Wanna Play Again?

Tradition! The holidays are full of it, and my family is no exception. In fact, my dad is probably more a proponent of it than most fathers. He merrily sings the opening song from Fiddler on the Roof and does a little dance any time we ask why he does, well, pretty much anything around the holidays.

We had many holiday parties with both sides of my family when I was younger. Most of the ones my parents hosted were for my dad's side, although my mom's family occasionally came over. But my mom tried to avoid that so she wouldn't have to stress out about my irresponsible cousins and their rambunctious children.

Most of the family events with my dad's family that I can remember at our house were summer cookout holidays, because my in-town aunt usually did Christmas. But even at the handful of fall/winter holidays that we hosted, dinner (and in the case of Christmas, presents!) was always followed by games.

Every family holiday gathering ended with my dad, my aunts, and my grandpa playing Cribbage. And attempting to explain it to my sister and me as kids. Every holiday my dad would try to explain it, we'd mostly understand, and until the next holiday we'd forget it again. To this day the only thing I remember is how to keep score.

It's been almost nine years since my grandfather died. I haven't seen anyone in my family take out the Cribbage set yet. Now our only playful tradition is working jigsaw puzzles during Christmas break.

My mom is a retired teacher and part-time tutor, so she always had a good, long Christmas break that coincided with mine while I was in school. We all loved puzzles, my mom probably the most of all, although I love it just about as much as she does now. My dad would get each of us (my mom, sister, and me) at least one puzzle, sometimes two, and all three of us would spend Christmas day in our pajamas, folding card table in the family room in front of the TV, and work puzzles all day while watching our favorite Christmas movies.

Now that I have my own family, we're still establishing our traditions. My son received more toys than anything else for his first birthday, so I'll bet at least some of ours will be centered around playing!


What are your family traditions? Does your family play any board games, card games, role-playing games, video games, or any games at all? Blog about it at PBN to win some awesome video games from Electronic Arts. Hurry! Contest ends at midnight.

"Whaddaya Say, Ya Wanna Play?"

My husband and I spend what is probably an inordinate amount of time in front of the television. We don't not let the baby watch TV, but we don't put on anything specifically for him, since he doesn't understand it yet. Well, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends waiting until your child is 2 years of age to let them watch. But the AAP also says not to cosleep with your child or put him to sleep on his belly before the age of 1 year, and I'm guilty of both.

We don't always agree on what to watch, either. We have a few shows we're both addicted to: Heroes, Eureka, Smallville . . . oh, and we love Mythbusters, too. Everything else is hit or miss. I like Project Runway, my husband prefers Top Chef. He loves to watch Deadliest Catch -- which I hate -- and I can't get enough of my guilty pleasure, What Not to Wear (and of course he can't stand that).

But one we do agree on is Cash Cab. He doesn't care for Jeopardy quite the way I do -- which is weird, because the shows aren't all that different. We're both pretty good at trivia, and fiercely competitive. You probably don't want to team up against us in Trivial Pursuit.

Ben Bailey's show was a hit with us from the very beginning. The questions are a little less intellectual than on Jeopardy, and a bit more general knowledge and pop-culture based -- although there is the occasional brain buster. And we love the Red Light Challenge questions! When we went to New York to visit my aunt-in-law, we secretly hoped we'd pick the Cash Cab one time. But it wasn't to be.

What's your favorite game show (or shows)? Head over to Parent Bloggers Network to read about some you may love, hate, or have forgotten about entirely. Then read about OlieBollen.com's Arm Chair Holiday Shopping Sweep. They have lots of great kids' products, and their sweep includes five free items around the site that you can get with any purchased item. Start your holiday shopping early!

Playing With String

One of the facets of my geekdom is my involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. Although I've been somewhat less active since I moved away from the group I started with, and certainly since the baby was born, it's still something I enjoy -- partly because there is so much to do within the Society.

Most of the activities I participated in involved "playing with string": knitting, embroidery, weaving, and different ways of braiding to make cords. I also crochet, but that's not strictly within the SCA guidelines because it was done after 1600 AD.

These skills really came in handy a few years ago, when I had no money (student loans are great until you run out of the leftovers at the end of the semester). I made hats and scarves for everyone on my gift list -- I got so good at the crocheted ones that by Christmas, I could make one, start to finish, in under two hours. While watching a holiday tv special.

I will more than likely be racking the right side of my brain again this year, with the exception for the gift exchange at my best friend's house. It's hard to know what to make for someone when you don't know who will be receiving it.

So tonight I'm finishing up this post so I can win a prize from Klutz -- anyone remember them? They make activity books for kids, including art and craft books. I'm always looking for fun craft ideas for the kids at my preschool, and then when my son gets a little older I'll share the books with him.

Plus, Parent Bloggers Network has teamed up with Klutz to get you free shipping when you order $50 or more through the link on this post. You also get a free copy of their award-winning Activity Book. That's a $14.95 book for free, people!

Anyone else planning on going the DIY route this year? Leave me a comment and tell me about your favorite homemade gifts -- given or received.

Everybody Wants to Be a Cat

Lately I've been missing my cat -- or to be more precise, my sister's cat. Charlene died in March this year while my parents were in the Dominican Republic celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.

We've always been cat people: my parents had two cats in the earlier stages of their relationship, Ginger and Twinkle (Ginger, the black "mutt" type, was so named because she and her brother Fred used to "dance," like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers). They also had a German shepherd named Heidi who was of less-than-average intelligence, even for a dog. She died before I was around, having eaten a raw chicken.

