Just had to share...

This afternoon one of Mia's friends from school came over for a playdate.  This particular child was accepted into the "gifted" program at school.  Now, already we knew that this sweet little girl had no clue when her birthday was and was hazy on how many siblings she had.  We were all a little confused about that last bit.  Anyhoo, the playdate was going longer than I had anticipated so I asked Mia to go ahead and get her homework out of the way and then they could get back to playing.  Part of her homework is to practice reading for 15 minutes each night.  After Mia finished reading the first story she asked how much more she had to do.  I told her maybe two more stories out of this one particular book.  I also said if her friend wanted to read some that we could count that toward their time, although they are in different class I assumed that similar requirements were in place.  The little girl, rather than jumping in and reading, said "I can't.  I don't know how to read."  What?  You mean a kid in the "gifted" class doesn't know how to read.  What exactly are they basing this program on anyway?  

I know, I know.  I need to get over it already.  I am getting more and more over it daily as things like this happen.  Plus, Mia's class this year is smaller than the gifted class anyway.  I hope I don't sound completely bitter.  Because really, I'm only a little bitter still.  

The Sweetest Six Year Old on the Block

I forgot to mention that while we were in Texas in August, we all got at one point or another this nasty one day stomach bug.  Mia was the first victim.  I found her upstairs at Papa and Nana's house laying in bed quietly and when I asked her if I could get her anything she just asked for some hot tea with honey.  As I was leaving, Lennon on my hip, Mia looked up so sweetly and said "I'm so happy we have Lennon.  I'm glad we decided to have another children."  I could have eaten her up right then and there.  It's so awesome that they love eachother so much.  Yesterday she was blocking him from putting non-trash items into the diaper champ and he reached out and pinched her.  On purpose.  It was sad and she cried a little, but more out of hurt feelings than out of pain.  He is definitely a different person than she is.  I guess that goes without saying, but every day is like a new adventure in parenting for me.  I was noticing this morning at the playground that he is a lot more tenacious that she ever was.  She would try to get up on something for about 2 seconds before asking for help whereas he tries and tries until he either gets it or moves on.  On the other hand if she asked for something and was told no she would move on whereas he would buckle his knees and scream for the next fifteen minutes out of protest.  Ahhh, tenacity.  What a gift.

TCCS (Texas, Cape, Camping and School)

Sorry for the long lapse since my last entry.  This summer has been by far the most traveling summer of my life.  I feel like I went to sleep sometime in early June and woke up and it was September...Only without the wonderful feeling of rest that one would have after having slept for three months.  Either way, here we are in September.  Fall is quickly approaching and I have yet to tell of our final summer adventures in August.  To start Shelby and I went to NYC for the weekend at the beginning of the month and Gaga flew in to stay with the kids  THANKS GAGA!!!! We definitely couldn't have done it without you!  We stayed in an awesome hotel and got upgraded for free to a junior suite and ate at a fabulous Spanish restaurant in the west village, I think.  We then spent the day at a music festival in a beautiful state park overlooking Manhattan.  We even rode a ferry to the park and went past the statue of liberty and ellis island.  It was really cool.  We saw Radiohead and Kings of Leon, two of our favorite bands.  Gaga and the kids had a great time too.  They went to the science museum and church and had some good Gaga bonding time.  Gaga brought Mia some real live Mexican Jumping Beans and we are still enjoying the random "clicking" noises they emit.

A few days after we got home from the concert we were off again, but this time as a family, to Texas to celebrate Pepa's 80th birthday.  The party was awesome!  It was so fun to see everyone and the cake was yummy!!  Pepa makes 80 look like fun!  The visit was way too short though as Granmommy, Grandaddy, Kelsey and Bethany and Shelby all had to go back to their respective homes sunday afternoon.  The kids and I stayed however for about another 10 days.  

We spent some time with Papa and Nana, swimming and throwing the ball with Freckles.  We also spent a few days with Gaga and Jimmy hanging out and watching old family favorites like Santa Claus the Movie and The Electric Grandmother.  Shelby came back for the next weekend and we celebrated his 29th birthday and Jackson's big #1!!!  Jackson's party was so fun and although Hill says he was having a hard day, you would never have known, he seemed to be reveling in the attention.  Tuesday morning the kids and I flew back home to Boston but didn't arrive until around 5PM.  This might have been a good time to relax and unwind, but no.  Technically Mia should have started school that day, tuesday, but instead we were flying home from Texas.  Well then she could have started back to school the next day, wednesday, but no.  Instead we decided that she would have a better experience spending a few days down on the cape with some good friends.  Enjoying the last few days of summer.  So, tuesday night I quickly shuffled around our stuff from this bag to that bag.  Packing and unpacking and repacking all at once.  Wednesday morning we took off with Claire and her two kids to meet Amy and her two kids and her friend Malissa down in West Falmouth on Cape Cod.  The house was great.  A short walk to a beautiful beach and a fenced in backyard for the kids to play endless games of red light green light and unbeknownst to the adults rip up a bunch of the shrubbery to make a "bed" for the characters they were pretending to be.  I hope the owner of the house wasn't a major gardener.  Oh yeah, and we also didn't notice this wine rack in the dining room with 30 year old bottles of wine on it.  Well, we didn't notice it that is, until Lennon smashed one of the bottles to pieces all over the dining room floor.  Luckily no one was hurt, but I am definitely keeping my fingers crossed that it wasn't some collectors bottle or something.  

