Dear Employee #1:

Congratulations on your 10-year anniversary with the Company. We are very pleased with your progress this year. If we were in a position to give raises (if, in fact, you received any salary at all) we would certainly give you a nice big one. Instead, we will continue providing technical support and upgrades to existing equipment, such as figure skates and other footwear.

We wish to call attention to several indicators of progress in the most recent year:

• Seamless transition to new work team (Grade 4)
• Excellent protection of newly issued equipment: after braces were removed and retainer installed, no Dumpster diving was required
• Vision upgrade led to significant improvement in reading interest and performance
• Continued mentoring of Employee #2 with a great deal of patience and good humor
• Tested ability to compete in individual as well as team events with excellent results

In short, Employee #1: Way to go. Keep up the good work. (We must note that the mustache is not in compliance with our personnel policies, but we trust that is a temporary aberration.)

Love Best wishes,

The Management

One of my favorite pictures from recent ice skating adventures (this is the “Good Ship Lollipop” costume). (Yes, really. “Good Ship Lollipop.”) Jo was disappointed to have to do another year on the beginner level synchro team, but it has worked out for the best. She gets to be a leader among the other girls on the team, and the commitments for practices and competitions–not to mention costs!–are lower. She still has the time and the passion to pursue individual skating goals, and she wants to keep skating synchro next year too.

Although I confess we both hope she’ll jump up a notch to the next level–and leave Shirley Temple behind for good.

A brief summary of what we’ve been up to, in photos:

As Jo gets more serious about skating, I add new skills too. First it was the hair styling (actual email received a few weeks ago: “Please do not cut your skater’s hair until competition season is over. Bangs are especially hard to work with!”) and the fact that “if you’re not puking, you’re skating.” Then it was understanding how to buy ice time, via a contract with the figure skating club. For the record, my best bet was to buy 26 hours of time at once, calculated on a per-minute basis.

Most recently, I took a lesson how to be a music monitor during said ice time. Someone asked me “Is that like a DJ?” and I said yes, only without the turntables and those giant headphones. And also, cold. Basically, you sit in one of those boxes next to the ice and put CDs into the player. On the ice, 15 or so girls are either practicing individually or working one-on-one with a coach. They line up their CDs of program music and the monitor plays them, in order. Except sometimes, a coach comes in with a “pro call” and bumps to the front of the line. (There is a list of about 20 rules for music playing, so you can understand why I was totally nervous the first time). And then some other times, whichever skater whose turn it is doesn’t want their music after all. So between each CD, the monitor has to stick her head out of the box and bellow, “JULIA!” or “MADDIE!” or “KATIE!” once or ten times until the girl says Yes, please play my CD, or No, not now, thanks.

Related: Why is it kind of intimidating dealing with teenage girls? They are perfectly nice, but I did not like that bellowing part of the job.

Also related: Proper attire is essential for music monitors. This means fingerless gloves, and also apparently eyeglasses so you can realize that there are not one, but TWO space heaters in your little box, in case you would like to maybe turn them on?

Two pictures:

Two announcements:

“Wow, I did not expect the kindergartners to be SO small.” (This from the first grader.)

“The second day of school is always the best. Because it’s usually a Friday.” (Also the first grader. They are so wise.)

I. Yesterday morning Jo didn’t eat her cereal. When I asked her why, she said it smelled “like Little Dude’s cage and tasted funny.” Little Dude is the class mouse, who recently came to stay with us while his regular summer caretakers were on vacation.

(He only escaped from his rolly ball and almost got lost in our laundry room once!)

(Honestly? I kind of miss having him here. As long as you stayed downwind, it was fun to check in on him and see what he was doing. Usually, he was building himself burrows and hiding places with cedar shavings.)

(However, I was also relieved to see him go, because he’s at least two years old, and how long do pet mice live anyway?)

II. Opie made one of those paper cootie-catcher/fortune-tellers at camp. These are the fortunes in it:

• You will be a superstar.
• You are a superhero.
• You will have a trampoline.
• You will turn into a mouse.

People never cease to be amazed, or at least interested, in my children’s back-to-back birthdays. I think it’s cool, too–except, most years, the week when it’s actually happening. Then, it’s too much at one time (especially the year we had one birthday party on Saturday and one on Sunday). The to-do list grows and grows, and I worry that neither birthday gets the attention it deserves.

