we went to "Stars on Ice" last night. there was one show, 8 pm. 1 full hour after bedtime. but just 1 show, and we knew ava would love it and be motivated, to say the least. she gets a lot out of watching the older girls, so why not let her see a gold medalist?

so, i told her she could go if she took a nap. unbelievably, she did. and she made it through the whole show, and all the way home, finally falling asleep at 11:30. holy moly. carter finally collapsed at the show around 9:30, which i figured he would do.

and it was worth it--ava barely moved a muscle for the 1st hour. carter was equally thunderstruck, though he did get a case of the squirmies eventually. the show itself was pretty good, though i could do without the hyped up rock-n-roll uber-sexy numbers. it really is not necessary--the most compelling pieces were the classical traditional skating routines. lots of tremendous skating and jumping and, in the case of the couples, tossing and hoisting the women to ridiculously dangerous heights.

however, based on some of ava's feedback, i believe the last half was essentially a total blur for her. we could have easily left at the intermission, but she would not hear of it.

the funniest part of the whole thing was that this was the first time in 3 years that i have been out in the evening. when ava was little little she went to bed later and we did manage to take her to some musical events, but when she started going to bed at 7 (october 2004), that stopped. so, last night was really werid. usually, at 6 pm, we are doing the nightime dishes-bath-teeth-pick up-jammies routine, and last night we were left with an eerily quiet hour during which we just waited to leave--finally at 7 we started towards lake placid. and i felt SO WEIRD. here i was, leaving home, to go OUT, when i usually am curling up with the kids to put them to sleep. i cannot explain how disconcerting it was. completely foreign. like i was doing something i should not be doing. part of me really wanted to go back home. and i told that part of me to stop being ridiculous. but clearly having kids has allowed me to tap into that part of me that is perfectly happy snuggled up in bed or on the couch at the end of the day, letting the rest of the world go get their squirmies out. i never was much of a nightlife person--much to the dismay of a friend in san francisco, who after a long monologue about how she needed to get out and RAGE!, she looked at me and with an exasperated sigh said "you don't rage, do you?" and i said no. i never really saw the point. however, i do love to go out to dinner. and i adore going to places that have lots of comfy fancy couches and mellow music and fancy drinks where you sit down and have some sort of interesting conversation, and i love to get dressed up, but 1. those loungy-type places simply do not exist here, 2. i have to eat dinner for the rest of my life--there will be the opportunity eventually, and 3. i have no time to do the requsite maintenance to be able to dress up convincingly--how people find time to file their nails, i'll never know.

so, what it all boils down to is that i don't go out. and i am fine with that, knowing that fancy dinners are in my future eventually. but last night was a testament to the fact that i should probably go out at least a few times a year, just to make sure i don't forget how.

and it was so neat once we got into lake placid--it was all decorated for christmas, and we might as well have taken the kids to 5th avenue, they were so amazed. i know ava felt extra special. carter was simply bewildered.

and on a totally different topic, the words keep coming fast and furious out of him. it is like a faucet finally got dislodged. and curiously, he struggles to make the sounds in some words, but can make the same sounds in other words. so (with the exception of the hard "c") he can make letter sounds, but sometimes cannot do it in the midst of a long word. the best part about it? his frustration level has diminished significantly. thank god.