Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

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The ChickieNob has recently become obsessed with ballet, and when I say "obsessed" I mean that she spends a minimum of four hours a day reenacting famous poses (mostly just arm movements, which she calls port de bras, because I am not buying toe shoes for a five-year-old. I mean, I'll buy them for myself despite my lack of ballet training and the potential for a broken ankle, but not her), pirouetting around the living room, and wondering aloud how she will ever learn to do 32 fouette rond de jambe when she cannot even stay upright for one. This literally keeps her up at night. She has had to discuss ballet with me at 2 a.m. because she is just so worried that she will never become a principal dancer with the ABT.

We listen to a lot of Tchaikovsky (on CD--not on my Irish Penny Whistle). I gave her an old ballet program that I kept from 1985 and she pores over it, flicking her wrist like Martine Van Hamel or holding her leg behind her like Marianna Tcherkassky. She is in love with Angel Corella. This past weekend, she gave me a two hour performance of Swan Lake, mastering Odette's fearful expression when she sees Prince Sigfried for the first time and the traditional swan pose in Act Two:


She just turned five-years-old. Do yo think there is a possibility that we will be scoring free tickets to the ballet twenty years from now? Principal dancers must get a few free tickets to pass out to friends and family...right?

She is about to start ballet classes soon (yes, all of this and she hasn't taken a single ballet lesson). It's hard to hold onto your excitement for something when you enter into classes, having to keep pace with the rest of the group rather than sprint with your heart. I hope that she still peppers me with translating everything into French after ballet classes begin. It would be a shame if she lost this spirit.

On the other hand, she has never, ever kicked another child gleefully in the face during one of her performances. She does not know that joy yet and you can only get that by taking a class and getting on that stage. So much to learn, so much to learn.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

Please don't ask how the topic of Christmas came up in September, but it did and with it came out one of the truths--the only reason the twins want Christmas is for the cookies. "Cookies," I said, "we could make Rosh Hashanah cookies. Christmas doesn't have the monopoly on cookies."

"Could we do it tomorrow?" the ChickieNob asked. "Do you know how to make cookies like that?"

"Of course," I lied. And then I scurried downstairs to write my favourite Christian baker and begged her to save me. She sent me two recipes, wished me good luck, and sent me into the jaws of death--a Martha Stewart recipe--with only this advice: "you have to chill the shit out of it."

The cookies may have taken over our life--stretched from 8 a.m. until almost 4 p.m. in terms of construction and decorating (seriously, I don't know how Christian people do this year after year. Give me an unruly challah dough to braid any day of the week)--but the twins were so excited. And when we got to the end of the batch, their immediate question was which shapes we'd make tomorrow.

Er...

A recreation of Nietzsche's nothingness? Does Wilton make nihilist cookie cutters?

When the twins were 4 1/2, I started permitting them to use my cake decorating and candy equipment on their own with my supervision. I filled their pastry bags and folded their hand properly around it and then they went to town. In their early minutes, the cookies looked like this...


But they quickly moved into a stage I loving called sugar chaos...

While they were decorating those, I made a few pomegranate cookies with the leftover dough. An old friend bought the mold for me during treatments. Maybe it was a few months before we started treatments? She knew that pomegranates were a fertility symbol in Judaism and that I loved the shape. It felt nice to remember her while I pressed these.




What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

I thought that I should do something profound because it is 09-09-09, perhaps show nine items that were important to me when I was nine-years-old...except this idea only occurred to me on Tuesday night. So I give you the fact that I relish both the best and worst of the Beatles. Meaning, I relish the best:


And I relish the worst--I mean, relish it, roll around in it, watch it numerous times:

And like a mother, I love it all equally--differently, but equally. I love Eddie Murphy as the Fifth Beatle and I love street musicians in Jerusalem playing "Let it Be" on violins (fourteen-years-old, Saturday night on Ben Yehuda street--I still remember those street musicians and drinking hot lemonade at Cafe Atara), and I love "Free as a Bird" even though few others do.

