Do You Hear the Penguins Sing?

It has been a remarkable summer for the Penguin and Bunny Theater Troupe.  They have presented, under the direction of Bud, both The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, with a very short run of The Battle of the Penguins and Bunnies and selections from Wicked.    The performances take place in our living room, in front of the blue backdrop of Bud's comforter.  For Les Miz, Bud was especially creative with the sets, utilizing small wooden chairs in different positions for the barricade, bridge, sewers, and "Master of the House" tavern. The boat on the lake from Phantom, in "Music of the Night" (my favorite scene), was used here as the death cart.  (The mirror scene in Phantom was also great.)   Mama loved Smeak as the flag bearer in "One Day More," while I loved the little groundhog as Eponine.  Tango, who appeared as the Phantom, is Valjean here.  We look forward to the next production, though there do not seem to be plans in the works for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

The Penguin and Bunny Theater Troupe

Marius and Cosette sing a duet, with Eponine below

"One Day More," with Smeak waving the red flag

Summer Fun: First Full Day

Friday was our first full day of summer, if you count summer essentially as no school.  Bud woke up at his usual 6:30 a.m. weekend time, while Sis purposefully slept til 9 a.m.  I was in between.

Before Sis awoke, Bud practiced his "Penguin of the Opera," an idea we had the night before to have him stage the musical with our collection of stuffed animals.  And he did an amazing job.  Below, you'll see Amy the bunny as Christine and Tango as The Penguin, in the "Angel of Music" scene, first in the mirror and then in the boat on the lake, and then the "All I Ask of You" scene on the roof of the Paris Opera.  Besides taking these stills, Bud has been practicing some of the score on the piano.  We then spent midday watching the 25th Anniversary Phantom at the Royal Albert Hall.  It's a good thing we've purchased tickets to the Broadway production later this year!

I love how Bud took the picture so you only see The Penguin in the mirror, just like in the stage show.

The boat is an upside-down cat scratching apparatus; Bud ingenuously flipped it over.

[No Name] appears as Raoul

When Sis woke up, we headed outside to play, it being a beautiful (cool for June) day.  I even did some weed-eating while they planted some seed packets they received from church as part of Stepping Up.    We also had the first of our many summer picnics, this one from the deli, sitting under the Japanese maple out front.

We ran errands midday--deposit at the bank (with lollipops!), party foods from the big store (and two new books--one Lego, the other a crafting felt project), and then we headed to the Y to join as a family in order to swim!  Surprisingly, Bud didn't want to swim, but Sis did, in the deep end even, for about an hour.  We stopped for ice cream on the way home.

Evening was spent eating the lobster that Ma, Gong, and Goo got us in Maine, as well as prepping for their birthday party.  The theme was Doctor Who, minimally, since it was mainly an ice skating party.  But we did make inspired "TARDIS in the Time Vortex" cupcakes, complete with blue-gold-white swirl and tilted TARDIS on a toothpick!  Sis helped frost while Bud and Mama made the decorations.  I think they came out rather well:

The inspiration

Our creation

I had promised them a water fight and so, stripping off my good shoes, I snuck up on them while they were swinging and doused them with the hose.  They got me back, pretty well, since we have two hoses and they're faster.

And then it was pretty much bedtime.

A really good start to our summer fun, considering we can check off two or three things off our list!

(And look, no mention of computers!!)

Partying with a Penguin

We celebrated the kiddos' birthdays a little early yesterday with a special Penguin Encounter at Mystic Aquarium. We'd wanted to do this for years, since the kids were but toddlers and we could watch others up close and personal with the penguins from outside the Discovery Room.  Bud had been smiling for two days in anticipation; Sis, who prefers bunnies, was also excited about meeting a penguin.