Wednesday, thursday and friday in West Falmouth and then Shelby and Claire's husband Walderie drove down to meet up with us friday night.  Saturday it was time to say goodbye to the nice cozy, a/c in every room cape house and hello to the four man tent in the woods with the church group.  It was our very first attempt at camping as a family and overall it went very well.  Despite the fact that afterwards we were down one camera  and one cell phone, found a large crack in our windshield and Shelby and I sustained some mildly painful sunburns we had a really great time.  Both kids slept really well and it was super nice to wake up and know that the campers next to us would be up and ready to share a cup of coffee and convo while the kids played in the dirt.  The beach was gorgeous and I had forgotten how fun it was to fall asleep listening to the sounds of the outdoors.  We did discuss that for the next time we will need to get some memory foam or something to sleep on instead of just a sleeping bag.  It wasn't quite so uncomfortable to sleep on the ground as a kid!  

So we get home monday afternoon from camping and Mia starts school the next morning.  

The first day of first grade!!!  She was a little less than totally excited because all of her friends were in the same class except her, but she still got dressed and had a smile on her face and was looking forward to a new year.  I had gone out and gotten her the last Tinkerbell backpack and a Tinkerbell lunchbox the night before we left for the cape and she was lovin both of those for sure.  She seemed very proud of them and it made me feel good to know I had done something so simple for her that was giving her so much obvious pleasure.  Tinkerbell is pretty cool I guess, but I had no idea how cool Mia thought she was.  Anyway, she ended up coming home early from school with a headache that I thought might be more stress related than anything, but she did have a fever.  The doc couldn't find anything specific wrong with her but did note the slight temp.  He said he doubted she was contagious and as long as she felt like going the next day to send her.  She had a hard time sleeping and woke a little late, but when I finally took her in around 10 she seemed to have a great day.  Her teacher seems really cool and she has steadily made more and more friends all week.  Last night after she finished her homework she asked if we could make her some more homework.  When she finished that she complained that she wished she had more homework.  I should record that and play it for her when she's taking 9th grade algebra and see what she says then.  We're happy that she's enjoying it this week and hope it is just a sign of things to come this year.  It couldn't be much worse than last year, so already our hopes are high.  

Mia had her first karate lesson today and starts back to gymnastics in the morning.  After lunch we are heading over to Nashoba Valley for their annual Harvest Festival for some apple picking, face painting, hay rides and more fun stuff.  I love the fall in New England.  It's probably what I'll miss the most when we leave.  Sorry for the long long longest blog update but now I feel like I can move forward with the fall and leave the summer behind.  Talk to you soon!

Kissy Face

Lennon has started giving the cutest little kisses.  The only problem is he only gives them to Mia or pictures.  If Shelby or I ask for a kiss he either dodges us or sometimes even vehemently shakes his head no at us.  It's so cute when he does it, but sad that he won't kiss us.  He's such a hunny!

Stay with us sleeping baby...

While Shelby and I were out of town Lennon slept late each morning for my mom.  He didn't get up before 6 45 at all and a couple of mornings he slept until 7 45!!!  Monday when we were home he slept until 7 30, but then tuesday he got up at 7.  Today he woke at 6 45 and that is fine, but I am praying that he will not go back any further than that.  6 45 is GLORIOUS!  compared to the 4:45 or 5 am wake up he was doing before this weekend, and I want it to stay!  Please please Lennon keep it up!  I cannot believe I ever complained about Mia's wake up time of 8.  I would give anything to sleep until 8 every morning.  Why do I love sleeping so much?  Thanks so much Mom for keeping the kids for us to go away for the weekend!  

Playdoh

We went to this thing at the library today where we made our own playdoh.  Mia and Mateus worked together to mix and make the stuff and then all four kiddos played with it.  It was Lennon's first time to play with playdoh.  I would not have thought about letting him so early, but he seemed to really think it was cool.  He had a measuring cup, a really large bowl and a small glob of the dough and he was just moving the glob from container to container and back to his hand and so on.  He was having a really good time.  Bianca definitely tries to say Lennon now, she says "lele."  It's sooo cute!  They had lots more hugs today.  When we got home Mia and Lennon sat at the kitchen table and probably played with playdoh for about another 30-45 minutes.  It was soo cool.  I cooked about a million meals today so that my mom wouldn't have much cooking to do while she's here for the weekend with the kids and Lennon and Mia were having so much fun together.  It's so exciting!  I hope he does well with Gaga this weekend.  It's the first time I've ever been away from him for a whole night.  He is still nursing about two times a day right now and I'm not sure how he's going to take this whole separation thing.  I guess we'll see.  I sure will be happy to see him monday morning when he wakes up!  

