New adventures in toddler land

So it has been FOREVER since I've been on here. Lots has changed. My husband got a new job - a MUCH better job. And as a result we were able to relocate and upgrade our living arrangements. We also have just a SLIGHT bit of disposable income now that we can use for things here and there, so we've tried to focus on activities that will keep our two toddler boys occupied. B, who will be 5 in October, is very bright and catches on to things quickly, while P is all about the sports balls. We did buy them Amazon kids tablets (since they pretty much destroyed my iPad and these puppies come with a 2-year unlimited warranty - they could dump them in the toilet and Amazon would replace them completely for free!), but we clearly don't want our kids spending day in and day out on tablets. B also is already showing signs of getting easily bored. His little mind needs to be working - putting things together, taking them apart, analyzing, being creative. So this summer will be a struggle to keep him stimulated. That's where this post, and probably the new focus of this blog, comes in. 

One of B's interests is cooking. He ALWAYS wants to help me in the kitchen. His kitchen play set provides some entertainment for him, but he'd rather do the real thing. So I let him help by being in charge of kid-friendly things like cheese. We've ventured so far as to let him handle the spices, although he's been a little heavy handed with the pepper once or twice :-). So with moving 45 minutes away from where they were born, we discovered Young Chefs Academy. We enrolled B in the weekly Kinder Cooks class for kids ages 4-6. It's a parent-child class, so for a fee each week or a monthly membership, kids and their parents go class and prepare a full recipe from start to finish. The school provides all of the ingredients and tools - you just show up and take your leftovers home with you. Each month has a theme, and all the recipes for the month revolve around that theme. This is apparently one of the MOST exciting things that we could find for B to do because literally every day he will ask me if today is cooking class. I had to put a big blue circle around every Thursday and start marking the days off the calendar so he could keep track of when his next class is. We're now three weeks in and still rolling. He loves it so much that he actually cheered when I brought home a new blender and stand mixer from Target earlier this week. What 4-year-old cheers over kitchen appliances? Apparently, mine ....

Week 1 was an adventure to say the least. I had no idea what to expect as we had never been to Young Chefs Academy before. We were greeted at the door by Chef Chad. Inside the classroom there was a wall of cabinets and appliances. In the middle of the room was the teacher chef's station with a stainless steel table and racks of bowls, cooking tools and ingredients, surrounded by a semi-circle of stainless steel tables and chairs for the kids. Each child washed their hands and then put on their aprons because, man, can toddlers make a mess out of flour. By the time we left, I was covered in it and it was all through my purse, which I mistakenly put under the table at the beginning of class.

Class this particular week was baking biscuits. All of the kids make one big batch of dough, and then each child gets a portion of the batch to finish off their own individual biscuits. To make the big batch, each child gets to put in a portion of each ingredient. So for example, if the batch calls for 1 cup of flour and there are four children, each child gets to put in a 1/4 cup. This was B's first attempt ever at measuring a dry ingredient, especially one that can get REALLY messy. And while every piece of me wanted to get in there and help to avoid the mess, this class is really so that he can LEARN. He can't learn if I'm doing it for him. So here's how that went ... 

He did really well for his first try ever! After all the kids added their ingredients, the instructor ran it through the stand mixer and gave each child their portion of the dough for them to roll out and cut into biscuits.

After that, Chef Chad put all of the biscuits on a baking sheet, keeping them separated so that each child got back the same biscuits that they had rolled out and cut. While they were baking, each of the children helped clean up and had some lemonade to pass the time. They also whipped up a batch of cinnamon sugar to put on their warm biscuits once they came out of the oven. They each sprinkled their biscuits and then got to taste test their results. And since each child ended up with anywhere from three to give biscuits, they got to wrap up the rest of them to take them home. B clutched on to his with dear life the entire trip home - he was so proud of those biscuits. And of course, as soon as we got home, he had to show them to his dad, and his brother promptly licked the cinnamon sugar off all of them. Anyway ... our first cooking class was quite a success! We've now gone to two additional ones, so blog posts for those will be forthcoming!

 

 

Crafty Mommy back from haitus

Yes, I've already done two posts today, but since both topics aren't related in the least, I figured I'd just do two separate ones.