Yesterday, it was our turn.  We sanitized our hands and disinfected our shoes and then took or places inside.    We were introduced to our penguin, Yellow Blue, a 17 year-old female African penguin.  She was relatively shy and didn't come towards us much.  Though, she did try to hide behind my skirts and pecked at the folds of it.  We knew to only touch her back, which was very soft; she was also very firm and strong--all 6 lbs of her (a lot like our cat Hermione in size, as well as color.)  While she wandered around, her handler told us all about penguins, their nesting habits, their environmental adaptations (like the bodily-temperature-controlling featherless eye-patches), and their training (they are taught certain behaviors to help with their own medical care), plus how they trained as penguin handlers.

We each also got a chance to sit next to the penguin and listen to her chest with a stethoscope, though only Sis heard anything.  She concentrated so hard, was so serious, as she examined Yellow Blue and petted her back and wing.  Bud grinned and glowed the entire time.  And Mama was so gentle and friendly, like she is with the cats.

It was a delightful hour of penguin-ness.  And a great way to celebrate two special kids.

A Weekend in Beantown

We just got back from a three-day weekend in Boston, a wonderful getaway for the whole family.  We're trying to take regular little family trips--the overnight in Times Square, the overnight in Hartford, and now two nights in Boston--to test my my abilities and, more importantly, to engage in new, fun, memorable family activities.  Beyond colonial history, marine biology, and Yankee cooking, we discovered a few things on this trip:

• Two nights and three days is, for now, our family limit for vacations, both because of my endurance but also because of the kids', too.  We discovered that I got tired right before they did (generally, after about 3 hours of sightseeing.)
• We realized that, in future, we should do our biggest, most involved activities the first day, because, regardless, we'll all be more tired the second day.  The second day is really a half day--the kids collapsed Sunday afternoon, which we weren't quite prepared for.
• Centrally-located hotels in cities are the ideal vacation because lots of activities are in walking distance and I can come and go from the room to rest as needed.  It also gives me quite a sense of accomplishment--for the first time in a year, I could actually go get a coffee  at Starbuck's when I wanted one!  And for me now, that's freedom.  (So, Boston, NYC, Hartford, Providence--3 hours is about my limit in the car for now, so maybe Philly later)
• Snacks are key.  We get hungry on different schedules and hunger really effects mood and behavior.  Especially because Sis is a much more particular eater and didn't like what we got for meals sometimes.  We should have carried more snacks.
• Breakfast in the hotel is so much easier.  And, in fact, the buffet at our hotel was actually a real high-point for the kids.  They woke up Monday morning and immediately began planning their breakfast choices, even before they got out of bed!
• I can take cabs and subways for short distances with little problem (about 5-10 minute rides)!  But this did give me the ability to go further and get back quickly and easily.  
• We should seek out the UU congregation wherever we go.  I went to church on Sunday and it was an eye-opening experience to be with another congregation.  Especially because this one was Unitarian Christian, a rare bird (esp. for me) indeed.
• Mama and I enjoy used bookstores, like the Brattle Book Shop, more than the kids do, but we still go--and have heavy bags to carry home afterwards!  We all like gift shops and end up with postcards, magnets, pin, patches, books, and t-shirts.  We also like picking up pamphlets for our scrapbook.  We try not to spend more time in the shop than the attraction, sometimes easier said than done!  And our usual allotment of spending money based on ticket price goes out the window on vacation sometimes.  
• Wherever we go, we seem to attract mild attention.  Of course, Sis had on an adorable fuzzy panda hat.  And Bud had on a knit penguin hat.  So, they're awfully cute, if I do say so myself.  But, even in same-sex-marriage-approving Massachusetts people--particularly bored people in restaurants--look at us repeatedly and talk about us and sometimes even gesture and think we don't notice.  But I do.  I know.  I can hear.  I can see.  Sometimes, I can read lips.  I know they are trying to guess if Mama is a man or a woman, usually deciding that she's my son (it happened twice on this trip alone.  That I know about directly because I was asked).  I know they wonder if these are "my" children, whatever that means (and never "ours," because they never guess that Mama is a parent, sometimes even after I've explained it).  I know they talk about the race of our kids, wondering how they became biracial (really, people, this is a question in 2012?  The president is biracial, for heaven's sake!).   I know they rarely realize that we are two lesbians with children.  I know because they aren't as subtle as they think they are.  If they had a real question, I'd be glad to answer it direcly--I'm all for teachable moments and I'm good at lesbian/biracial outreach, but usually they're just gossipy and can't think of anything else to discuss (Really, people?  In this day and age?  Luckily, with the ubiquity of cellphones at meals, perhaps this will become a thing of the past.  If I had a dollar for every table where no one talked and everyone surfed, I could've paid for all those meals!)  And the waitresses usually ask, or apologize awkwardly after they get it wrong.  And so we teach our kids not to comment, hypothesize, discuss, stare, talk about, or point at people, especially when we're bored in restaurants, unless they have a genuine question (kids do, sometimes, about wheelchairs or yarmulkes and such). Everyone has inherent worth and dignity; we don't need to talk about them.  Because we don't like it when they talk about us.

