~Sarah

Hanging in the boys' room

This years theme is super heroes.  Not just in this household.  It seems to be everywhere, from my mom's preschool lessons to the  local library program. Maybe its the age, or maybe its the wildly popular Marvel movies, or maybe something else.  Anyway, we are fully embracing it!






We've begun swimming lessons for both the boys.

Well, Rowan has had quite a few lessons previously, mostly good but ending fairly badly last winter when he suddenly developed a fear of the deep water.

This time around he has taken to it again like a little fish.  He's tearing it up out there.  Plus, he's the only student in his level/time slot so he gets one-on-one lessons. Fancy!!  He's getting really really good.

Cid had some heavy separation anxiety for the first week.  I knew it might be hard for him to go with his swim teacher instead of me or Rogér, but I didn't anticipate FOUR STRAIGHT DAYS of crying and not participating. He finally warmed up to his swim teacher and now I think he might be in love with her ;)



Rowan also started Hip Hop dance lessons last Thursday.  It was pretty funny.  He was a little grumpy because it was structured so he didn't get to bust out his fancy moves until the free time at the end

Bonus!  They do allow photos and video! Yay! Although parents have to view from outside of the classroom.

Here's the first of (hopefully) many.


~Sarah

Do you think little brother learned from big brother's mistake?

Ah, summer is officially here.

Even though the weather has been so warm you would have thought it's been here for a while already!

We celebrate the Summer Solstice with a box of summertime goodies for the boys. We call them "First Day of Summer Boxes".  It started from a story in a Highlights magazine and they are always really excited and thankful to get them.

This year, the summer boxes included floppy hats (Pokémon & Avengers themed), beads & string, water guns, window ornaments for coloring, and chapstick.

Usually I put a couple extra yummy snacks in too, but this year we accidentally left the goodies in the back of Roger's car for about a week...in super hot weather....and the snacks didn't fare well.

The summer solstice happened to fall on Father's Day this year.  We've somewhat celebrated over the whole weekend with a trip to French Prairie Gardens Berries, Brews, and BBQ's festival.  Where we chowed down on some delicious bbq chicken, ribs, brisket, and pulled pork, (nom nom!) while tasting local beers.

And the kids played on the tire slide and rode the tractor rides.


~Sarah

Rowan has been really into addition (and you know I love it!).

On our last big road trip, we spent about an hour playing the "adding game".  Rowan would say two numbers for me to add together (he usually chose the biggest numbers he could think of) and then I would say two numbers for him to add together.

I had to keep my number choices low (ie. add up to less than 10) so that he could add them up on his hands.  He did have a little trouble when I chose a number over 5, like say, "6 + 2". He didn't realize he could carry the extra 1 on the 6 over to his other hand and then put up two more fingers on that same hand.

That took a little coaching and I'm still not sure he got it because shortly after, the game turned into adding a number with an object, "Mom, what is 3 plus car?!" This game lasted another half hour or so.

I'm going to come right out and admit it. The number plus object game bothered me slightly.  OK, it bothered me a lot! It was like a nail on chalkboard.  I winced every single time they had an "equation" for me. But as long as they were entertained, I did what I could to pretend I was enjoying the game.

Then the other day when we went to lunch, the kids menu had an adding game.  Rowan was instantly intrigued, but because it had multiple numbers and some larger than 5 (one hand, remember), he was having trouble.

Then Rogér suggested drawing tally marks next to each number so that Rowan could count all the tally marks to add up the numbers.

I did the first tally marks and then Rowan took over, carefully drawing the correct number of lines next to each number.

This way, he was pretty easily able to add up the numbers.


~Sarah

I'm so so SO behind.  It was a ton of fun visiting our friends and family, but it was also a lot of work for this mama and the kids seemed to go through a funky recovery phase too.

Life goes on now that we are back.  Preschool has wrapped up for Rowan.  We went to his graduation party this last week.  It was really cute. During their performance, Rowan decided it was the perfect opportunity to show off how "silly" he is....of course. But mostly a very sweet occasion.

We're very happy that Rowan was able to go to school for the last half of the year and are excited for both Cid and Rowan to attend in the fall (Cid will be in preschool, and Rowan in Pre-K).

We are enjoying the apartment pool and we've got a couple summer classes lined up for the boys.

Rowan asked to learn how to break dance....sooooo.....I found a hip hop class that meets weekly over the summer.  I just CANNOTWAIT to watch his dance classes.  He takes his break dancing very seriously. This is gonna be good.  Hopefully I'm allowed to take videos!!  (I got in trouble for taking video at his last swim lesson).