Since then, my parents have been cats-only, and my sister and I grew up with cats. Twinkle, the sweet, older-than-dirt seal point Siamese, was fairly tolerant of us as kids. Ginger hated us (well, we were kids; we wanted to hold and pet). They both passed when we were 7-8 and 5-6. Twinkle was 21.

Charlene and Snowpaws were giveaway kittens from my dad's route (he worked for the post office, delivering mail until he retired almost 5 years ago) -- someone who didn't spay their female cat. So my dad brought two replacement cats home in a cardboard box: Charlene, a skinny black cat who clearly had tiger stripes when she sat in the sun, and Snowpaws, her black-with-white-chest-and-feet, Maine Coon-looking brother. Snowpaws ran away after about three years. We put up signs and hoped and prayed, but eventually figured someone else was feeding him, because he never came back.

A few years later we got a chocolate-point apple-head Siamese, Coco Puff. Appleheads, as you can see from the photo, are built more like typical American Shorthairs, not super-skinny with angular features like wedgehead Siamese cats -- that's what Twinkle was.

So Sara and I grew up with mainly Charlene and Coco, who (like many cats) loved to sit in the windows. Even when it was cold, they still sat on the backs of chairs to get a good look at what was going on outside -- especially at the living room window in front. Charlene loved that window, and would sit there every year during Beggars' Night. It was really uncanny.

Once I moved out and into an apartment of my own with my (now) husband, I got cats of my own, Trouble and Tiger (you can probably guess what he looks like; I'll just say he's orange rather than grey). Adam even loves them. Well, really, he loves all kitties. He gets excited every time he sees one, even if it's ours that he sees every day.

But I've still come home to my childhood cats and they're still my cats. I even think of my sister-in-law's cat as somewhat my cat, because the in-laws are my family now too, and family cats belong to everyone in the family. Plus, Griffin loves me. (Then again, so do most of the strays in the neighborhood -- we have a ton of those. Must just be my animal magnetism. That and my secret desire to adopt them all.)

After Adam was born, I didn't cry much. I cried all the time when I was pregnant, and really I cried a lot even before that. I suffer from chronic clinical depression, and I've been on and off of medications for the past seven years. But somehow, after we brought the baby home from the hospital, I only expressed negative feelings with anger and frustration; I never cried. So when Charlene died, my sister cried for a whole week. Me? I cried when I found out that she died in her sleep. But then I didn't cry again. Not until I read a really sad blog.

Now Halloween is drawing closer once again. I've been thinking about how for 15 years, Charlene sat in that window, and I bragged to my friends that I had a cat content enough to be part of the decorations. I love my current cats, of course.

But I still miss my kitty.





This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by Burger King Corp. If you'd like to participate (and be entered for a chance to win a $250 VISA gift card!), write your own post about your pets by midnight tonight (Pacific Time). Click on the PBN link above for details.

Also, sorry for the depressing nature of this particular post. I promise my next post will be lighter.

Music Therapy

As previously mentioned, I am somewhat of a musician. I used to be more than that: in high school -- my busiest and most productive musical years, I was still taking piano lessons (which I ended up taking for a total of 13 years), I was in marching/concert band, pep band, and choir, and in my free time, I was teaching myself to play acoustic guitar, singing in the shower, and writing music of the sappy love song variety. A career in music was once the only kind of career I considered. More than anything, I wanted to be famous someday.

But then I went off to college and things changed. I sang in women's chorus (this picture was taken after our Christmas concert -- that's me, my grandmother, and my sister Sara), wrote one song, even played guitar in front of my theatre class for our stage fright project. But I never really immersed myself in it the way I had since I was too young to know better, and for the same reason I eventually left school, I left that part of my life -- maybe for good.

I have suffered from depression since I was 17. Back then I was able to combat it, or at least distract myself from it, with my hobby. When I graduated, I had no more busy schedule, no more routine, no more order. I fell apart.

I still battle with it, but sometimes I'm still able to forget about it for the time being. The smallest thing, like singing along to the radio in the car, can help lift my spirits for almost the whole day. And I'm not the only one who benefits: my son loves music of any kind, especially singing. My dad sometimes plays the guitar for him, and Adam just sits there, entranced.

When he gets a little older, we'll use music as a tool, for therapy, for memory, for entertainment. At now 10 months old, I'm still mostly singing to him just for fun. Working at a preschool helps me keep fresh songs in my head, like "Bringin' Home a Baby Bumblebee" and "Fudgie the Whale"*. And anytime Adam won't eat, I sing Raffi's "Apples and Bananas", which always makes him laugh; I just stick the spoon in his open mouth. :)

What songs do you like to sing to your kids, your partner, or to yourself?

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as an entry for a contest sponsored by Bush’s Beans.

*Here are the lyrics to "Fudgie the Whale" in case you're interested. I tried to find a link where you could actually hear the song, but the only one I found was a drunk Youtube video. Meh.

Oh, I'm a real big mammal,
I'm a great big whale.
I've got a chocolate head
And a chocolate tail.
I bought my car today
Because it was on sale.
And when they call for me,
They call me "Fudgie the Whale".
Fudgie... Fudgie... Fudgie the Whale!
Bop bop ba ba bop ba bop ba ba, yeah!