Great Wolf Lodge

Taking the kids to Great Wolf Lodge for New Year's was a blast! Here are a few little things I would suggest for the next trip:

1) Bring flip flops. If you are staying overnight, all the waterpark fun is included, and there's enough to keep you busy for days! The waterpark is hilarious and fun, but even if you're just walking through it, you might end up with wet feet. I also brought water shoes for my little guys. They aren't a necessity, but it makes watching your toddler climb his way through the shallow kids' pool like an adventurer look even cuter =)

2) Speaking of water, bring a water bottle, Starbucks tumbler, Shakeology thermos or other capped container. Your kids will ask for water at least a million times, and rather than carry around an open plastic cup, be prepared. You can fill up at any of the dispensers with water, or you can purchase a themed one for $12.99 and fill it with soda for the duration of your stay. Ugh. Fortunately, there's a Dunks onsite.

3) If you are going to be there for more than a few days, get the Passes (I got a Paw for Emerson and a Pup for John Sawyer - they're divided by age). They give you pretty good deals on the things you'll see around the Lodge, such as snacks, candy, and the stuffed animals from "Creation Station" that look just like (and fit into the same clothes as) the ones you'd find at Build-a-Bear. Checking the items off the list can be really fun, the kids love all the treats, and it's a fun way to spend time.

4) MagiQuest - This a fun and interactive wand-waving adventure where the kids wave their wand at screens located throughout the Lodge to gain points and uncover jewels. IT IS ALSO A MAJOR TIME SUCK. So if you have a little one who doesn't want to swim - or you don't feel like spending a fortune in the arcade - this is the way to go. Just know it will eat up a few hours because you're walking all over the Lodge to find the Magic Pixie Pool's secrets. The wand comes with the Paw Pass, but the additional doodads that make the wand do extra-cool stuff costs extra....which leads us to...

5) Bring lots of money. The Lodge is a cross between Chuck E. Cheese and Disney. The food is expensive and not super (although the burgers at the Lodge Wood Fired Grille and the pizza at Hungry as a Wolf were excellent) and many of the activities are not included in the price of your stay, such as the video games, mani-pedi's at Scooops and other activities in the Northern Lights Arcade, Howlin' Timbers Play Park (which has toddler rides, mini golf, Ten Paw Bowling Alley, and the Howler's Peak Ropes Course). Knowing this ahead of time can let you plan which areas to hang out in, or to avoid.

Have a great stay!

My Starter Kit

One of the most exciting days for Austin seniors is the day the yearbooks arrive; the students and staff are always excited to see the Omega, and since much of our student body is with us from grade six (affectionately nicknamed "the lifers") the students page through with good-natured groans at the images of their younger selves, while simultaneously loving their recent snaps. They usually enter one of their teachers' rooms in large groups, to settle in and leaf through their copies, and while initially the conversation is boisterous and hearty ("Dude, your sixth-grade hair? You have a mushroom!" "Ahhh, look at my semi date? Ewww!") within minutes, a hush falls over the room, and they get lost in nostalgia. 

Sometimes, their reveries are interrupted by each others' questions ("Who was that girl at the prom with the crazy dress?") but this year, while looking through my copy, I did the interrupting. I had stumbled on a slang term I'd never heard before.

"What's a 'starter kit'?" I asked my seniors.
"It's the things that make you, you," replies one of my most laid-back seniors, a tall gentleman who would continually enter my classroom with a lazy "Hey girl" to me, despite my repeated suggestions that he discontinue the practice. "Like yours, Ms. P? Yours would definitely have a giant Starbucks green iced tea," he replied.
"A copy of The Great Gatsby, obviously," his friend intoned.
"Dance stuff," chimed in another.
"High heels, French manicures and makeup," from a senior who, perplexingly, slept through most of my classes. Guess she had one eye open for fashion.
"Pretty stationery and good pens," piped in a blonde girl.

