Last day of school

Today was Molly's last day in Balsams (that's her classroom name). The kids had a normal first half of the morning, then parents and siblings were invited in for a puppet show put on by the teachers. It was amazing to see how much all of the children have grown!

We all went out side to the play yard afterward for a picnic lunch. Sarah, Molly's teacher, made a book for each child with photos of the child at school.

I think I'm taking the last day much harder than Molly. The school has only 25 students, many of whom are siblings or teachers' children, so it's a small community. One of the nicest things about Waldorf schools (which makes up for a lot of the fairy stuff and paper with rounded corners) is that they have lots of programs for parents and whole families.

I'm realizing that I've come to think of the school building as a clubhouse. There's always somebody there hanging around, often with a toddler, looking for somebody to talk to. Once a week there was a drop-in program for parents and young kids. Parent coffee once a month. For a while we had weekly doll-making sessions every week. Now it's over. Sniff.

Kinda. They're doing a summer program starting next week and I signed Molly up for all three weeks. I hope that wasn't a bad decision. It's the same hours as school, so it's kind of like a continuation, just with a different teacher and more watermelon. I think she'll have a good time. We'll see...

Memorial Day weekend

We had a great weekend but you'd never know it looking at the pictures. We went to VT for Lex's 7th birthday!! I even remembered my camera. Did I get a single picture of the birthday boy? NO! I got a lot of pictures like this ...

This was a safety day at the local high school. Molly was glued to Eve. They held hands. They made buttons, painted art projects, got fingerprinted, watched a dog demonstration. It was fun. The girls were so cute. I guess I was too busy watching and not snapping.

On the way home from their house Molly was almost asleep when she said, "Mommy, I want to live in New Hampshire." I asked her why. She said, "Because I love Eve so much."

(She meant Vermont. It was a long day.)

The pictures get worse from there. As in, we only have two pictures from the rest of the weekend. Do they capture the perfect weather? The hours that Jim played with Molly outside yesterday, carrying her around and making her giggle like a baby? The "flower gardens" that Molly has been making around the yard where she picks flowers and "plants" them in the dirt, all arranged like a garden? Kate being at perhaps the cutest age a human being ever goes through in their entire life?

Nope.

It's this.

Had to get out of the house Sunday so we could pretend we had a conflict with our next door neighbors' annual picnic, to which we were invited but didn't want to attend. This trip to Target just COULDN'T wait, right?

And this.

Back at the car after a mini hike at a nearby trail we'd never tried before.

That's right. Feel the excitement. Good times, great memories.


OK, maybe there was just one keeper in this photo collection. :)

Kate and her new best friend.

The 4-year-old mind

We're driving to school this morning and I'm thinking about the ordinary stuff -- did I remember extra socks for Molly's cubby, etc. -- and only half paying attention to Molly telling me that actually, for real, people in California are awake while we sleep. Somehow this leads to such questions as "Mommy, how does the sun move?" Then, "How does the moon move? How do the stars move? How does the Earth move? Can airplanes fly over water? How? What if there was an airport in the water?" Fortunately when I mentioned aircraft carriers that sent her off thinking out loud about how boats would bring the planes to a dock and people would walk off onto land. Phew!! It's not easy to keep up with a conversation with a 4-year-old.

Molly has had a lot of questions lately about where things come from. In the car the other day she wanted to know where all the trees came from and how there got to be so many. Another time she wanted to know where sheep come from. When we told her they came from other sheep she asked, but where did the first sheep come from? During snack yesterday she asked, detective-like, "When Daddy built the work bench in the basement, what did he build the work bench on?"

It's especially funny when one of these deep questions pops out because a good portion of the words coming out of Molly's mouth lately are gibberish and random phrases. The other day we were looking out the window at a woodpecker in our yard and Molly shouted, "Sweet mango!!!! Goober peas!!!" and on and on. I wish I remembered more of them.

Anywho....

