Post-Show Glow

The little schooling horse show we took the kids to on Tuesday night turned out to be an awesome experience.

Champ and Lily and Gabby

We did get there with plenty of time to spare, and got a good parking spot right near the ring. Lots of time to unload and tack up, do a little schooling, and relax before heading into the ring. Hooray! Just the way I like it!

The Hunter's Ridge kids and ponies!

Noah took his first blue ribbon in the leadline class (and so did the other six kids, but hey, it's leadline!). The look on his face was absolutely priceless when the 'ribbon girl' came to hand him his very own horse show ribbon! "And it's the color I wanted, too!"

He had a hard time waiting outside the ring for people to finish schooling so the class could start, and he declared, "I don't wanna ride! You wanted me to ride!" We all laughed and reminded him that he cried at the last show because he could not ride in it. Upon entering the ring, though, he stretched up tall, held the reins, and looked around...."Ooh! I *like* this!"

Wren...well, she had a lesson that morning, and was spectacular. She was determined to trot, and she did, bolstered by her incredible performance on Sunday (which I did not yet write about) that included trot circles and taking her pony over the tiny cross-rail in the indoor ring. Such bravery as I have not seen from that child in a long time.

But it got better.

At the show, I had registered her to participate in the leadline class, and the walk/two-point class only. No trotting, as she was not solid yet in getting her correct diagonal, and also had not even trotted her pony all the way around the ring at our trainer's barn. Given that you should show your horse at a level below that which you school at home, it was a good idea not to push her. The ring at Summerhill is huge, and there is lots of space for an energetic show pony to get wild ideas about going faster.

But after the walk/two-point class (she placed third of five), she was DETERMINED to enter in the walk/trot class. She begged. She swore she could do it. Kathy and I relented. She went in. Travis took up his spot on the rail and took pictures.

We held our breath. Wild Wings the Show Pony definitely knew her job. She got a little quick at the trot in one spot, but Wren was on it, and things were under control. She didn't always have her correct diagonal when posting, and she didn't use and maintain her space in the ring well, but she accomplished something HUGE.

She decided being afraid of this was for other people.

Now she's making little jump courses for her play horses, and talking about all the fences she will do once she can canter. I may have encouraged the creation of a monster, but I don't care. She told me after her lesson on Tuesday morning that she wished she could just keep riding and didn't have to go in.

I am so proud of her.

Third

He is small, but growing, into a little boy with the colt-like legs and the rough and tumble way of moving from one place to another that occasionally results in a faceplant on the floor.

Still little enough to hold my hand everywhere we go, he hangs on to me at night, telling me stories about his day, or random bits of information he feels a burning need to communicate. "But I have so much to tell you, Mommy!"

He stepped into a new preschool halfway through  last year, with just about no hesitation and no negative thought. None of the girls' worry -- will they like me? Will I have friends? Will I be okay all day?
He has never been that self-assured before, ever.

Last week, I put him on the school bus for his first 'big-school' experience -- a summer school-readiness program for rising kindergarteners.

After three children, this I know is true: once they enter school, the years flip by with increasing speed, blurring from one to the next like a time-lapse video. One day, you are snapping a shot of a shiny new kindergartener proudly wearing his backpack and carrying a new lunchbox, and then like magic, you look through the lens of your camera to find a young man in a cap and gown.

He is fascinated by the way things work. He identified the mechanics of a car seatbelt buckle when he was four, and has created large Rube-Goldberg-esque machines in the living room that he pretends can make coffee, or ice cream, or dispense any manner of toys or books or other trinkets.

He is starting to read. He can do some simple math. He questions everything, and wants to know how all the machines work. He is constantly chasing, and failing to catch, his big sisters.

He wants so badly to be big.

But he climbs into my lap when I sit on the couch, or the porch, and he slips into my bed in the dark early-morning and pets my arm or touches my cheek. He wants to be with me wherever we go, or he wants to go nowhere and stay at home all day.

He is my last, my baby, and the little boy I didn't know I wanted so much.