Crafty Mommy took a hiatus for a while. Frankly, I forgot I had a sewing machine, except for when I would trip over it going into the closet. So a few weeks ago, my husband mentioned that we needed new bath towels - specifically the hooded ones for the boys because he felt like the toddler-sized ones from the store just aren't really big enough. I had purchased one for B last year at a craft fair that was made with a full-sized towel, but that sucker cost me $25, and I wasn't quite ready to dish out $100 on hooded bath towels. So I went to the wonderful world known as Pinterest because I figured how hard could they really be? And they aren't - one full-sized towel, one hand towel that you cut in half (so technically you could make two towels with two full-sized and one hand towel), and whatever embellishments you want to put on them.

I started off with a trip to Joann's to check out their appliques. I found a handful that I liked - an elephant and a giraffe to keep with our African family theme, some duckies playing with sailboats and some cute little "monsters" that would let me do something a little more colorful. Then off to Target I went to get towels to coordinate with the appliques. My husband works for Target, so between his team member discount, the discount for using their store branded debit card and an additional discount they were offering using their Cartwheel app, I bought four full-sized towels and three hand towels (two of the towels were brown, so since I only needed half a hand towel for each one, I only had to buy one brown hand towel) for probably about $12.

This weekend I sat down and completed the task - sew half a hand towel to the long end of the bath towel, then fold it in half and sew the hand towel across the top to make the hood. Easy enough. The appliques I bought were all iron-on, so that was pretty easy, too. I debated grabbing a sewing needle and thread to reinforce them, but after ironing them on, they seem fine. We'll see how they hold up after a couple of washes. I may need to reinforce them a bit after they take a trip through the spin cycle.

So here's the finished product. Four towels for probably about $35 instead of spending $25 each to buy them from someone at a craft show or on Etsy. Pretty easy and I would even consider making these as gifts at some point, and I'm FAR from the expert seamstress.

Sneak peek at B's photo shoot with Step 2!

So when we started out on this toddler modeling journey, we had no idea what to expect or where we'd end up. It only took six weeks for B to get his first request from Step 2, a national toy company located about 40 minutes from where we live. The shoot was for a "gender neutral" kitchen set that they are rolling out in time for holiday shopping. And even though they spent about 20 minutes taking photos, they also took photos of two other toddlers prior to B's turn, so we really didn't know if they would end up using his photos or not. But late last week, our Agent got her hands on the first official photo released by Step 2, and our little B is there!

What's amusing about the photo is that it is of both him and the little girl that they shot just prior to him. And they never actually took a single photo of the two of them together, so they either photoshopped him into a picture they took of her, or vice versa. But in the end, it really doesn't matter. Chances are that since this is the first photo to be released, it might actually be the photo that ends up on the box - I'm assuming boxes need to be designed and in production months before the product so that they actually HAVE boxes to put them in when they come off the assembly line. So I'm taking this as the first sign that my kid's face is going to be on the box when they hit store shelves in a few short months. I'm going to walk into Toys R Us in a few months and quite possibly see my child on display. Or maybe not - who knows. 

So here you go - my baby :-)

Our little one Byron & friend having a blast for Step2! What a cutie. #print #ckmtgmidwest #ckmtg #clekidz #cutekids #childmodel #adorable #babymodeling

A photo posted by CleKidz Model & Talent Group (@theckmtg) on Jul 27, 2016 at 11:18am PDT

Yea, we did it!

So back in the middle of May, we signed a contract with The CLEKidz Model & Talent Group for both of the boys. And since then, we've basically been sitting around and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I'm not a completely patient person, especially when I started seeing other kids that got signed at the same time as the boys being hired for jobs at Zulily and Carter's/Osh Kosh. I will be the first to admit that a little bit of jealously started creeping in - why didn't they want MY kids?? But I kept reminding myself that it's seriously only been a month and we've got a one-year contract and their chance would come eventually. Patience, my dear.