Across the Universe is the epitome of terrible/wonderful Beatles--it's like Capri Sun. You know how as a kid you always wanted to have a Capri Sun in your lunch and then you'd get one for a special occasion and you'd drink it in one gulp and then you'd still be thirsty but endless happy? That's what watching the movie is like--you literally don't absorb it. You can watch it 14 times, play it in the background while you write Tash about the Beatles, and it literally doesn't stick with you for longer than 5 minutes. I love it. Love it.

A few days ago, Lindsay and I were talking about which Beatle we align with the most, which is a more interesting game than which Hogwart house you'd be placed in. She is definitely Paul-like in personality (or what you imagine his personality to be since you only know the public figure). As much as I am attracted to Johns, I am definitely not a John myself. I am so clearly a George, which is also fitting since one of my top 5 Beatles songs is "The Inner Light" (other 4: And Your Bird Can Sing, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, Here Comes the Sun, and Mother Nature's Son).

Which Beatle are you most like? And if your personality doesn't match with anyone in the band, what would you bring to the band personality-wise as the fifth Beatle?

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

I recently unpacked the Barbies from my childhood so we could use them. I not only have Barbie, Ken, and Skipper, but I also have the lesser known Scott, who was a roller skating friend who loved to wear muscle shirts.

This was one of my favourite outfits: one-piece leopard print clamdiggers:

This was an outfit Barbie wore when she had a date with my Andy Gibb doll:

Some of my favourite shirts and jackets for Ken:


What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

Lest you think I am the only person in the family with brilliant ideas, the ChickieNob and Wolvog dreamed up bringing a chocolate cake to Josh's office and having him write a mock-angry email to the staff asking who left a cake in the lounge because it was now crawling with worms--and decorating the cake with GUMMY WORMS TO FREAK THE SHIT OUT OF A BUNCH OF NON-PROFIT DO-GOODERS.

They were positively gleeful, dancing around the kitchen, imagining the surprise of the staff as they encountered what we dubbed the Worm Cake. They were so excited that they were turning into Ed Grimley, running back and forth in the kitchen, breathlessly describing the revulsion and horror that would rock Josh's workplace while...um...I did the majority of the baking. They were so busy running that no one helped me; the deliciousness of their trick was unbearable.

They did curl up two gummy worms underneath the pool of "watery dirt" (aka, Leah's chocolate icing. Go bother her for the recipe because it is so damn good) and placed a few crawling on the top. And this was their creation.


Except the horror show that was to happen was never to be because the ChickieNob got a turn of conscience right before bedtime and cried over the idea of people being freaked out in their offices because they thought there was an army of worms on the top floor. And she wanted me to call her father and make him promise that he would tell his coworkers the truth. That it wasn't dirt and worms despite the overwhelmingly realistic evidence in the eyes of a five-year-old. It was just chocolate cake with chocolate icing and gummy candy. It was breaking her heart to consider the alternative that almost was.

Instead, her new idea before she went to sleep was to somehow coax everyone into the hallway for a giant, five-minute dance party. Dream big, little girl. She went to bed muttering, "they're trying to work. But I want them to dance. They are trying to work. But it would be funny if they would just dance."

And I am willing to put down money that she figures it out--that she somehow gets everyone dancing in the hallway, if not at the same time like a Coke commercial, then for their own five minutes of enjoyment.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

Early in our relationship, Josh and I were in a used bookstore and we each purchased each other a book to read. I bought Josh Adam's Diary by Knut Faldbakken. For some inexplicable reason, this book has been by the front door for the past three years or so amongst the gardening equipment. This isn't the reason I'm telling you this story.

In college, I got special permission to take a high-level Scandinavian literature class. It was all graduate students and seniors and a nineteen-year-old me. The course work was really over my head. This was one of the books we read in class. One of the main characters was called Payk and it seemed like there was a joke surrounding this name, but I didn't get it because I didn't speak Norwegian and I was reading the book in translation, unlike some of the graduate students.

