News, Fire Dancing, and Slacklining

I apologize for the long neglect. We've been doing lots of exciting things which I would love to blog about, and perhaps I will be able to catch up on some of the highlights soon. But I shall reserve this post for more current news and big things that have happened.

In case you haven't heard from other venues, we are expecting Baby Szalapski #2 to arrive in early August. The kiddos will be just a couple weeks shy of being exactly two years apart. I am now 12 weeks along, putting me on the brink of the second trimester, which means I have a bit of energy back, a little less nausea, and horrible heartburn. I've had to cut all red meats from my diet...I expect poultry and cheese will have to go within the next couple months. It did last time, anyway. This round I did not crave watermelon, but strawberries and cherries have both taken a turn.

We began the year with a wonderful few weeks with my sister, Zhenya. One of the many things that I love about Zhen is how she inspires me to be a little crazier, a little more fun, and to be more creative and less...well, boring. She had recently decided that she wanted to become a fire dancer when she finished school, so we spent our days devising homemade equipment.

This is a fire poi. It consists of a flaming ball on a cable, which is then spun and twirled about. Not the best picture, but we were mostly taking videos. We probably should have practicing the twirling bit before lighting them on fire, but we were a bit eager to make it more exciting. This video is an excellent example of how awesome it can be, once you get good. Unfortunately, we're not that good yet. We also had to redesign our poi, as the cable was too thin and broke.

Next we tried a fire staff-- more or less, a quarterstaff with both ends on fire. Ideally, someday we would like to have a full dance quarterstaff duel routine that we can do.

It worked quite well. We're considering trying a shorter version, although that might make it difficult to actually have a duel with them. Still testing that. For now, I'm mostly trying to get better at wielding the quarterstaff while it's not on fire. I admit, I go to the backyard to practice it...I'm a little paranoid about looking like the Star Wars kid before I'm good.

Zhenya and Robert both also learned how to breathe fire with some success. I did not feel particularly led to try it myself, because while the substances they used were relatively safe, they were also rather disgusting to have in your mouth. 

I decided to content myself with being the photographer. I rather liked the little fire seahorse in this shot:

In the circus mindset, we also purchased and began practicing walking on a slackline--kind of like a tight rope, but is a wider strap that is meant to be more slack. At this point, I am fairly consistently able to walk its length forwards, and occasionally able to do so backwards. I'm also working on being able to twirl a poi (not on fire, yet) while on it, and maybe even play a song:

For his part, Tiernan thinks it's great fun, although we haven't let him at the fire yet. He also keeps on wanting to try the slackline, or better yet, have us carry him across. Still working on that one.