Bring it on, Summer!

Summer has officially started here at the Brandel Circus. All three of the kids are out of school now, and we have shifted to what will be the schedule for the next two and a half months.

(I still can't believe Noah is starting kindergarten in the fall.)

We've been getting ready for summer for a while, finding all the fun outdoor toys, stocking up on bubbles and water balloons and getting a new lawn sprinkler. Soon, we'll join the pool, and then the fun really begins!

(I have got to get Wren a better-fitting bike helmet...)

Noah is attending a Kindergarten Readiness camp at the elementary school starting July 1, so in two weeks, my big boy will already be getting on the bus and riding away from here to start his own adventures. Kira will be off to her dad's house for the summer next Friday (boo! We miss her when she's gone!), and Wren and I will probably be at the barn most mornings while Noah is at school. We don't really have any travel plans this summer, what with the horses this summer, and the big trip to Miami last year, and the potential for a Disney vacation next year.

I'm hoping for a July schedule that involves getting to the barn by 8:30 at least three days a week, helping Wren with Gabby (groom, round pen, tack, ride), and then getting in a ride on Champ before heading home to get Noah off the bus at noon. After that, pool time! We'll have to fit in other barn time on the weekends or in the evenings, because Travis has already bemoaned the lack of built-in Turkey time for him. I anticipate much library time, and computer and Wii time, too. Summers are very HOT in Virginia, and I can't say I love being out in the heat of the day.

My kids are predisposed to love books and learning, so I am not too worried about "summer slide", or whatever they are calling it these days, but I am considering making some sight word flashcards for practice with Noah, and getting some math facts cards for Wren. Noah started reading a couple of months ago, and while he is not proficient, he is definitely ahead of his level already, and I'd like to build on that a little.

Somewhere in our schedule, I need to find time to work.

Maybe some day trips will be part of the weekend agenda, maybe we will go camping at the state park near our house. I definitely want to hit the state park's water playground.

I think it's going to be a fun summer.

Kindergarten

Yesterday was our school district's kindergarten registration day. Noah is now five years old. He will be starting kindergarten this September.

I'm not sure I am quite fully cognizant of the fact that in a few months, I will be putting my youngest child on the school bus every morning with his sister.

I will be the only one left standing in the yard, waving.

As much as I protest, I know I am ready to move to this next stage of life -- with all school-aged children. They will all have the same days off, the same schedule (essentially, except for the teen), and I will no longer be paying for preschool tuition. Wow.

I worry about my baby, though. He's so precise, so routine-bound, so very smart in a different way than his sisters. I wonder if I will have three children for whom traditional school is a bit of a struggle. Or will he thrive in the structured atmosphere? Will he enjoy school, or will he be bored?

Will he miss me?

Actually, I think he will be excited, but apprehensive. I think he will find his niche, and some friends, and be happy. He has grown from a relatively insecure, change-fearing child into a little boy with more social reserves than I thought he had, who is actually ready to try new challenges and be in new places. He has always had strong language skills, and strong analytical and visual-motor skills, but now he is really starting to shine.

A few weeks ago, he explained to me how the seat belt latch in the car works. "It has a spring in it, Mommy, so when you put the buckle in, it snaps and holds it there".

Oh. Why, yes it does.

I am looking forward to a more regular schedule, with more time in the day for me to do the things that I need to do and want to do -- my day job work, touring at the museum, riding Champ. I won't have to plan everything to happen between the hours of 9am and 1pm so I will have enough time to get home for some lunch before running to the preschool to pick him up. The bus will drop him off in front of our house, with Wren, every afternoon.

I imagine he'll come running, like Wren does, backpack flying, straight into my arms.

Barn Day!

Sundays are usually 'barn days', in that Wren usually has her riding lesson in the afternoon. Since Travis has started studying photography at school, the whole family typically goes to the lesson to watch and hang out with the horses so Travis can take pictures.