We loved our trip and the kids are already asking to go back.  I must admit to some prior prejudice against Boston, being more NYC-oriented.  But who, besides my kids, wouldn't love a place called Beantown?  I'd been there three times before, but none of them counted:  an overnight on a trip to Canada with Gommie and Uncle T when I was in high school (we arrived around 9 p.m. and left before 8 a.m.  We took a late-night driving tour of some of the sights, in a rush to get to the outlet malls in Freeport, ME and onto the family reunion in Trois Pistoles on the St. Lawrence!); a college trip for a fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, conference, which included for me visits to the Boston MFA, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Fogg but nothing colonial; and finally, a trip to lead a panel at the annual art historians' conference when the kids were just 6-months old, when we did follow the red line for just a bit, taking some pictures, and eating at Durgin Park, the kids' first restaurant meal--of oyster crackers!

This time, we did so much more:

Paul Revere:  Bud was very intent on Paul Revere this trip and I was interested in seeing his 17th-century house myself.  So, the first day, we walked to the North End, which is Boston's Little Italy or Arthur Avenue.  I heard more Italian there than anywhere else outside of Italy.  And there, nestled amid the gelaterias, pizzerias, and salumerias, was this preserved example of English medieval urban architecture, complete with overhanging second floor, casement windows, and shingled exterior.  Of course, it's an imagined version of the house, having been incorrectly restored in the early 20th-century, but it was wonderful to wander the four remnant rooms where Revere and his large family lived.  It was packed with tourists and a couple of indifferent (read: awful) guides.  But we still enjoyed seeing the starting point of the midnight ride.

From there we wandered to the Old North Church, where two lanterns hung signaling an approach by sea.  The lanterns are no longer there (supposedly one is in Concord).  It's a lovely Georgian church with enclosed pews, raised pulpit, and tower with bells that a modern bell guild was practicing on that day.  Bud enjoyed asking about the whereabouts of the lanterns and how exactly the signaler got inside the church at night (he was a verger, I believe) and how he got to the tower (through doors in the organ!).  And then we perused the book shop where th American Heritage chocolate people were given a demo and samples.  I like the historic chocolate blend even if my chocolate buddy Sis didn't.  

Bud finished his explorations of Revere by sitting in Revere's pew at King's Chapel and seeing where he was buried in the Granary Burying Ground.  Oh, and he posed for a picture near the iconic statue of the midnight ride.