Well, our time finally came.  And by finally, it's only been about six weeks since we signed, so "finally" actually happened pretty quickly - I keep reminding myself that some of the kids may never get a call and it's nothing against the kids - it's just that they don't exactly fit what the clients are looking for and that's no one's fault. Wednesday afternoon I got an email from the agency saying that Step 2 wanted to use B for a photo shoot. I think I went into a mild panic attack. Step 2 is a quick drive east on the interstate that we literally live right next to, so it's a convenient place to start. I quickly emailed the agency back and told them to book it, and shortly after that I got an email with all of the details that we would need for the shoot - date, time, directions, extensive wardrobe request, etc. His shoot was going to be for a new kitchen play set, so they wanted lots of options to choose from including pants, long sleeved shirts, polos, t-shirts and shoes. Basically bring along his entire wardrobe with the exception of shorts and anything with big logos on it. So I spent a good hour Thursday night ironing most of his wardrobe. Lots of little tiny pieces of clothing that otherwise never see an iron ....

This morning we got up, I gave B a bath, dressed him up in a nice polo shirt and jeans,and headed out the door to Step 2. I seriously thought I was going to throw up, but B eased my mind about 15 minutes before we arrived when Uptown Funk came on the radio and he started dancing in his car seat in the back seat. We got there about 15 minutes early, and when we walked in the door we were greeted by the very friendly staff that works there and shown where the playroom was so he could get acclimated. They were still setting up, and there were two other kids there that were scheduled ahead of him. They went through his wardrobe, picked out an outfit that they thought would work best with the play set and backdrop, and they got to work with the other two kids. They told me that they would probably overlap them - when one of the other two started getting fussy, they would probably swap B in for that one so they could keep things moving. They were quite active, and I was worried that B wouldn't do very well in comparison. But on the other hand, they were a little hard to keep focused on the set. They worked with the other kids for about 15 minutes, but instead of swapping B in, they sent the other kids home and B got a photo shoot all to himself. And I couldn't have been more proud of how he handled it. He was such a trooper. He was very mellow, followed instructions and did what they asked him to do, and when they needed a little bit more from him (like um ... a smile instead of being so darned serious like he always is), he even let one of the staff pick him up and swing him through the air like an airplane so they could get him to giggle and smile for a quick shot. By the end of the shoot, he was giving high fives and fist bumps. And they all just kept commenting about how calm he is and how well he was doing. One of the guys working there told me that if this is what he's like to work with, we can pretty much plan on getting a call every couple of months to bring him in for projects. That was an exciting thing to hear.

So our first venture in the toddler modeling industry went very well as far as I can tell. The new play set is due to be released probably in November, just in time for the holiday shopping season. The photos could end up being used for just about anything - their web site, product ads, packaging, who knows - and the set will be released primarily to Toys R Us but will be sold at pretty much every major retailer that carries their line. I can't exactly wrap my mind around the fact that my child has now done a photo shoot for Step 2 and who knows where I'll be seeing him pop up. But in the meantime, I'm just going to be proud of my baby and how he handled himself today and wait for our next opportunity to pop up. And when November rolls around and your out toy shopping, you just might see my kid on the box of their latest kitchen play set :-).

Tonight's the night

So most of my blog posts lately have been about my kids. And you would think that with today being Father's Day, I'd write something about that. But I'm going to take a change of pace for a moment and reflect on something else - my love for the Cleveland Cavaliers and the emotional roller coaster I find myself on today that I've been trying to avoid all year.

For those of you who know me, you know I had Cavs season tickets, either a partial or a full season plan, for 10 seasons. When I moved to Cleveland in 1996, I knew NOBODY and was trying to find things to occupy my time and meet new people. So I started out with a partial season ticket plan and after a number of years upgraded to full season tickets. Kept them until I had what I thought would be a once in a lifetime chance to take an African safari in Kenya (the rest of that story is history ....) and they started jacking up the prices more than I could afford.

At the time, the Cavs SUCKED. It was pre-Lebron, pre-Eastern Conference titles, pre pretty much everything in the post Richfield Arena era. I think we did a have a year or two that we made the playoffs during my 10-year tenure, but I am one of those people who maintained my loyalty through the tragedy that was the 17-win season, the year we landed in absolutely last place in the league with one of the worst records in the history of the NBA, and landed the #1 pick in the draft, the year we were begging for that so that we could draft the hometown kid Lebron James. I was there through the bitter final seconds of every single home game - me and about 7 other people. I was even President of The Rebounders, the only booster club the Cavs had at the time. I was in charge of a very tiny group of people who had basically no support from the Cavs organization, responsible for planning events and hoping people would help us support this team that SUCKED. No one wanted to admit they were Cavs fans at the time. The organization reeked of desperation, so much so that at our annual autograph party, the ENTIRE active roster showed up even though it was totally voluntary for them to be there. In years prior, we were lucky if 3 or 4 guys showed up and the ones who did show up were the end of the bench players and the retired guys who were still hanging around and liked to throw the booster club a bone once in a while. But we were basically the only support they had, so when they all waltzed through that door, one at a time, I thought I was going to cry. And I was PRESIDENT of the booster club that was trying to do something to make people's $15 annual booster club membership fee worth anything at all. That autograph party was the highlight of my 2-year tenure.