Yesterday was a GORGEOUS day, and I planned to ride Champ while Wren and the other little girls rode in their lesson. The ring is big enough for me to do my thing at one end (as long as I don't canter and get the ponies worked up!), and the girls ride at the other end with our trainer. Because Travis had his birthday on Saturday, my trainer asked him if he would like to ride Turkey in a lesson after the girls as a birthday gift.

Naturally, I was not going to let that pass without taking as many pictures as possible. Plus, that meant I got to try out the new camera!

Travis took a bunch of pictures for a school project, and then snapped a bunch while the girls and I rode.

Wren seems to love Candy, although she tells me she gets scared because Candy "walks fast". Uh, no. I think it's more she moves differently than Keepsake, and wants to move faster. Kathy (our trainer) told Wren that Candy was practically taking a nap! I hope Candy (who is 20 years old) will be the confidence-builder Wren needs, much like Champ is the confidence-builder *I* need.

After lessons and my ride, it was time for Travis' birthday present from Kathy. He got a lesson on Turkey!

Noah wanted to help, too, so after the ride, he got out the brush box so he could groom Turkey with Daddy. Turkey measured out at exactly 18 hands at the withers (Kathy got out the stick), so Noah looked particularly teeny next to the massive Clydesdale!

Turkey really seems to love Travis. The feeling is mutual.

All in all, it was a great day. Beautiful weather, beautiful horses, and a fun time. Just the way I like my 'barn days'.

An Adventurous Week

It's not called 'Adventures in Living!' for nothing, you know.

Monday found us enjoying the start of Spring Break for all three kids. The weather was gorgeous, for a change, and the kids played outside. Wren decided she was ready to learn to ride a two-wheeler bike without training wheels, so after about an hour of my teaching her progressively to balance the bike at rest, then coasting down the driveway, she was able to pedal it successfully! I took the little kids and their bikes over to Wren's elementary school where they rode and rode and rode in the bus loop. Wren was positively exuberant!

Not to be outdone by his big sister, Noah has already asked me to teach him to ride, too. We haven't gotten to it yet (more on that in a minute), but it will be part of the plan this summer, for sure.

Tuesday found Wren and I making a quick run out to the barn to see the farrier work on the horses, and to pay the first bit of the lease fees. In the afternoon, we got together with friends for more bike riding in the church parking lot, and playground time. Then, my friend Sara graciously offered to keep the kids overnight for a sleepover so I could work on a big museum tour I was giving on Wednesday.

Travis and I got to go out for dinner in the middle of the week. By ourselves. That almost never happens.

After a supremely decadent Tuesday evening and the utter silence of Wednesday morning, I gave a fabulous tour to a group of Art Therapy graduate students. The topic was one of my very most favorites, 'Symbolism in Medieval/Renaissance/Baroque Art'. Oh yeah, right up my alley! It was fascinating research that I wish I could have done more of, and it was a terrific group of students and their professors, who asked great, thought-provoking questions, and had enough background art and history knowledge that it made for an excellent interaction.

I'm in the process of researching the answer to a question one of the students had that I was unable to answer -- which, by the way, do any of my readers/friends have any citations for the origin of the use of 'Madonna' to describe the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child? I can find a general answer -- that it probably originated with Italian Renaissance painters ('madonna' means 'my lady'), but I have nothing besides Wikipedia to cite, and I'd like to do better.

Wednesday night was a terrific lesson on Champ. I feel so much better about my jumping. We worked on one jump on a circle and practiced timing, position, and the canter lead change. I can't always get the change behind, but he does it pretty well up front. He was a good boy, though, and I showed Kathy his new skill of closing the ring gate when we leave. I say "Shut it, Champ" and he pushes the gate closed with his nose. Quarter Horses are so smart!

By early Thursday morning, things got interesting when I spent most of the night up with Noah, who we thought had a serious GI bug, poor kid. Lots of vomiting and a really high fever with chills. Yuck. Thankfully, Travis was able to stay home and help me. Wren went to riding camp in the morning, and I came home to take a nap after another museum tour for college students. Then I came home to find this beautiful scene in our living room.

