Beach day

We met our dear friends at Wallis Sands beach yesterday for a lovely time splashing in the icy waves and playing in the hot sand.
...
Lots of playing in the sand...

And a little napping..


A little wandering...


And fantastic companions!

More fun

We're really working through our list of fun summer traditions to do before we move.

I took the girls to Mirror Lake Friday so we could be out of the house for our first showing. (We were hoping for more over the weekend but no luck)

We went to our favorite local orchard for blueberry picking on Saturday. Sad to think we won't be back for apple season. I can't imagine where in the Finger Lakes we'll find apples ....

Oh, and we still have the ordinary chores like laundry and cooking dinner. For a while I was giving Kate a bowl of water to play with on the floor while I cook. After soaking through several bath towels and some unfortunate slips, I decided to try this instead.

Summer play

The early craziness of getting the house ready to show has passed so we've been trying to have a little summer fun before the craziness really hits in a week or two.

We let Molly into her face paints the other night. She made herself up as a cat.

Kate hit the 20 pound mark after only a week of stuffing her with butter and ice cream. Hooray!!

We went to a birthday party at the Drawbridge Puppet Theater last weekend, a place we'd been meaning to visit for years. Turns out it was a good thing we never went. Molly was terrified (and I don't blame her, it was dark and loud and puppets were jumping out from all over). There was a lovely garden just outside, though, so we spent the time walking around and waiting for cake.

Thursday I took the girls on our annual trip to Davis Farmland. It was hands down the best time we've ever had there. In previous years Molly was pretty creeped out by the animals, which climb all over you trying to get food pellets. This year she was really into brushing the goats and cows, squeezing the pretend cow utters and even listening to the tour guide on the hay ride. Cool!

And Kate? She's going through a very intense animal phase. She pants (the baby sign for dog) whenever she sees anything vaguely animal-like. She points out birds, the bunnies in our front yard, anything. She can even say "cow" when she is talking about the rubber ride-on cow that Kim gave her. (Her only other words up until this week were "down," "mama" and "dada") So being in a place where there were animals everywhere, she was delighted and surprised by something new about every five minutes.

It was the first time I've felt the pull between two children with their own desires, usually Molly wanting to move on to something else and Kate wanting to stay longer. Fortunately Molly's old enough to get a little ahead, go into the reptile barn alone, etc. so it wasn't much of a problem. And Kate's young enough that she forgets what she wanted as soon as something else exciting is put in front of her.

And both agreed that the splash park rocks!

About half-way through the day Kate picked up a new word. Here she is getting excited on our return from the spash park area when she saw the pen of goats.

Speaking of goats, Molly ate quite a few bites of plastic wrapper at lunch before I realized what was happening (she wanted her fruit roll-up so badly that she didn't want to tell me that she couldn't get it peeled off the wrapper).

And Kate gave the goat babies so much love that at one point I had to pull goat hair out of her eyebrows and brush it off her cheeks. Twice she picked up animal droppings, once fresh out of the sheep.

It doesn't get much better than that.

Moving

Jim gave notice at work on Tuesday so now it's official. We're moving!!!!!

The new job starts Aug. 13. We're renting a house in Rochester starting Aug. 1. Sometime between those two dates we'll be packing up the kids and bunny and heading out. (And nervously waiting from afar to see if our house will ever sell).

The past two weeks have been insane. It's a good thing the girls go to bed so early (6:30 most nights) because we've been spending every evening plus a lot of each day packing, cleaning, decluttering, donating, figuring out where to get rid of things, fixing holes and broken drawers, cleaning more and generally whipping the house into shape. We've finally got the place somewhat presentable. Phew!

Now we begin a different kind of insanity, where we try to keep the house spotless -- every closet, bathroom and crevice ready for inspection with just an hour or two notice-- while keeping two children entertained, bathed and fed.

Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be paying super close attention to what Kate eats. I'm on the third day of keeping a 5-day log of every morsel of food that goes in her mouth to bring when we meet with a nutritionist. Plus I've got to spend more time at meals getting extra calories in her mouth, feeding her things to help with constipation and also making sure she gets at least some vegetables and fruit, not just Annie's bunnies all day.

Talk about pressure to be perfect -- perfect housekeeping, perfect nutrition. This is not going to be an easy month.

Yet somehow we're mostly not freaking out. I'm having a great time with the kids these days. It's so nice to be done with the stress of getting Molly to school and managing her melt-downs in the afternoons. She has even stopped whining about when she can play with kids. I think that's the best sign yet that Kate is becoming a playmate.

And who wouldn't want to play with this silly girl?

Had to run for the camera for this trick -- she can put her foot in her mouth!

The sign goes up

Deep breath.

Here we go...

Doctor says feed Kate more ice cream

At long last our family doctor finally sent us to a specialist for Kate, not for her stuffy nose but for her lack of growing (at least in terms of weight, she's getting taller). We had the appointment today at a GI clinic and the doctor was fantastic! She looked at the lab reports, asked me a ton of questions and examined Kate. The conclusion? She's probably fine, she just needs more calories. She told me, among other things, to give her plenty of ice cream. That may be the best medical advice I've ever heard.

 Here's our silly Kate playing with one of her favorite things, hats.



And for anybody who doesn't believe Kate has hair yet, here's the photographic evidence.



This is from the other day when Molly dripped water on Kate's head and rubbed her hair the wrong way to make it stand up and showed me Kate's "porcupine head."

Big sister's been playing in the dirt every day -- digging dirt out of the garden into containers (many of them good bowls and utensils from the kitchen, grrr!) and making mud, serving pretend meals, I don't know what else. There's a pile of dirt on the deck. Nothing like trying to keep the house clean with a 4-year-old around. Ugh!