My mom came out to visit, oh, two weeks ago? (stale blog news, sorry). We went to Boston just to walk around. And walk we did! We walked all the way from the aquarium to the public garden, stopping along the way for lunch, ice cream, water fountains, a playground, police horses and nesting swans. Then, like magic, the subway whisked us back to where we started (thank goodness, because none of us had any energy left!)

Molly visits the harbor seals outside the aquarium.

The swans are making a nest in the background of this photo. Molly didn't notice or care.

Neither did Kate. She was just glad to be out of the stroller.

Molly and Grandma watching the swan boats.

Back at the aquarium, looking at the boats. What a beautiful day!

Molly has a new best friend in the neighborhood, the little girl across the street who is only two months older. It's funny because they were in playgroup together and have know each other since they were toddlers but just noticed each other about three weeks ago. Most days after school now they arrange their own play dates (long, involved conversations with many trips into their respective houses to check with Mom about details) and either ride bikes and scooters on the sidewalk or play inside at either house.

Then at 3:20 Molly runs after Teddy's dad as he walks to the bus stop to get Teddy. Molly has been going with him (whenever we're home and she remembers) for many months. And for quite a while Teddy has refused to play with her. He (understandably) just wants to go inside and relax after school, especially now that he's into video games.

His dad has recently taken pity on Molly and tried very hard to get Teddy to play. No luck. We did lure him over a few times when made a balance beam out of a board and two buckets, but even that only goes so far with a kindergartener -- especially when Molly's bossy about who can set it up and what can be done on it.

Usually the closest she gets to playing with Teddy is at the house across the street. Her new friend has an older brother exactly Teddy's age. All four kids run around the front yard. A few days ago the mailman stopped to hand-deliver each child the mail and then gave them lollipops. I saw them out the window like this, sitting down to eat.

I love how kids these days are always wearing helmets, even when they're not on bikes. It's just too much trouble to take them off, I guess, when you're not riding.

Any Given Sunday

May Day, walking baby

Not much going on here, just routine.

Molly's school had a May Day celebration Tuesday on what was possibly the first gray, rainy day of the year. They moved most of the festivities indoors, including crafts.

We made a flower crown, which stayed on the children's heads for about 10 minutes. They were all really cute, though.

The only part they did outside was the May Pole -- the teachers sing pretty spring songs while the children walk in a circle and the ribbons wrap around a pole. A lot of spring frolicking, wouldn't you say?

Kate is a lot of fun lately.

She's growing more teeth. Until now she had just the top and bottom left front teeth. Now she's getting the right ones, top and bottom at the same time. Needless to say, she can bite now. Ouch!

Getting sick right after her birthday set her back on walking. Now she's back at it, though. Just in the past few days it seems she is walking around more instead of crawling. And having a good time, too.

Spring break

I hesitate to even mention it because it never lasts, but for the moment everybody in our house is mostly healthy and things are just chugging along normally. Ahhhh!

Molly started back to school today after April vacation week (which was almost two weeks considering I was throwing up and couldn't take her to school the day before vacation and her school week is only three days long).

We had a lovely, long vacation doing a whole lot of nothing. Intentionally. I like doing nothing. :)
Actually, I assumed anywhere remotely fun for kids would be packed during vacation week and since we routinely have free weekdays when others are at school we should hide out at home and save the fun stuff when all the suckers older kids are back at their desks.

However, an empty week was a little frightening. I decided to work on what they call "rhythm" at Molly's school. Basically it's having a schedule of ordinary daily stuff without being too crazy about clock time -- just doing things in the same order most days. We already do this anyway somewhat. We have normal bedtimes, wake-up routines, meals at the same time most days, etc. But on non-school days we just kind of drift and Kate's naps are all over the place, which means it's really hard to know when we can go to a playground or invite neighbor kids over or do Molly projects. We're either waiting for Kate to nap or about to go out the door when Kate gets sleepy. It's so different from school days when we leave the house at the same time, Kate sleeps when I get home and things are more predictable.