Wren had a spectacular day at camp, and she was thrilled to get to see and ride one of the new ponies. She made no bones about the fact that paint ponies are her favorite and that she was going to buy one of the two of them as soon as possible. I told her she was going to have to be able to ride at the trot at least before we'd even think about buying a pony.

An uneventful evening was followed by a nail-biter of a Friday morning, in which Noah woke up seemingly worse -- fever, sore throat, headache, NECK PAIN, holy crap....any of those things without the neck pain, and I would have been less stressed, but when your five-year-old is whimpering and looks like hell, and won't bend his neck, AND had hallucinated a couple times during the night....well, thoughts start to bend toward meningitis. Especially when the supposed GI bug doesn't manifest itself like it was supposed to. And then you peek under the jammies and find a red rash all over the little body....needless to say, it was a bit of a scare. Travis took him straight to the pediatrician, although he wanted to go to the ER (I told him better to go thru the doc's office to avoid the all-day ER wait), and I gathered Wren up and took her to riding camp.

Waiting for the information from the doctor's office was hard. I tried to think of all the possibilities for his symptoms that didn't include viral or bacterial meningitis. And then I remembered that the only sure way to diagnose it would be with a lumbar puncture, and then I started wondering if my morning was going to include holding my child down while someone stuck a needle in his back. Ugh. By the time we got to the barn, I was kind of a mess. Thankfully, I got a text from Travis almost immediately, in which he said the doctor was positive it was strep. Oh! Thank GOD! The one possibility that never even entered my mind! Seriously, I have never been so happy to hear a strep diagnosis in my life.

Antibiotics, rest, comfy jammies, and lots of ice cream were today's priorities. He looks a little better now, but is definitely still sick, poor guy.

Travis and I feel like we have been hit by trucks and run through the wringer. I see a beer in my future, after the kids are in bed, and Kira has been delivered to her father.

Life IS an adventure, to be sure. Sometimes it would be nice if some of the adventures weren't so intense!

The weather is supposed to seriously improve in the next day or so....let's hope I can carve out some time to spend with Champ.

Winter Fun, and Also A Run

I finally got my ass in gear and ran for the first time in two weeks. It was raining, and I have run in the rain so much this winter that I just couldn't face going outside, so I ran on the (hated) treadmill (dreadmill). There is definitely something wrong with the calibration on the 'mill, because I know my pace really well, and there is NO WAY I only ran 2 miles in 31 minutes. Seriously. That's like a 14 min/mile pace. No. Way.

Anyway, I did it, yay, and now I feel like I did something good. If only I could stop mainlining carbohydrates, that would be an improvement.

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I took the kids ice skating on Monday, since there was no school. Kira used to take lessons, and of course I have been ice skating since I was a little girl, but the little kids had never been. We had a great time! It was a lucky thing I saved Kira's old figure skates, because one pair fit Wren, and the other, smaller pair actually fit Noah. I had my own skates from college, and Kira got rentals.

Noah was not sure about this skating thing, but Wren went right to it, especially after she found a friend from her school was there practicing her program.

Kira remembered how to skate, and she was off and having fun.

Halfway through the session, we got to watch the zamboni resurface the ice. Totally fascinating! And super-smooth ice afterward!

Back on the ice, Wren got brave and decided to go out sans buckets.

She really did well for her first try at it! Noah saw his sister try, and so HE had to try, too:

My boy is determined, but not as reckless as his sister. He liked to skate, but he did NOT like falling down.

Kira got a picture of me on the ice, and then we had to take a self-portrait.

We went home after about two hours of skating, and made soft pretzels, a winter school-holiday tradition. It was a fun afternoon, and we definitely want to go back!

Chihuly at the VMFA

Most of you know that I am a docent (a fancy word for 'tour guide') at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I've been doing this for a year so far, and I LOVE it. It's my most favorite thing I have ever done, I think. I only wish they paid me to do it.