I called up a friend in Norway and asked him why this would be amusing. I kept saying aloud that the boy's name is Payk (pronouncing in "p'ache"--like ache, with a p in front of it), never spelling it, and my friend said, "well, I've heard Falkbakken is pretty racy. He probably created a name that is close to 'pikk' which means 'cock'."

I took this information to class.

And I made sure I spoke first in class in order to work in this brilliant assessment of his name. "And, of course," I said confidently, "Falkbakken continues the sexual themes of the book by working the word 'pikk' into the text in the form of Payk's name."

And there was silence.

And there were uncomfortable looks exchanged and a few people laughed and the teacher gently said, "the main character's name is pronounced "Pay Koa"--the two letters "p" and "k" with the Norwegian pronunciation of those letters. Because his name is actually Per Kristian. So PK or Pay-koa (also written Payk) is merely short for Per Kristian. And it would help if you didn't use words like that in my seminar again."

Classy!

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

One trip to the farm today = 4 rustic tarts: peach, raspberry, strawberry, and blueberry. Served with cream. This is how I spent my afternoon.

I am so in love with making pastry.




What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

I'd like you to meet our blackberry, Dr. Pangloss. This name was originally to be used for our future family guinea pig, but since we have not yet visited the humane society, we decided to use it for the blackberry Tarrant gave us at BlogHer.


The Wolvog had given me strict instructions to bring back electronics from BlogHer. This, of course, is easier said than done, but I entered myself to win a blackberry and three months of service from Sprint at the contributing editors party.

I waited anxiously for them to pull the names out of the hat. I mean, I waited anxiously. Ask Briar. I was anxious. I really wanted to be the cool mum who comes home with the electronics, like the cavewoman returning home from the hunt. I know some of you are currently rolling your eyes at the idea of handing over a blackberry to a not quite 5-year-old, but...he's really good at it. And it brings him such pleasure. Literally, you can see his whole posture change when he's using it because he knows he's good at it. His body conveys just how proud he is with himself and he will often try other things after his ego has been satiated through this venue. If it's important to him, it's important to me. And I wanted to be able to share a blackberry with him and have it be our special thing.

But my name was not called. Then, I felt a tap on my shoulder and Tarrant was standing behind me, holding out the box she won and said, "Denise told me to give this to you." I don't think I've ever been more floored. More knocked over. We took this picture, but I couldn't even really process what had happened until I got home and handed it over to him.

And you have never witnessed such pure joy.

So if you receive an email from me and it contains a bunch of gibberish and a few nouns, that is the Wolvog, just reaching out and communicating. One of the drawbacks to having all of your email addresses on auto-fill. It is, though, a nice way to see the world through his eyes. He takes the blackberry out of the holster, snaps a picture, and immediately sends it to 20 people along with a note:

dfgdfkjapsd v apple kia dlikjsoiuoiiiiiiiiiindjh apple apple dkjhku

Thank you, Dr. Pangloss, for providing a new way to bond with my child. Thank you, Sprint, for providing the service and blackberry. And thank you, Tarrant and Denise, for making his dreams come true.

If you did not see Tarrant read in the keynote at BlogHer, you should. The video doesn't capture the twirl she did walking on the stage which showed off her incredibly cool dress, but it does contain the post that made me cry backstage a few minutes before I was to go on.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid's dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let's begin.

Josh wanted me to make this my Show and Tell this week so much that he asked me twice and then edged the piece of paper into my line of vision three separate times. It finally ended up on my desk. I intended my Show and Tell to be a fantastic piece of junk mail that I received this week, but when I said that to Josh, he looked at me incredulously and said, "you're not making my score card your Show and Tell?"

I love this man. He flew me to Chicago so I wouldn't have to go alone, and let me squeeze all the blood out of his hand on the flight. He let me read that keynote piece while he was in the room. He deserves to have the majority of my Show and Tell space.

Josh wants you to know that he went to a Cubs game and the Cubs won and he scored the whole thing on his score card. And he was really damn cute about it.




What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog's name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.