The Great "Faery" Hunt

Okay, it was blisteringly hot today, and wild fires were raging.

Nevertheless, it was the summer's last scheduled show in Griffith Park of A FAERY HUNT (before it moves to venues a bit farther afield), so I drove clear across L.A. and up through Koreatown, into Los Feliz, and finally to Fern Dell, to take Thing 1 and Thing 2 to look for fairies.

Thing 2 insisted on going in costume, but that was no problem, thanks to a hand-me-down fairy outfit (thank you, Julia -- a going-into-third-grade, big girl friend who keeps Thing 2 in wonderful outfits). Thing 2 kept telling her brother the faery hunt was for girls, despite my continual attempts to dispel this notion. (Sure enough, there were boys in attendance, though Thing 2 later pointed out, "it was MOSTLY girls").

The "hunt" was really an interactive play with several stops along the way, guided by actors and actresses and even kid actors, in fairy and troll attire, and a couple of fairy "guides." The play had a plot of sorts, just enough for my kids to kinda/sorta follow (they were so busy looking at the costumes and face paint on the actors, they missed a few plot beats). And the actors were sufficiently convincing to the kids that Thing 2 asked me if the fairies lived in the park, though later she asked, "Were they real fairies, or dress-up fairies?"

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Ain't No Cure For The (Workin' Mom) Summertime Blues ...Till Next Week, Anyway

Here's the deal: Thing 1 and Thing 2 are free all week. Camp is over. School doesn't start for two and a half weeks. And they wanna play.

I don't wanna work. I just wanna ... no, not bang on the drum all day. But play with my kids, for sure.

Mama don't have that much vacation time, though. So here's what I did. I paid the nanny to play with my kids all day.

Somehow this is not what I had in mind ... not when I planned on a career in the movie business. Not when I had kids. But I want both -- and, in fact, need both -- can't afford not to have the career, and sure do love having kiddies. So this is my lot, and I gotta make it work.

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Date Night Pizza In The Theater Lobby: A Tale Of Two Desperate Parents

Once a month, the kids' preschool, which is part of a temple, hosts an event called "Parents' Night Out." For a reasonable fee, a bit less than it would cost you for a regular night of babysitting, you drop your wee ones at school in their PJs with their sleeping bags, and they're entertained with arts and crafts, toys, pizza, and a couple of movies. We usually persuade our kids to do this by calling it "Kids' Night Out," an idea I shamefully stole from another preschool mom (thank you, Christine).

So while you're kids are getting settled in for an exciting evening outside the confines of your home, you and your spouse escape into the fresh night air, grab some dinner, and if the movie theater gods align with your schedule, catch a movie. But the movie theater gods really do have to align, because unless your timing is well-nigh perfect, you won't have time to dine and watch -- remember, this isn't an open-ended evening, and you don't have the option of telling the sitter to come early or stay late.

Still, it's a chance to eat something out that isn't kid food, and look at your spouse and perhaps focus on what they're saying rather than getting your kids to eat what you've put in front of them without fighting or getting side-tracked into making up an entire song about dinosaur tushies. (Yes, that really happened, though in the car, rather than at dinner, but you get the idea. I bet you never thought about dinosaurs having tushies).

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The Great Big Move To Big Kid Beds

Thing 2 learned to climb out of her crib months before Thing 1.

But still, I managed to resist the move to a big kid bed.

Nearly two years after that first nocturnal escape, and many months after removing one side of each of the kids' cribs, so they could roam free, I finally decided it was time. They could probably have lasted another six months, a year at best. But they'd be pretty cramped by then, and I figured, why not change 'em over during the summer, so they wouldn't face sleep disruption mid-school year?

Then the question became, what kind of beds should we get?

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Once Upon A Mattress

You might remember a fairy tale from your childhood about a princess who could detect a pea at the bottom of a stack of mattresses, a feat so impressive it won her the hand of a handsome prince.

I had no idea, when I first decided it was time to get Big Kid Beds for my still-small kids, that I'd be as much of a princess as the princess in that story.

But lo and behold, buying a mattress for your kids, let alone an actual bed, isn't so easy.

Sure, there are a lot of mattress stores -- throw a rock in my L.A. neighborhood and you'll hit one. But thanks to a 2005 law meant to protect consumers, specifically very small consumers, every one of these mattress stores sells essentially the same thing: a mattress treated with toxic materials so it won't catch on fire.

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Almost A Vacation

Last year, the Memorial Day weekend "vacation" to Santa Barbara was, well, pretty much a disaster, as documented here.

A friend and father of three's comment was, "Now you know the difference between a vacation and a trip."

Ever since then, I've set the bar for my expectations of vacations with the kids pretty low. So this past 3-day July 4th weekend trip, to Newport Beach, was a pleasant surprise. I wouldn't exactly categorize it as a vacation ... I think that's years away for this family ... but there were moments when it actually felt like one.

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We Took 'Em Out To The Ball Game

It kinda felt like a Mastercard commercial -- you know, the ones that always end in "Priceless." Though you could easily substitute "Pricey." Much money was spent bewteen the tickets, the hot dogs, the lemonade, the peanuts (well, they didn't go for the peanuts, which required too much work and then didn't taste sufficiently like peanut butter), the frozen treats. But there we were at Dodger Stadium with our four-year-olds attending their very first major league baseball game, seated between home plate and first base, not exactly in a field box, but close enough for a pretty good view. The kids clutched Webkinz koala bears: the first 15,000 kids were handed the stuffed koalas upon entrance to the stadium, because it just happened to be Kid Appreciation Day. The National Anthem was sung by the crowd, hats on hearts, as an elementary school string ensemble sawed it out on violin (another nod to Kid Appreciation Day), the line-ups were announced, the players took the field, and baseball began. The kids were enthralled.

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