Here we are now, Lebron back at the helm after a brief hiatus in Miami, getting ready to play Game 7 of the NBA Finals against Golden State, the defending champions who just had a record breaking year of their own. Two weeks ago, I'm sure millions of people never thought there would be a Game 7. Last year there wasn't a Game 7. Yet here we are, just a few hours from tipoff. This city has been desperate for a championship for over 50 years. Yeah, the Lake Erie Monsters just won the Calder Cup last week, but it's not the same. In fact, you're probably sitting there saying "Who are the Lake Erie Monsters? What's the Calder Cup?" and firing up your Google machine. When Lebron came back to Cleveland, he said it was because he wanted to bring an NBA championship to this city. The Golden State Warriors just finished off a season where they broke the NBA record for the most wins in a season. They are the defending champs. They have the league's unanimous MVP. They have never lost three games in a row under the realm of Steve Kerr. No team in league history has ever come back from 3-1 to win the championship. It's been close to 40 years since the visiting team has won Game 7 to win the title. Odds are not in our favor. But we are the first team in history to come back from being down 3-1 to force a Game 7 in the Finals. Lebron and Kyrie are the first two teammates to ever both score more than 40 points in the same game in the NBA Finals. Stephen Curry was ejected for the first time in his NBA career. The Warriors also are playing without one of their significant big men who suffered a season-ending knee injury. And everyone watched them literally fall apart during Game 6 in Cleveland. So there's hope. All of the hype up videos being shared on Facebook give us hope, along with all of the memes making fun of Curry and his wife, who can't seem to stay off Twitter, igniting a firestorm of revolution that it's OUR turn now. But I keep reminding myself this is Cleveland.

I expect this game to be brutal. I expect it to be heated and tempers are going to flair up easily. I expect my husband to come THISCLOSE to throwing things at the television. I expect that I will cry. In the meantime, this is what I leave you with - This Moment - We Own It - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYQ1Okyi3g4&list=RDtYQ1Okyi3g4#t=0

Go Cavs!

Good heavens, my kids have an agent.

So a few weeks ago, we met with Shawna, the owner and lead agent at the CleKidz Model & Talent Group, to talk contracts, expectations, etc. After reviewing everything and asking a few questions, we took a day or two to really think about it because it really does involve commitment. Sometimes you only get 24-hours notice that your kids have been booked, and you can always turn down a job, but you turn down too many and then they don't bother to consider you at all. We basically decided that if it was within driving distance, it would be a reasonable request. Three major toy companies have offices within 30-45 minutes of us, and Zulily would be a quick day trip to Columbus if we're asked to do a shoot for them. So why not? So we signed the contracts and my kids officially became "models" with an agent. Scary stuff.

Next step was head shots. Shawna does photography as well, so she graciously offered to do head shots for free. So we met up with her a few days later to take pictures, and let me tell you ... THAT was an adventure and if it's any indication of what's to come, this should get interesting.

We decided to meet at a park so we could use the natural lighting, which means lots of distractions, both good and bad. In a stale studio setting, I'm not sure we would have had much cooperation since this is something that is pretty new to them. But on the other hand, being outside and getting them to focus is quite a challenge. B tried his darnedest to NOT smile. He'd be on the verge of breaking out into a huge grin but would just clench his cheeks as hard as he possibly could to avoid it at all costs. We finally resorted to pulling out Mickey Mouse and having him "tickle attack" Mommy, which made him pretty much lose it in hysterical laughing. Shawna managed to capture pretty much every one of B's moods, from being stubborn, to thinking everyone around him is completely crazy, to his sweet little nature, to laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall off the picnic table.

