Piano Recital

Oh hello. Long time no blog. A little surprised to see a new entry?

Well, Everett and I have decided to put blogging on hold for now so that we can go out and live our lives. I mean, we're only 6 and 4 years old and we have a lot of living to do. But our hand was forced this weekend. You see, it was my first piano recital and a few family members had expressed interest in seeing my play. Good thing that the teachers were planning on live streaming the recital! Except that the live streaming didn't work.

So here I am to share a video of my piano recital. I placed Twinkle Variation.

I wasn't nervous about the recital until right before I had to take the stage. Then I got lots of butterflies in my tummy. I didn't want to go up there but Mommy told me I would be great. I wasn't so bad afterall.

This is what I think of the groundhog

This is what's forming outside. It's March 18th.

Skiing!

Phew! It's been a busy week. As you may have seen from Juno's blog, we've been busy taking over Northstar, hitting the slopes, hot tubbin' and skiing some more!

As you can see from Juno's pictures and videos, we all loved skiing. I actually took my first official lessons! Two days of them!!

Since I'm just a beginner, I had to stay towards the bottom part of the mountain. The main thing that I was working on was how to ski in a straight line. The first video is from my first day of lessons. The second video is from my second day of lessons. I'm getting better!

Then I got to ride the gondola up and explore mid-mountain with Daddy.

And look who we found!

Mommy was nice enough to give me a lift.

After a long day of skiing and a dip in the hot tub, we settled back into the condo for story time. And since Jasper can now read, he was the storyteller!

And apparently, he had a few more s'mores with Yee-Ma, Uncle James and Juno. Where was I?

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

I've discovered a new favorite book. I think that Jasper received it for Christmas but I've have claimed it as my own. I love it so much. I can even recite the first few pages!! My favorite part is telling Mommy about all the different color lightsabers.

What do you think? I'm working on my reading and attention span!

Swimming update - Everett edition

Jasper isn't the only one who takes swim classes around here...

Disney World!!!

As some of you know, a few weeks back, Mommy and Daddy had a big surprise for me and Everett - a trip to Disney World!!! We love Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, Pluto, Chip, Dale and all the characters from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and were so excited to go visit them at their home in Florida. 

So, last Sunday, we packed our bags and got on a plane super early and made our way to Orlando. We stayed at Animal Kingdom Lodge which is one of the newer resorts. But the coolest thing? It was like we were living in a zoo with giraffes, antelopes and other animals roaming around the property. 

We visited Magic Kingdom first and made a beeline to meet all of the characters. We rode some rides - Dumbo, Madhatter's Tea Party, Peter Pan's Flight, the carousel, racing cars - and ran all around. Mommy and Daddy even let us stay up past our bedtime and we returned at night to see the parade and Mickey, Minnie and Goofy light up Cinderella's castle. 

The next day, we visited Animal Kingdom and went on a safari and saw lots and lots of animals, dinosaurs and fishies. We went also went to see Finding Nemo - the Musical but only made it about halfway through the show because both Everett and I were scared. 

On the last day, we went to Downtown Disney to visit the largest Disney character store in the world. Mommy and Daddy promised us each one present for being good boys on the trip. Everett chose a pack of 8 mini dinosaurs and I chose a set of three Disney buses. 

Instead of boring you with a million posts on Disney or a super long post filled with pictures, Everett and I decided to put together a little video of some of the highlights from our trip. 

We had so much fun. Thank you Mommy and Daddy! When can we go back?

Good monster, bad monster

How we keep ourselves occupied when it's too cold to go outside...

Days of the week

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday... well, you can guess the rest...

Sleepyhead

It's hard for me to believe, but apparently when I was little (OK, OK, littler than I am now), I wasn't such a great sleeper. Hard to believe for you, too, right? Especially since I've become such a GREAT sleeper as I turned into a big boy.

I really do enjoy my sleep - both a solid night of sleep and a great nap each day. I think my breakthrough may have been when I realized that I sleep much, much better when I have something in my hand - and that something, as often as not, is a ball... Look, don't I look like I'm enjoying my sleep?

And what's that in my hand?

Yep, a bouncy ball!

Every night before I go to sleep I pick some object to hold in my hand, then once I have it, fall right asleep and then sleep right through the night. And of course the benefit of getting a good night's sleep is that I wake up rested and happy in the morning. Here, have a look -

MSNBC vs. FOX

Guess we'll find out who wins this water-gun fight tomorrow...

Another swimming update - part three

And finally, the forward crawl (aka, freestyle) - the full pull width!

Another swimming update - part two

The back stroke - I'm getting a hang of this one.

Another swimming update - in three parts...

Sorry, not much else going on around here post-Hurricane Sandy and post- Halloween...

So, let's start with the back float. Hey, did Frankie, my coach forget about me?!

One more hurricane day activity - video

Practicing counting - in English and Polish - and singing (just in English, for now...)

Independent Swimming Class

I've been taking swimming classes for a while now, but up until now, they have always been "Mommy and me" or "Daddy and me" classes, where either Mommy or Daddy came into the pool with me. But now that I'm a big boy, Mommy and Daddy decided that it's time for me to start "separation" classes, where I learn to swim independently with just the instructor in the pool with me.

I have a great swimming instructor, and she figured out very quickly how to get me to swim towards her...

Though I do admit that at the very beginning I was very apprehensive about this whole "separation" thing...

But by the end of the first class, I was happy again - even Frankie was impressed!

Gymnastics @ Naomi's

We recently went to our friend Naomi's (who happens to be the daughter of Mommy's good high school friend's daughter) birthday party, which was held at a great gymnastics center in Brooklyn.

After getting some initial instructions from the coaches...

And watching them do some gymnastics in front of us...

Everett and I couldn't wait to get in on the action...

Of course we stretched first...

And let the birthday girl have her turn... 

Then waited in line patiently for our turn...

But then once our turn did come, we took full advantage of the equipment and the chance to do some real gymnastics...

I think that by the end of the afternoon, we became pretty good little gymnasts, don't you?

Town pool

There's a great town pool in Montauk, and the best part is that most of the time it was practically empty and we had it almost to ourselves. There was both a baby pool, which Everett loved, and a regular depth pool, where Everett and I could both swim with Mommy and Daddy's supervision, and even Mommy and Daddy could do laps.

And if I do say so myself, my swimming came along quite a bit - what do you think?

I'm a Triceratops Pinata

OK, admittedly, Everett and I had a lot of fun at his birthday party over the weekend. In particular, we really enjoyed the pinata so we've devised a little game for ourselves. One of us will declare that we are a triceratops pinata and the other will go chasing after, trying to knock them open. Oh, and that thing that we're doing on the living room floor with the pillows? We're making pudding. Yeah, don't ask.

Have we mentioned the "Summer of Water" lately?

Because it definitely continued in Mystic... 

Mommy and Daddy were clever enough to book a hotel with an indoor pool (all the better for that one rainy day we had), and as you can imagine, we spent a considerable portion of our vacation in that pool...

And then warming up in the hottub between our marathon pool diving sessions...

And when the sun came out, The Dinosaur Place that we told you about wasn't all dinosaurs - it was also a waterpark! Now, we love all the new waterparks we have around our house in Brooklyn, but this one was a notch above all the others. We were excited from the moment we saw it! 

And spent the rest of our time at The Dinosaur Place taking advantage of just about every water feature available...

How much more time can we possibly spend in and around water this Summer?!

The Wrestler

I think Daddy is hoping that Everett will go to college on a wrestling scholarship...

But I know that this is just Everett's favorite way of expressing his affection for me! Can you feel the love?!