And it was enlightening, to see the way kids saw the pieces of what "made" me, me. The little necessary outward things that defined who I am, or at the very least, who they thought I was. It made me think: what are the things that truly make me, me? That make me feel alive? That intrinsically make me feel grounded, yet light? 



There are so many things I love to do: spending time with my kids is at the top of the list. But being a mom is draining, and sometimes my "mom" definition simply isn't enough. I am not a better mom when I don't have time to dance, read, put on some lipstick and write a long-overdue thank-you. And sometimes those pieces get lost, because I am busy "putting the kids first," or feeling supremely guilty if I don't! For example, I love to dance, and while I have been teaching it non-stop for the last 22 years at Austin, I rarely get to an actual class for myself. Lots of my inspiration comes from videos that I watch on my iPad late at night, or from organic choreography sessions with my seniors. My personal dance has been limited, and I realized it was making me sad to lose that part of myself. This summer, I vow to take my 44-year-old self to class, and to reclaim a part of me that has long since been asleep. 

Let's hope Tylenol and muscle relaxers don't become part of my new starter kit.

(UPDATE August 10: I have made it to nearly two weeks of classes. My flexibility is a faint shadow of itself, yet I love every minute of my class. There are some familiar faces and some fun new connections. The choreography is as cool as ever. And I? I am loving my time being myself again.)

Visions of Sugarplums, or Because Ballet

My earliest memories take place inside a dance studio; it is where I spent the majority of my childhood, it's where I learned the value of hard work, discipline, limits, and successes. So it was no surprise to anyone that the joy in my heart to find I was expecting a daughter was immediately paired with a vision of a little girl in a tutu. And, eighteen months after she was born, Emerson was in her first recital, and she's been dancing ever since.

My hope was that my daughter would love dance as I did, not only because it was something we could share, but because I knew the beauty and artistry of dance would affect her whole life, as it did mine. From dancing school recitals at the John Hancock Hall to national competitions, from dance companies to starting a dance program at Austin, I have loved it all. Here's a fact: I have been dancing or teaching dance for all but three of my 44 years, and I continue to love it in new ways each year.

But there is a fondness in my heart for the holiday season and the Nutcracker that is beyond description. As a child, I danced in the Boston Ballet's Nutcracker, and while my time there was equally exhilarating and exhausting, the memories are as familiar and comfortable as a broken-in pair of pointe shoes, and ones I am not likely to forget. All of it - the intricate maze of tunnels under the Wang Center stage itself (the Ballet now calls the Opera House their home), the giant costume closets, the enormous practice rooms for the principals and company members, the fleeting glances into the dressing rooms of the ballet royalty  -  was like stepping into a fantasy world. If I close my eyes, I can still remember the excitement of standing in the wings, trembling next to such legends as Elaine Bauer and Laura Young, who, in my twelve-year-old eyes, were like angels on earth. It was a precious, special time, and one I was looking forward to sharing with my own little dancer.

Since her earliest days, I'd taken her to Nutcracker productions, including the one I choreograph at Austin. I have photos of her as plump as a little jelly donut, sitting among rows of my ballerinas in their sparkly tutus. Needless to say, when the opportunity arose for Emerson to audition for a local production of The Nutcracker, my heart leapt. We chose the perfect leotard, I pinned her hair into twin buns, gave her a big kiss and sent my six-year-old on the first dance audition of her life. And she made it. She was selected for her dream role: a mouse.

Naturally, we were thrilled beyond belief. The rehearsal schedule fit perfectly into my own Nutcracker rehearsals, and Em skipped off to practice with a smile. And then came the updates:

"Mommy, we got our places today, I'm Mouse 5!...Did you know that we are very important because we fight the Nutcracker and almost win?...I get to drag off the Mouse that gets shot because I'm really strong...Did you know I get to stand near the Mouse King in the wings?...We have to be very quiet when we are backstage because we have to be professionals...Mommy, will you be in the audience for all my performances? Mommy, next year, can I do it again? I want to be a Cherub. And then a Party Girl. And then Clara."