A WEEK OF FIRSTS

This past week brought several firsts for our kids.  Lennon celebrated his first birthday.  I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but we sliced strawberries on top of a piece of whole grain sandwich bread at breakfast time and put a candle in the middle and sang "Happy Birthday."  Mia and Lennon both thought it was pretty cool.  He sort of blew on the candles - he does the sign for "hot" now - put he didn't get them out.  The rest of the day was pretty average.  We went to a park in the morning where we met up with Jessica, Ella and Diva and they gave Lennon a pair of handmade leather baby shoes from the country fair in Oregon.  They are so cute and look super comfy!  After his first nap we went over to Amy's house and hung out with Lennon's baby friend Bianca as well as Mateus, Miranda and Michael.  Bianca is now about 20 months and she LOVES Lennon.  Whenever she sees him she runs to him and gives him big hugs.  This particular day he also went up to her and gave her hugs.  It is the cutest thing ever.  He has actually started giving lots of hugs.  It's always on his terms though.  He gives Mia the most hugs probably and then he sometimes chooses a random stranger to hug.  Like on Thursday we went to the Science Museum with Mia's friend she made in Plymouth, Nicole, and while we were there Lennon went up to this random man who was there with his kids and gave him a big bear hug around his knees.  The man was caught off guard and thought it was totally sweet.  It was pretty funny.  

Another first this week was Lennon's inaugural trip to Breakheart Reservation where we had Mia's 5th birthday party.  We went there all the time before he was born but hadn't been back since.  He had a great time.  The water was the perfect temperature and he had a blast dropping stuff in the water and retrieving it and playing in the sand.  Mia and Mateus spent a lot of time digging a channel that Lennon and Biance spent a lot of time sitting in.  

This week we also had Shelby's annual company picnic.  This year it was at The Museum of Science.  So, yes if you are paying attention that means we nerds went to the museum on thursday and on friday.  It was great though.  The food was awesome and they had tons of toys bought from the museum store for the kids to play with during the picnic.  The kids both had fun and Mia made a new friend named Maia (maya.)  

Our last first of the week was Mia's first guitar lesson with Shelby on her new pink guitar.  It was a little rough starting because she has a hard time doing things that she isn't instantly good at, but in the end she was really enjoying it.  She practiced more after dinner and then again sunday morning.  Tonight when Shelby was on the phone with Dusty Mia asked to play what she had learned for Dusty.  It was pretty cool watching her sit down and play guitar with Shelby.  

I am finally starting to feel like I have two kids rather than one kid and a difficult baby.  They are really starting to interact and Mia and I are able to do more and more while Lennon is around playing with his toys.  We read a few days ago for about 45 minutes while Lennon played nearby with various toys.  He is really loving dogs right now and we're pretty sure he says "daaawwg"  when he sees them.  He is also definitely doing several signs now.  He does the sign for food, more, hot, fish, he gives high five and he has started walking back to his bedroom and basically asking to go down for naps.  He's having a blast communicating with us.  He will clap his hands anytime someone says patty cake and he gets a big grin on his face.  He no longer hates his car seat.  He does great in the car.  We've also been going on lots of walks lately around the neighborhood and he seems to enjoy those as well.  Mia likes to point out which houses she would like to live in, but tonight she said she liked the area our house was in better than the other houses because we have a nice view of "the forest."  She likes to jog during our walks and we talked about starting to jog in the mornings before Shelby goes to work.  She's so much fun.  We spent the last hour and a half she was up tonight organizing her vast collection of jewelry in her bedroom tonight.  She mentioned several times how much fun she was having.  It was so nice to hear her unsolicited enjoyment of such a mundane task.  I will bask in it as long as it lasts.  

You know sometimes when you just have that realization that your life is sooo beyond awesome and that you are so lucky to be where you are and have what you have.  I am totally having that today.  I know I don't live in a super fancy house or anything, but I love it and we don't have tons of money, but we definitely have everything we need and more and such a wonderful supportive loving family and it just rocks!  My kids are awesome, my husband is awesome (he has been getting up with the kids every morning again and letting me get some extra sleep) among other things.  I am just really lucky and I'm happy that I can realize that because I think a lot of people don't ever realize it.  I love all of you who are reading this and I can't wait to see most of you in Texas in just a couple of weeks.