Thinking back, I guess all we really did for rhythm was take a short walk around the neighborhood every morning around the same time we would usually leave for school. It really did help, though. We even made it to a playground once. (Of course we drove all the way to one playground, I opened the door to let Molly out and found her barefoot with no shoes in the car. Grrr. Not the best moment of the week.)

The weather has been a bit confusing for all of us. It was so hot early in the week that we had the sprinkler out. Then it cooled off but Molly still wanted to use the sprinkler. Here she is a bathing suit in 60-degree weather. She came in after a few minutes of water play and said she was cold an needed a towel. Ah-ha, I thought, she figured it out herself that it's too cold for water play! Nope. She wrapped herself in the towel and then ...



 back in the sprinkler! See Mom? Now I'm warmer!

We did take one extremely last-minute expedition to DeCordova Museum one morning at the invitation of a neighbor. They have an outdoor sculpture park and it was beautiful weather and surprisingly not crowded. Molly mostly just loved playing with the neighbor girls. We stayed a few minutes after they had to leave to see more of the exhibits but she wasn't at all interested. She made, I believe, only one comment about the art the entire time we were there. This sculpture was named Flex, or something like that.

I mentioned it to Molly and asked if she thought that was a good name. She said no. It should be called Dragon. Or Snake. Then she asked to go home.


Lets see, Kate's been here the whole time, too. I must have some stories about her. Umm ... we've reintroduced dairy to her diet and noticed absolutely no difference. Hooray! Or boo. Her nose still runs all the time, so I guess it's annoying that we still don't know what that's all about. But at least we can eat ice cream while we wonder about it. She's been so hungry lately, too. I think we might finally see her gain a little weight. Fingers crossed!


She's into hats. If she sees any of her hats she points at it furiously and says "ah" until you put it on her head. It was especially cute this evening when she kept a hat during most of the bedtime routine. (No pictures, sorry).


She's also into cats. She was screaming and crawling away from me yesterday as I tried to change her diaper. I randomly made a "meow" sound, not sure why, and it was like hitting a switch. Silence. Curiosity. Clean diaper.


Oh, and she really, really likes the swing in our backyard. She makes a sign that's kind of like a karate chop and she says "geee" when she wants to swing. This happens any time you say the word swing, any time she sees Molly go out to the backyard and often when she simply looks at the deck door. She cries when you try to take her out of the swing. I think she finally picked up the sign for "more" so she could communicate her desire to PLEASE stay in that swing.


I have no pictures of that, either. All I have is this goofy shot from this morning of the girls playing with a pair of sunglasses. Silly monkeys.

Easter

We're back from our Easter trip.

Here we are at Mendon Ponds park. Molly has been telling me that hills she sees out the car window would be good running hills. I told her if she wants good running hills, this is the place to go. She wasn't disappointed.

You might have to zoom in to find the running kid in this one.

Kate didn't run but she did seem delighted to watch her sister.

We had a big birthday party for Kate at Oma and Grandpa's house.

Kate and the cake she refused to eat. Oh well, more for Mommy. :)

Here's the video I made for the party (posted here with kind of cheesy royalty-free music. If you want the original, play "Fireflies" by Owl City as you watch)



Then Easter morning we did baskets in the bird room. At one point I felt eyes on the back of my head and discovered the alpacas staring at us. They inched closer and closer until they were right outside the door.

On to the Easter egg hunt ...

And the big game of T-ball.

We've had a rough week since getting back. Molly threw up in the car just as we were getting on the Thruway. Kate threw up in bed after we got home and has been throwing up for three days now. Molly somehow didn't have any other symptoms but has a wicked cold. I got the stomach bug.

Today I let Molly make cinnamon critters from leftover pizza dough (I couldn't take her to school because Kate and I felt so yucky) and the one she made for me came out with a fantastic face -- exactly how I felt last night.

Mmmm, yummy cinnamon critter. I think I'm feeling better. ;)