P on the other hand was even more of an adventure. That kid will NOT sit still for more than about 6 seconds before he's off and running. Pictures sitting on the picnic table turned into pictures she had to take while chasing him around the park. We haven't seen his shots yet, other than a few she showed me on the camera before we left the park, but she seemed to be pretty pleased with what she got and thinks that the toy companies will really be interested.

So we're off and running. B's photos are now up on the agency's web site, soon to be followed by P's. Now we sit back and wait. I don't know what to expect, and I'm going to try my hardest to not be disappointed if nothing comes out of this. Personally, I think I will deem this successful if we even only get one shoot out of all of this. And we haven't invested any money (no legit agency is going to ask you to pay them fees upfront - they should only get paid when YOU get paid), so we've got nothing to lose. So we'll chalk it up to an adventure and see what happens. Who knows - maybe you'll see my kid in an upcoming baby Gap and or maybe not.

We're starting a new adventure!

We've always thought our kids were cute. Heck, what normal parent doesn't think their kids are the most adorable on the planet? But that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else on the planet thinks your kids are as cute as you think they are. But there's something to think about when random strangers come up to you in the middle of the mall, or at Target, or at the zoo, or in a restaurant, to tell you how cute your kids are and ask if they are twins (we get that ALL. THE. TIME.). Our pediatrician, who for all intents and purposes is definitely not the warm and fuzzy kind, has actually commented about our "good looking boys" and said they should be Gerber kids. Okay, whatever ....

But then something happens that makes you think. Back in October, we had new family photos taken. We used the same photographer that we used the year before because we like her, she's reasonably priced, and she's really trying to get her feet into the photography business. We like her. She takes great photos of our kids, which is hard to do with toddlers who have the attention span and patience of a goldfish.

A few months later, I get a Facebook friend request from a young lady that I do not know. As usual, I take a look at her profile and our mutual friends, the only one of which is our family photographer. I message her to check her out and she says she doesn't know much about her but she follows her on Instagram. Seems harmless so I go ahead and accept her friend request and move on.

I soon discover that she runs a kids modeling agency here locally. Hmmm ... interesting. She runs a modeling agency and our only mutual friend is our family photographer, who conveniently had posted photos of my children on her Facebook page a few months prior. Wheels start spinning .... then she starts posting about needing more kids between the ages of 0-3 years to add to her roster .... wheels spin some more. After the second posting, we take it as a hint and decide to submit their photos through her website and see what happens.

Last week we attended an open house at her agency - not exactly what I expected but probably a good indication of the industry. It was two hours long. I was thinking that we would be there for the full time, some presentations about the agency and the industry, getting a chance to talk to her, take a few photos, etc. Nope - we were there for MAYBE 15 minutes. Entered the lobby, filled out paperwork, attached their photos to the forms, went upstairs, walked up to a table in the hall where they were sitting, had about 3 minutes where she asked how long we had been interested in modelling, handed us a brochure and out the door we went. How did the boys do? B hid behind his dad's leg and refused to look at them, and P refused to let go of his basketball. Not high hopes.

The following night, we got our first Chuck E. Cheese experience at a birthday party for one of B's preschool classmates, and when we got home, I posted some videos. The following morning, the young lady from the agency "liked" one of them and commented about how much she loved those two little boys. I thanked her and told her it was nice meeting her on Saturday and she responded that she would certainly be in touch towards the end of the week.

Today we met with her to go over the actual contract, the agency, and basically how things work. There were 10 other kids in the room with us - out of two hours of who knows how many kids stepping in front of that table, we were in the 12 that ultimately got picked, bringing her agency roster to 60 kids. I have to admit I'm a bit freaked out. We really have no idea what we're getting ourselves into. Most of her work is local, but she does book things throughout the Midwest - Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota, Wisconsin - which I'm guessing are probably more acting gigs and not something like $125/hour photo shoots. And in some cases, we may only get 24 hours notice. But we'll see how it goes. It may end up being that someone only wants our kid(s) every other month and we never venture out of Northeast Ohio. Or it may be that we're having to turn things down because we get two days notice that they want us in Minneapolis, and that's just not feasible for us on a normal day. We'll jump in, get our feet wet, and maybe sometime over the next few months, you'll see my boys in the next ad for baby Gap :-).