First day of preschool, September 2005
First day of kindergarten, August 25, 2008
Well, it’s official — our baby girl is growing up. Sunday night as we were preparing for the big day there were a few tears, lots of questions, and some extra snuggles. Monday morning she woke up excited and ready to go. There were no tears from her, but Davis cried as I walked in with her because he couldn’t go too. The first day went well. She enjoyed it and said she was excited to go back.
This morning, however, was a slightly different story. She told me she didn’t want to go to school five days a week and she wanted to stay home and play with her toys. She also didn’t like that it was longer than preschool. There were tears when I dropped her off, but they stopped quickly when I was able to walk her to her classroom. When I picked her up this afternoon she was full of smiles and talked about her day. She is looking forward to tomorrow, hopefully she will wake up with the same attitude.
This summer the kids have discovered the fun of playing in the mud. I didn’t want to deprive them of this childhood joy so I have let them play and we just hose off before coming inside. However, today I think I reached my mud limit. Mommy is ready for a mud break.
School is starting tomorrow for our big girl. Check back on Tuesday or Wednesday for the first day scoop.
This week wrapped up another summer of swim lessons for the kids with their awesome swim teacher, Kyndal.
This was Davis’ first summer. He was a little scared at first, but quickly put his fear aside and did whatever Kyndal told him to do. Here he is swimming to the wall all by himself. I’m very proud of the progress he made.
This was Sarah’s third summer with Kyndal. She improved on her form and endurance with both back stroke and freestyle, and she is now treading water for longer periods of time. Sarah began learning to dive the last couple of weeks.
Here is a picture from the first day of diving. She did better this Monday, but I forgot the camera. I am also very proud of how hard Sarah has worked this summer for Kyndal. Swimming is something she really enjoys and is such a good physical outlet for our girl.
Most Many Some of you know that I’ve recently begun as the Director of Marketing for the new Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, which opens November 8.
Starting today, August 9 through August 15, if you shop at any Barnes & Noble in the US, a percentage of sales will be donated to the educational programs at the museum if you use the code 319640.
If you’re in Roanoke, the education department is hosting the day at the Tanglewood Mall Barnes & Noble from 10 am to 8pm. Free kid’s activities like face painting and crafts, along with lectures, readings, artist demonstrations, previews of upcoming exhibits, and music for the grown-ups. The kids and I are going to stop by later this morning…
So if you were thinking of buying some books this week, help support the educational programming of my employer! Just mention code 319640 when you checkout…
Every night before we go to sleep, we tiptoe upstairs to check on the kids. The other night, this is how we found Davis…
My kids are currently having room time right now. This also translates as one hour of quiet time for mommy a day. It was just interrupted a few moments ago with hysterical shrieks coming from Sarah. I ran upstairs to see what on earth was wrong. She had “Lady” caught in her hair! For those who aren’t familiar with Thomas and Friends, Lady is a train and she is the only battery powered one we have, all the others are the wooden ones you push yourself around the track.
First I turned her off, then tried to carefully pull her hair out from around the wheel, but unfortunately had to cut a chunk of hair with the scissors to get it out. Now, I’m wondering how in the world this happened and why did she have Davis’ train in her room??? I never got the “full” story of how she ended up with the train on her head, but did get something about she was standing against her dresser and “Lady” ran off the dresser on to her head. Say what???
The kids and I have enjoyed the “Catch the Reading Bug” summer reading program at our local library this year. For reading (or being read to for) 5 hours, the kids earn a stuffed bug after showing their reading log. The next 5 hours, they earn a bug jar. If you read for 15 hours total they get a bug finger puppet. Sarah and Davis have really enjoyed going each week to the library and getting new books. Today they earned their bug jars. Above is a picture proudly displaying their prizes.
The library also has had special programs in June and July. In June we went to the Backpack Puppet Rainbow Show and Story Time. This month we have attended The Musical McKenzie’s, Story Time, and Craft Day. I think today was our favorite, though. They had Birdman Dave with Belle the Macaw, Miracle the Owl, and Mimi the Dove. It was great to see these birds so close up and learn about them in a fun way. Belle flew over our heads. It was really neat. (She is potty trained by the way, well I should say perch trained.)
They have had more fun things as well, but it’s hard to attend them all with vacations, swim lessons, and life. I do encourage you though to get involved in your own library’s fun next summer if you’ve missed out this year. Great free activities to do with your kids — and you are instilling a love for reading.
UPDATE 7/17/08:We just got word that Mindy & Baldwin’s roadblock has been lifted and their adoption is finally moving forward! We also learned that our friends the Moores and the Kutsors have gotten miracles in their adoption journey’s too! Amazing how the impossible can happen in an instant. Joy.
We spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon with our friends Mindy & Baldwin at their home nestled cozily on a hill in Floyd county, not far from the Little River. The kids loved feeding the goats, chickens, and fish — Sarah even got to gather an egg from the hen house. Here’s the two of them happily watching the fish:
We went through the home study process with Mindy & Baldwin, and have really enjoyed getting to know them. Their own adoption journey is stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare even more absurd and arbitrary than ours, but hopefully more easily resolved. It occurs to me that perhaps we did our home studies together so we could commiserate now that things haven’t gone the way we planned.
But walking with the kids and dogs down to the river and enjoying a swim during a gentle summer rain, the stresses of adoption seemed far away, and the time with friends felt great.
We’ve been home two weeks now, but golly we had a great time at the beach. Sorry for the delay in posting some pictures.
Davis’ first dose of the ocean this year — and he loved it!
Making “gloppy glop” was a big hit this year. And of course, so was the pool…
The kids love the rides at Broadway at the Beach.
My snack, let me show you it.
More pictures in the gallery…