Then again, these two have never really known different. I think they enjoy those “oh wow!” responses too. They, knock wood, are pretty good at sharing, and that goes for special days too.

(And here’s one showing how it all began.)

(Look at that! His hair hasn’t changed in six years.)

Jo had her first skating competition on Saturday. Unfortunately, on Friday morning she woke up with a sore throat. She hates taking medicine of any kind (I blame the appendix). She muscled through school until noon dismissal and then an afternoon skating practice and collapsed into bed.

Saturday morning, she was feverish and felt even worse. I called her coach and said that she couldn’t come to the competition, even though she really wanted to. She choked down some Tylenol but refused to eat anything because it hurt too much to swallow. Then her coach called back and said “Is she puking? Because if she’s not, I really, really need her to come.” Instead of having to be at the rink from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., she could show up shortly before her team’s performance, and leave immediately after.

So I yanked that poor kid’s hair into a bun and wrapped her in a blanket and took her to the rink, where we stepped into a parallel universe. One where girls wear track suits and tons of makeup, and mothers sew fake hair onto their girls’ heads. (I mean they really had needles and thread. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? The end result looked so messy and ugly, too. They had their real hair pulled into buns and then all these extensions sticking out randomly from the bun.)

When my poor sick little kid took the ice it was all I could do not to cry. She not only got through the program, she remembered all the little details, like hand movements and facial expressions.

(No pictures because in the chaos, I forgot the camera.)

And her team came in fifth.

Oh well! We get to do it all again next month. At least at that event, Jeff and I don’t have to put in two hours of rink setup and three hours of traffic control (him) and five hours of selling hot dogs at the concession stand (me). We get to be the visiting team. Wish us health and luck.

Jo is eight and rushing headlong toward nine. For Christmas, along with a “mackbook” (no) and a “snugie” (also no) she has asked for an American Girl doll. It would be her second one.

I can justify the expense of the doll: She really does play with the one she already has, both alone and with friends who have their own dolls. This would be just about the only thing we’d buy for her this holiday. And Opie’s one big gift is actually a nice piece of BlogHer swag, so cost=$0.

If we don’t get her the doll, we’ll probably get something like an iPod  shuffle.

I’m leaning toward the doll because this is surely the last year she’ll ask for something like this. We have the rest of her life to buy MP3 players and gift cards and clothes.

But is it silly to buy something that she’ll love for a few months and probably forget about by next Christmas? WSSD?*

*What Should Santa Do?

Yesterday was Jo’s first performance with her skating team (I also wrote about this, briefly, over at the fitness site). Since she hasn’t taken dance since she was about three, I was/am totally unfamiliar with everything that goes into primping for this kind of performance.

Luckily I received a helpful email reminding me to buy/bring (and I quote):

• Brush
• Ponytail holders (5-6)
• Hairnets
• Hair gel
• Hair spray
• Hair clips the color of your child’s hair…bobby pins are not allowed

This scared me, a little. I also exchanged multiple phone calls and texts with another parent as we both tried to source the right kind and color of hairnets. We showed up yesterday with our little cosmetics bag full of this stuff and I wrestled my kid’s hair into a lame, sad-looking bun on the back of her head. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Then I got schooled in how to do it right (Maggie is going to love this…)

1. Glop up your child’s hair with a whole bunch of gel.

2. Brush the gel through her hair to create a very sleek, very smooth, very very high ponytail; secure with a hair elastic.

3. Thread the pony through a hair donut (it looks exactly like a mesh dish scrubber, in the shape of a doughnut).

4. Fan the hair from the pony over the donut to cover it. Spray the hell out of it with hair spray.

5. Place a hairnet (same color as the child’s hair! Please!) over the bun. Secure that with another elastic. The ends of the pony will still be sticking out all over in an alarming way.

6. Wrap those ends around the bun, tucking them in as you go.

7. Now put a (color-coordinated, natch) scrunchie around the bottom of the bun.

8. Spray it again. Also again. And a few more times for good measure.

Done! So easy!

That, plus makeup application and last-minute costume decisions, took only about 90 minutes of pre-show time. No wonder we had to show up three hours early! In the end, though, they looked totally cute and did a lovely job with their routine (in spite of Jo’s gasp of “We’re not ready!!” just a few days before, and the fact that a new girl joined the team on…Friday. For a Sunday show).

Next stop, a real competition with over eighty other teams. Eighty!