Freedom Trail:  The red-brick line connecting historic sites has to be one of the best things any tourist district has ever done.  It makes navigating the narrow, winding streets of a confusing town so much easier.  And the kids took it quietly literally--Sis and Bud actually stuck to the red line as they led us around.  We saw most of the stops, if only for a bit, including

• Paul Revere's House
• Old North Church
• Fanueil Hall (closed for renovation--the NPS Visitor Center is moving; the NPS has a great shop and very knowledgeable Rangers) and Quincy Market (but really just to look at from the outside; we're not mall goers).
• King's Chapel and Burying Ground--now a Unitarian (Christian!) church, this chapel has a Revere bell and his pew, too.  Bud and Sis got to sit in it!  
• Granary Burying Ground--with Paul Revere's grave, as well as those of James Otis, the first woman off the Mayflower, and victims of the Massacre.
• Old South Meetinghouse
• Old State House--this was a delightful discovery, with numerous galleries geared to children's exploration of colonial history (a puzzle of the building, a timeline of history that you can mark with dates relevant to your own family, sniff bottles of the scents of Boston, a clock like the one in the tower that you can wind, life-size versions of the Unicorn and Lion on the exterior) and a special heraldry activity the day we visited.
• Sites of the Old Corner Bookstore and Boston Latin School

Omni Parker House:  The centrally-located home of Boston Cream Pie and Parker House rolls was our base for the trip.  I could get very used to staying in historic hotels!  I loved the grand lobby, all the history (Dickens stayed there often--the mirror he practiced his characters in for his dramatic readings was outside the restrooms!), and the attentive service.  The kids even got cookies and milk the first night!  The location was grand, too.  The kids liked our corner suite, named after Boston Massacre victim, Crispus Attucks.  And the breakfast buffet!  Sis got Parker House rolls both days and Bud had salmon.  Both wolfed down bacon and sausage.  On our last morning there, I spotted a couple of kids with hot chocolates in tall mugs with mountains of whipped cream, reminding me of a childhood trip to the Marriott in New Orleans when I was about their age--I got hot chocolate in a tall mug with a mountain of whipped cream several times on that trip. And it tasted just the same in Boston!  Sometimes you can go back. 

Eating Out:  Mercy, we love eating out.  And we did quite a bit of it this trip, including:

• Galeria Umberto--incredible Sicilian pizza in a nondescript building in the North End, where they serve big squares, plus arancini and a few other things, only until the dough runs out; we made it just in time!
• Mike's Pastry--another North End stop, this time for cannoli, biscotti, a little gelato, and oddly a huge pasty called a lobster, with a deep fried layered shell surrounding a mix of ricotta, yellow cream, and whipped cream.  We munched on these for a few days.
• Wagamama--Mama and I had eaten at a branch of this Japanese noodle shop in Covent Garden, London, of all places.  The kids loved it--ramen, soba, gyoza, rice--yum.  
• Durgin Park--"Yankee cooking" and incredibly indifferent service, but Bud helped Mama crack a lobster, shuck clams, and devour clam chowder, too.  We also had chicken pot pie, pot roast, fish and chips, baked beans, Indian  pudding, and apple pandowdy.  But, the food is traditional and now it's a family tradition, too--we looked at pictures of Sis and Bud's first trip to Boston here.  They were such chub-a-lubs.  
• Union Oyster House--more historic "Yankee cooking" in an even more historic building (a la Daniel Webster and later JFK).  We had pretty much the same foods--clam chowder, fish and chips, baked beans, Indian pudding, but also oyster stew, "lazy man's lobster," and chicken fingers.  Yep, poor girl had suffered through enough food she didn't like and devoured her usual favorites.  While we were there, the "Ancient and Honorables," America's oldest milita, were meeting in their full dress uniforms (I thought they might be the fire department brass!).  And the kids got to touch a lobster, too.

The Aquarium:  Penguins!  Rockhopper.  African.  Little Blue Fairy.  I'm not sure there's much else to say. Sis and Bud spent four hours exploring marine life with Mama (and me for the first two hours)--there were sea dragons (literally, they look like little dragons), fur seals, jelly fish, turtles, sharks, a sting-ray tank, touch-tanks with horseshoe crabs and hermits, a tidal pool with programmable crashing wave, a tank where you can change the current and watch the fish turn around.  And an IMAX (with "cuddle fish").  But really, the best part was the penguins.