And so it went. My little Mouse was amazing, and I watched every performance with tears in my eyes; not only for the gift I have been given in having a daughter, but in having one with whom I can share some of the things I love. I am not certain whether her love for dance will be as encompassing as mine; she will grow and change and develop her own directions (followed by her own little brother who wants to do everything she does - her own Fritz, if you will) and I will applaud everything she does, onstage or off. 

But for now, my little girl has visions of sugarplums dancing in her head, and my heart is filled with love and gratitude in a million different ways. 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

The Way We Were

Teaching in a high school gives me a rare perspective of aging; I can see where I've been, when I am going, and often, I get a glimpse of what I must look like to my students. A few years ago, one of my female students rolled her eyes at me and said, "Ms. P, you have NO idea what it's like to be a kid." And while a piece of me secretly congratulated myself on appearing so together that this student thought I was a mature, well-adjusted adult (HA - she didn't see the package of Swedish Fish I was planning to eat for breakfast in my purse) another piece of me looked back at my high school days and the way things seemed back then, and the images we all project now.

I was lucky. For some, high school is a battlefield, one whose scars last longer than the battle itself. But I loved high school. I loved my friends, I loved being a cheerleader, I loved finding my way through those years with a combination of teenage trepidation and bravado. I loved taking my first steps into adulthood and falling flat on my face (literally and figuratively - I tripped down the stairs and fell on my chin in front of my football player crush. Well, one of them.) As an only child, I loved the closeness of our class, and the way my friends became family. I would like to think I was kind and fair most of the time, though I know I wasn't always, but whether running from the cops at Florence Park, swaying on the gym floor at one of the dances, cheering on the sidelines, or navigating our first heartbreaks and heals, we seemed to have fun all the time. 

Going to my reunion last night was as fun and exciting as high school was, and connecting (or re-connecting) felt easy and fun. The faces looked the same (although the nametags helped!), and warmth and hilarity was still underlying most of the conversations. As kids, 25 years ago, there was no way to tell that we would still be friends, or even want to, but as the night wore on, we broke off into groups, shared stories, reminisced, moved around and started all over again. There were tears of laughter, old jokes revisited, and photos taken again and again. Sure, parenthood and life in general had changed us, but not in the ways that mattered; we still have a lot to laugh about. And what stories we'll have to share with our kids - if they are lucky.

Being Saved

In a prior post, I had written about losing my students, and about the effect it has had on me as a teacher. Imagine a chance to get a piece of one of them back.

Let me start with an admission: I have hoarding tendencies. I am extremely sentimental, so the treasures my students give me for holidays, birthdays, or end-of-the-year gifts are extremely precious. Not only do they mark a sweet and specific time in their lives, but they also hallmark milestones in my early teaching career. When I was hoping beyond hope that I was reaching my students, it was wondrous  to receive a gift like the sweet shell my students painted on vacation to give to their "favorite teacher." Or the 7th grade baseball trophy with "Your (sp) the best teacher ever" taped over its base. These treasures are priceless in every way.

That being said, after a 20 year a career, I have been blessed with multitudes of cards, letters, books, and little treasures. I want to keep every one of them, and I have managed to do so fairly effectively.

I usually try to purge at the end of the year, while my students are industriously engaged in their exams, and I can sort through the materials I've collected, and no longer need. Last year I parted with volumes of potential textbooks that I received during my tenure as an Adjunct Professor at Bentley; yes, I had saved them merely because they were addressed to "Professor Pascucci" (and yes, purists, I realize I am not a true professor…yet).

But this year at Austin, there was a bit of an upheaval over the summer; the new construction and division of some of the classrooms resulted in a great deal of old things being removed from the building. Though I wasn't directly affected, my classroom got a new floor (and, thankfully, the rug that looked like the setting of multiple crime scenes was finally removed) and my enormous locked cabinet in my closet-free classroom was moved twice, and the contents threatened to explode into my new, pristine room.

So, during a particularly blue day, I decided to sort through some of the videotapes (!) that I had stored in there. And my breath caught.