One of the benefits is getting to see the traveling, banner exhibitions for free. I spent a bunch of time in the Egyptian mummy exhibit last fall, and I've seen the beautiful, breathtaking display of items from the period of Indian maharajas. This season, our museum has put on a huge exhibit of the work of Dale Chihuly. As an amateur glass artist, I adore any kind of glasswork, but especially glassblowing. Chihuly's work is stunning, bright, colorful, and imaginative, and this exhibit is a wonderful showcase. I especially love that he created a couple of works especially for installation at the VMFA -- the 'Blue Ridge Chandelier', and 'Red Reeds'. Really, I hope the museum purchases the chandelier, but I don't think there are any plans to do that, unfortunately.

My oldest daughter has wanted to see the exhibition since it opened last fall. Noah has been studying the artist and his colorful works in preschool over the past few weeks, and he was all excited about it. having been to the exhibit myself, I knew all three kids would love it, but what gave me serious pause was the fact that most of the works are easily within the grasp of the attendees, literally. You can get right up close and personal with his pieces. The thought of my young, active kids in a room with pretty-much-priceless glass art was a little unnerving.

But, I've had worse ideas. So I arranged tickets for yesterday, a school holiday.

The museum was PACKED. I guess everyone else had the same idea, because there was nothing in particular on the schedule that I could tell, besides a couple of tour groups. When I got the tickets last week, they said the options for tickets were wide open. This exhibit has timed-entrance tickets so there wouldn't be too many people in the gallery at one time, so I had to choose a time. I'm glad I picked 10:30, because by the time we left at noon, it was jammed!

This is what you see when you walk into the exhibit space:

And this:

My rudimentary photography skills aren't terrible, and my point and shoot camera is decent, but I could not even do justice the the depth and range of COLOR in this room. It was unbelievable.

On the wall opposite all of the magnificence was a collection of his paintings. They were much more muted in color, but full of shape and interesting texture. The kids pointed out their favorites. Wren chose "all of them" as her favorites.

After this part of the exhibit, you walked under one of his best works, as far as I'm concerned. It is the 'Persian Ceiling', and there is a HUGE one in the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. I've never been there, so I don't know what it looks like, beyond the photographs I've seen, but even the truncated version we have is stunning.

It's really cool to walk underneath all those pieces of glass, with the light pouring through them. It's kind of like being in a kaleidoscope!











We spotted a whole bunch of marine animals made in glass, like this starfish in the center of the photo:

More starfish, some urchins, and some squiggly cool-looking things:

And an octopus!

The light was just incredible in there!



We are so lucky to have this beautiful collection of artwork right here in our city. I could stand under that ceiling for hours -- in fact, I was thinking how cool it would be to lay down on the floor and look up at it all, and try to see the patterns, shapes, and objects he placed in there.

I think this is my favorite thing of all the pieces on exhibit.







After the Persian Ceiling, there was another huge room with his 'garden' of glass. His mother was a master horticulturist, and he did a lot of work inspired by her gardens. Another absolutely breathtaking display in here. There's just SO much to look at!

And a favorite of Kira's....the neon tumbleweed! This is an earlier work for Chihuly, and there is only the one in our exhibition, but it's still cool!

After we were done gazing at glass, I took the kids around to their favorite galleries -- the Gans silver collection, Africa, the Mellon Sporting Art collection, and ancient Egypt. Riding in the glass elevators is a particular source of joy for these guys!

On our way home, we stopped outside the cafe to see Chihuly's 'Red Reeds', the other installation he created specifically for the VMFA.

It was a terrific morning out with my kids, and I am so happy they could come and enjoy the artworks with me. Even better, I am so incredibly lucky to be able to be a part of all this fabulousness that is the VMFA. Becoming a docent there is about the best non-family related thing to happen to me in forever.

BTW, museum admission is free to the permanent collection, and the museum is open 365 days a year, from 10am to 5pm -- til 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays. The Chihuly exhibition closes on February 10th, so get your tickets and go see it!