King's Chapel:  Sunday morning found me, quite unexpectedly, arriving back from a few hours at the aquarium just as service started.  Who could resist the opportunity to worship at a 17th-century church that holds Unitarian services (because all the good Church of England parishioners died or left during the war!)?  It was like no service I've ever been to, even the mainline Protestant and also Catholic services of my childhood.  But it was grand!  The ushers were friendly when they learned I was a UU, too, finding a nice enclosed pew for me in back.  But I was like a fish out of water. Where was the Living Traditions hymnal?  What was with the Bible and Book of Common Prayer (specifically for King's Chapel) and a different hymnal?  And the service had more Latin in it than I heard at the Vatican!  Magnificat.  Jubilate Deo. Plus readings from the Old and New Testaments and prayers said while kneeling.  And  the reciting of the Our Father, which, believe it or not, I actually know from my days at the Southern Baptist church (though I never know if we're gonna have sins or   trespasses.)  The sermon--remarkably, the church is led by a woman--combined the readings, references to smartphones, a short story about her family's connection to the Underground Railway, and the quote about Naomi and Ruth "whither thou goest, I will go"--thoroughly enjoyable (though way too biblical for me--the connections to the readings were forced and not fleshed out).  The most marvelous part was the music--the organ and the angelic choir in the loft.  I could just imagine Paul Revere and his compatriots, Louisa May Alcott and hers, praying, listening, singing there.  And I didn't mind the formal prayers so much, enjoying the wordy structure, finding even one of them quite touching.  I'm not nearly a UU Christian, but I'd go to services there again.  Even if they teased me about being "mainstream UU."  Now, isn't that an oxymoron?

The Ducks:  I didn't make it on the journey through Boston Common, with stops at the Robert Gould Shaw memorial (the Unitarian who led the African American troops in the Civil War; you know, from Glory) and another Civil War memorial.  And of course, the Make Way for Ducklings statue of Mama duck and ducklings and the nearby island in the pond.  No water in the pond, no ducks, no floating swan boats, but the kids were thrilled anyway.  Someone had even dressed the ducks up, tying red ribbons on their necks!

Transportation:  Bud kept asking us if he could ride a city bus or the "T."  Such a suburban kid!  So we took the subway to the aquarium, though it was close enough to walk.  And then later we took a cab home from lunch.  The bonus?  I could get places without walking, thereby extending the circle of my explorations.  Yep, I SAT in a cab, on one side, for about five minutes.  

Isabella Stewart Gardner:  Our last Boston stop was at the art museum.  I chose the Gardner over the Boston MFA because the ornate palazzo chock-full of objets c'art is such a memorable place.  Especially with the empty frames indicating the Vermeer and Rembrandts and Degas and Manets stolen in 1990.  The kids got to do two art activities here--one crown- and shield-making craft while we waited a bit to get in (they recently reopened after a renovation and the place was packed!  They were also completely unprepared with only two ticket sellers.  And even with the timed tickets, which no one told you about until you reached the front, they were letting way too many people in for it to be entirely enjoyable.  Plus the bathroom arrangement is ridiculous--one stall on the main floor with no indication of the much larger bathrooms downstairs.  A silly oversight in a brand new building, which was all glass with pretty gardens outside but not enough space inside.) and then an engraved foil square that they made in the famed courtyard.  We walked through all the rooms, perfect examples of horror vacui, with Italian, Spanish, Chinese, French, and other paintings, sculpture, furniture, drawings, engravings, dec arts, architectural fragments, stained glass.  Plus a few paintings of Gardner herself.  We didn't bother with the new wing and the shop was an utter disappointment with extremely overpriced handmade knick knacks unrelated to the collection.  And only a few postcards.  Still, the kids won't soon forget it--the place has amazing art and ambiance.   

So now we have clothes to wash, postcards to write, souvenirs to put and give away.  And almost a whole week of winter break to rest, relax, and enjoy.