For in a boyish, seventh-grade scrawl, I saw the name Steve Baxter. Steve was one of my bright, brilliant students with deep intelligence, dry humor and wit and sharp sarcasm. He loved words and writing; he was lyrical and natural and honest and artistic in everything he wrote. He was also gone from this life far too soon. And now I had a piece of him. And I had to share it with his family.

A quick scroll on Facebook yielded his mother's name, and a visit to the White Pages gave me her number. Terrified but determined, I placed the call, and when her machine picked up, I said something like this, which was what I left as her Facebook message: Hello, Mrs. Baxter,
I was Steven's English teacher at Austin Prep years ago; I still teach at Austin, and I found a video Steven and his friends made in grade 7. While the quality isn't super clear, Steven is behind the camera as well as in front of it, and I thought you would like to have it. Please contact me at your convenience at (xxx) xxx-xxxx.
Marla Pascucci-Byrne

Within an hour, she had called me, and was on her way to meet me at school. We embraced in the doorway and reminisced about her beautiful son. She gave me the advice to "enjoy my beautiful children" before she left to bring the video to Steve's father, as today was his father's birthday, and they planned to watch it together. 

In a confluence of chance and clutter, I had made someone's day better, and, at the risk of sounding trite (which wouldn't honor that bright, beautiful student of mine) maybe the things we save can save us.

The War of the Words

As a lover of words and language, I actually enjoy ferreting out the perfect and proper words for any situation. And though I have little in common with Jonas' mother from The Giver, I know I have said "Precision of language, please!" to my students many, many times. When my friends tell me I'm articulate and eloquent, I feel like it's the highest praise. But this is one of those times when words are escaping me, and the complexity of their usage is leaving me confused. 

What's the correct word for feeling both blessed and overwhelmed? For feeling happy and sad at the same time? For feeling blessed with not one, not two, but three jobs I love (motherhood, teaching, and teaching dance) and sometimes, they all drive me crazy? Some days, I feel like I can decompress - but what's the difference between decompression and depression?

There are a million blogs and articles that outline the roller coaster of motherhood: the incredible highs, the crushing lows, and all the minutiae in between. But what about the flashing speed with which things change? What is it called when your day swoops and whooshes, and sometimes crashes? Then there's a peaceful lull…until the next turn? You can practically hear the clattering of the car as it click-click-clicks up the incline.

At the risk of sounding overly metaphorical (who, me?) I will offer some real-life verbal snapshots that all happened in one day, and maybe you can make something out of them:

• The window I thoughtfully left open for cool air turned my bedroom into a freezer.
• The sweet son who breaks into a run to hug me when I come home became a needy koala  encircling my neck. He will not allow me to put him down, and literally curls up his feet and howls when I try to put him on any surface.
• My darling daughter makes me a beautiful picture with markers. It's heartfelt and detailed and precious - and in Sharpie marker that has seeped through to the couch.
• The skinny jeans I was so happy to fit into are now too big at the waist and are continually snaking down my hips. While this is a positive thing, it means I spend more time hitching up my jeans than a cowboy. I have not the time, money nor energy to purchase new ones at this point. Yee-haw. 

This isn't the first time that I have had a tough time finding a word to ; when I was pregnant with my son, my husband called to ask what he should pick up from the store. The exchange went like this:

          "So what do you need, Marls?"

          "Um, you know, the stuff? For the morning?"

          "No, can you be more specific?" 

          "You know, the stuff that you put on the thing…(gesturing pouring with one hand while holding the cell in the other)"

          "I honestly have no idea what you are talking about."

          "The STUFF, Pete! It's white? You put it on the cereal!"

          "Um, (chuckle) 'milk'?"

          "Yes."

I have a degree in Linguistics, but trying to come up with the word "milk" was like trying to pick up an ancient, crumbling file from a dusty file cabinet. I'll blame baby-brain for that incident.

Fortunately, my word-blockage isn't contagious. In fact, while I seem to be at a loss for words (or at least the correct ones), John Sawyer's long-awaited "language explosion" is taking place; he is stringing words and ideas together faster than he ever has before, and they happen to be hilarious. The other day, after I had smooched on his rosy cheeks, I told him, "John John, you're delicious!"

