me to my school?”
Come on. How do you say “no” to the little kid who wants to go to school?
It ended up working out that a spectacular little art-based (and wallet-friendly) preschool in our area had an opening, so we jumped at it. Charlie is THRILLED. He loves to go school and seems to be doing very well . . . and I’m suddenly left with 2 hours that contain good nap-possibility for Lucy, and therefore the possibility of ALONE TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF A WEEKDAY.

We did it. Princess AwesomeFace (name exaggerated for privacy) and I ran our first 5k. I say first because, God help us, we are going to try to stick with it, even if it only means running once a week because that’s the best we can do. It was fairly difficult, because neither of us have any distance-tracking technology, so we were doing the training program by time. We’re a little slow when it comes to this running thing, so the actual 5k was a bit longer than we were used to. The facts, however, are these: We signed up for a race. We went to the race. We crossed the finish line running. WE ARE THECHAMPIONS.

Halloweeeeeeen! This was Charlie’s first year trick-or-treating. He handed out candy to kids last year, but didn’t have a costume. I think that was mainly because Paul and I are terminally lazy, and Charlie only cared about handing out candy. This year, we decided to go to a few of the houses on our street, and, although it took him a few doors to get really confident with it, he seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself. Honestly, though, I still think he got a bigger kick out of waiting for all the trick-or-treaters to come to our door. We didn’t really have a costume for Lucy, but she had just gotten a cute little hand-me-down jacket with ears on it, so I put some marker on her nose and called her a baby polar bear. Also, I should mention that this Halloween was brought to you by hand-me-downs from Princess AwesomeFace, so thanks, friend. 🙂

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Something Old, Something New . . . Probably Nothing Blue

I’m not sure when it happened, but at a certain point in my life, I stopped caring about new music.

There was a period of time . . . I’d say almost the entirety of 2011 till mid-2012 . . . that I listened to the same three Sara Bareilles albums over and over and over and over and over again. I like to pretend that John Mayer stopped putting out albums afterContinuum, and I swear if I hear the name Mumford one more time, so help me . . .

That is definitely not what the Lauren of old was like. I now sound like a crotchety old spinster, yelling at kids to get their boomboxes and hip-hugger jeans off my lawn.

New music used to be a really big deal to me. I remember heading to Hastings Books and Music on Tuesdays (CD release day, you know) to pick up the latest album by the newest musical discovery I had made, and it was like Christmas. I used to wait around the electronics area in Wal-Mart before midnight just to get my hands on a CD the absolute first second that I could. Every once in a while (cough Maroon 5’s second album cough cough) I would be disappointed, but not usually.

Those days were some of my favorites. Working to pay for new music. Driving around with the windows down and my best friend busting her lungs out in the seat next to me. Feeling a genuine rush of excitement when I heard an amazing band I never knew existed.

Is there a point to all of this musical nostalgia? I think so. I think it’s important to understand why certain memories stick out in our head. One of my favorite memories happened in the commuter parking lot in front of my dorm. My friend (a friend who almost singlehandedly shaped my musical landscape in college) made me sit in her car and listen to this song. As soon as I heard it, my arms felt all tingly and I got this tight-chested holycrapIneedthismusicforever feeling around my heart. This moment is branded in my head, and I think it’s because, oh man, did I feel alive. It was just a tiny little moment that some might find trivial, but it’s my moment, and I experienced it because of a little taste of some new music.

It’s time to get back in the game, friends.

I’m starting my journey back to the Land of New Tunes by checking out a guy named Cameron Carpenter at the Orpheum on November 7th. Carpenter is an extremely talented young man, who was actually the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy for a solo album.

Yeah. Organist. As in pipe organ. This guy is amazing. I’ve been watching YouTube videos and have been utterly mesmerized by what he can do. When I think of an organ, I think of a little old lady playing church hymns on an organ that hasn’t been repaired in 30 years. This guy takes that mentality and throws it out the window . . . actually, he covers it in sequins, lights it on fire, and then throws it out the window. I can’t even explain well or do it justice, and I’d probably just say the word “awesome” about 500 times to get my point across, so do yourself a favor and check out a video.

The performance is put on by the Omaha Performing Arts Center, and will be held at the Orpheum (409 South 16th St.) on Thursday, November 7th at 7:30 PM. If you’re interested in going, grab some tickets here, and give me a high five when we see each other at the show!

This post was written for the Omaha Performing Arts Center in exchange for tickets to see the show. All thoughts and ideas are my own, and hopefully enjoyable to read.

(photo courtesy of aussiegal via flickr)