Otherwise just enjoying the days.

Working on the letter F, we did a few different activities, including letter tracing, and identifying objects that start with "F". But the one that stole the show was these little froggy dudes.  I remember doing something like this as a kid with paper plates, but we only have Thomas the Train paper plates at the moment so unless we wanted our frogs to look be blue and grey with a #1 on their head, I had to do it a little differently.


I just used construction paper for the whole thing. And  glue sticks.  Doesn't get much more simple.

Rowan added the flies, which coincidently also start with "F"

I also scored some foam airplanes at th $1 store for "flight" and of course took the opportunity to explain Bernoulli's Principle (my fave!!! Go read). The kids didn't care.  But they did like flying the airplanes...for all of 3 minutes.

                         

 On to the next thing.

Ok, here's the recap of our roadtrip down to Cali....FINALLY!

I really really wanted to go to my best friend, and college roomie, Jen's baby shower.  Trouble was, it was all the way down in the Bay Area.  But one of the beauties of staying at home with a flexible work schedule is that I am able to pick up and go places as I please, if I please.  I just have to bring the boys with me. And I have to do it alone since Roger' doesn't have the same freedom right now.

This ability (and responsibility) of being able to go places with the boys  has pushed me out of my comfort zone to be a more adventurous and independent mother.  I actually never would have imagined that I could do so many things on my own with my two youngsters.

That's the reason why my first road trip with my little road dogs (Part 1 & Part 2), and this second trip feel so liberating, and why I am both eager and half force myself to do them.

I prepped for the trip with some new car activities.  portable pinball toys, dry erase boards, magnetic games, search and find pages (super easy to make), healthy snacks, water & juice, all packed into their little backpacks.

Halfway into the first hour of our 12 hour haul, Rowan says to me, "Mom, THANK YOU for packing all these fun stuffs!  This is the best road trip EVER!"

Toward the end of the second hour, they were totally over all the goodies and wondering when we were going to be there!

We only made a couple stops for gas, potty breaks, and McDonald's (McDonald's is a road trip staple in our family, say what you will, it makes everyone happy and gets us through).  I was especially happy with the McDonald's that we stopped at in Medford.  It had a nice indoor play place that was much more open than others we've been to, so the kids were very visible and accessible (Cid often gets stuck up in the tunnel type ones, leaving me with a predicament...do I climb up there and get him?  Do I leave him to go find a McD's employee? Usually I enlist some of the older kids to help him out, but it can be a bit truamatic). When you're traveling alone as a mom with your kids, places like this make the experience much more comfortable.

Our first real stop was at my dad's house in Cotati, near Petaluma. The kids love all the old-school games that Barbara has:  Cooties, Don't Break the Ice, Ants in Your Pants, etc.  And Cid is obsessed with their pet duck.

The next day we were off to Jen's baby shower in the East Bay. It was so nice to get to see our peeps.  We enjoyed the party and the company!  Baby Decker made out good, but I think Miss Hailey (Jen's little girl) made out even better.  Of course, Hailey was an angel the whole day, as usual, while my kids were into everything and had me running different directions constantly.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos this day, but Rowan did take this one of a Lego storage container.

 
Once we got down to our old 'hood, we met up with my old work bff, Maria, and her two lovely ladies, Gabriella and Giuliana.  They had a special surprise in store for us, tickets to the EarthQuakes game at the new Avaya stadium!!  Maria has a personality that brings along good things and everything went super amazingly well, packing all the kids into the car, parking, the ticket situation.  It was an absolute blast.  And, honestly, something we probably wouldn't have even done if we were still living there.


We got to stay a couple days and nights with the Ballous, which was also so much fun.  Sorry-not-sorry for cramping your style and keeping you guys up late!

And visit with a few of our great ex-neighbors.  We were seriously so lucky to score all those wonderful people.

And  André and Shelley drove up to meet us for some park time, dinner, and dessert.  The boys love these two!  (We do too).


We drove back up through Petrolia and spent a whole week there.  Being there was great.  Driving there sucked. The boys still held it together amazingly well, but Cid did puke up all his McD's fries and chocolate milk.  He was super upset and confused.  He kept screaming, "WHAT is that?!"  until I was finally able to find a "safe" place to pull over. (Note to self:  Never, never, EVER take the Wilder Ridge route again).

We did the usual P-Town things with a couple extra bonuses.  This time around I got more R&R time for myself while the kiddos went to preschool, including a lovely yoga sesh tought by Rupali Brown.