          "No, YOU de-la-la, Mama!"

          "John John, YOU'RE de-li-cious!

          "Mama, YOU de-la-la!"

And on it went. Two days later, out of the blue, while driving in the car, I heard his little voice peep up.

          "Mama?"

          "Yes, buddy?"

        "YOU de-la-la!" followed by fits of baby laughter, which might be the sweetest sound in the world.

So maybe the answer is a word I haven't learned yet. Maybe it's not paradox, parallel, dichotomy or contradiction. Maybe it's not a word, it's a feeling - a wave that rolls out and back in with regularity.

Tonight, I will leave you with the truest words ever spoken by my daughter: "Mommy, I still love you, even when you're mean."

Sigh…and the wave rolls out.

First Grade

We did so many things this summer: went on adventures near and far, saw many (but never enough) friends, and, most importantly, made memories and milestones. Em learned to swim underwater, John Sawyer learned to squeak, shriek and demand "Beppa Bee - snork" which is his way of asking to watch his Peppa Pig video. (The animated piglet enthusiastically announces 'I'm Peppa Pig' and then snorts the way we do when we've laughed too hard, and hearing John's version of this in his baby voice is hilarious. But I digress.)

Anyway, it was a summer of firsts in a lot of ways: the first time we went on a sailboat together, the first time we went peach picking with John, the first time we went on the Swan Boats together, the first summer with our new-to-us swingset and new pirate boat in the yard.  John Sawyer had his second birthday party, but it was his first party that he didn't share with his sister.

And mostly, I was first in command. Don't get me wrong, my husband is a present parent. But like most teacher-parents, we get used to our summer rhythm as the other parent trots off to work, and we become first in command. I am the one that plans the day, makes the meals, cleans the messes and kisses the boo-boos. I am the one who cuddles the Elmo doll, wraps American Girl in her blanket, and picks the snacks for the road. I am the one who packs the bags, brings the extra diapers, wipes and outfits, and remembers the chargers for the various electronic devices that give me a little peace in the car. I am the one who digs under the carseat for the source of the mysterious scent (once it was an apple slice, once a fried clam. Not kidding.) 

Toward the end of the summer, being first was getting taxing. Some days, my calls to my husband increased throughout the day with frequency and frantic undertones. Some days, I couldn't wait to pass the baton when he got home. On those hot summer nights, I would hop in the car, turn up the radio, drive to Target (aka Mom Mecca) and wander the aisles, blissfully alone. Strolling through the store, I could shed the heavy Mommyness of the day, and regain a little of myself. Some days it felt like the summer would never end. Some days, I missed the structure and routine of the fall, and I could feel my hands reaching forward to turn that calendar page.

But it wasn't just the routine of stay-at-home-motherhood that was wearing on me; it was the kids' burgeoning independence. Some days, the kids really pushed their limits. John Sawyer, in an attempt to recreate everything he sees his sister do, went down the slide for the first time, alone. The combination of his wet swimsuit and his chubby little bum made him zoom much faster than either of us anticipated, and he landed a foot from the base of the slide, shocked and crying, reaching his arms to me. Em, in an attempt at newfound confidence, decided to step further into the cold water at Hampton Beach despite my warnings, and a wave knocked her over. She was startled, but stubborn, and kept insisting, "I'm FINE, Mama," even though I could see she was scared. So many little firsts, as they test themselves, and me. 

But tonight...

Tonight, my first born and I are wearing matching pajamas with our names on them, right below a giant pink heart. Tonight, Em went to sleep a former kindergartener, and will wake up a first grader. My melancholy, emotional heart is so proud of the little girl she is: sweet, smart, beautiful, brave and curious. I hope her first day is exciting and fun, and that it goes by so fast.  So many of her firsts already have, and while I look forward to every one of them, and while I know I have to let my children grow up, I hope they will always reach back for me. And I promise I won't mind not being first.