Bagels, Birthdays, & Spiders

Here are some random pictures from the last two weeks:
- The lovely flowers that Molly picked out for me;
- The amazing bagels the Molly & I made! ;
- My 33rd birthday cake;
- And a spider that we examined at length on our front porch (Molly wants to know what kind it is, any guesses?).

Family Music Class

Zach and the girls have been having "Family Music Class" and "Family Dance Class" at every opportunity. The girls particularly enjoy practicing the trumpet. Believe it or not, both girls can actually make a lot of noise! (although, Clara sometimes cracks herself up too much to make much sound).

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Zoo Night

Two weekends ago Nana took us on a fun trip to the zoo - at night! (well, in the evening, at least). We had a great time seeing the animals coming out for the evening, listening to music, and eating a special dinner with the flamingos. Here's Clara watching the elephants, and Molly watching a Monitor being fed.

Lion Cub to Dinosaur

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Move On Up!

Yesterday, Molly had her “moving up” ceremony at preschool. It marks the time when the Lion Cubs become Dinosaurs. Since the Dinosaur’s classroom is upstairs, they literally get to “move up” to the second floor. And the ceremony helps reinforce this change. Each child was called one by one to receive a dinosaur necklace from one of the outgoing Dinosaurs. Then, while the rest of the parents and kids clap and chant “move on up!” one by one they each marched upstairs to the second story deck where their new teacher was waiting.

I remember last year, the whole concept of changing classes was very fuzzy for Molly. She was a Beluga becoming a Lion Cub. She was thrilled about the ceremony (which she called a “Sarah-mony”), and the change, and the process. But, she had a lot of questions about the change. Like, “Will I still be Molly?”

This year she was still thrilled about the whole event, but she clearly understood more about what it meant. The day before she talked a bunch about the chanting (“I’ll walk up stairs and everyone will say “move up Molly, move up Molly”!), about being a Dinosaur (“I like the blocks they have”), and about wearing a fancy dress (she wore a chiffon-ey bridesmaid-style dress given to us by my boss for our dress-up collection). When she got to the top, she yelled down: “Look at me Mama! Look at me Daddy!”

She also seems to be trying to understand more about change. When we were sitting together having snack after the ceremony, she said to me:

“Ceremonies are exciting, but also sad”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m excited about being a Dinosaur, but I’m also sad about not being a Lion Cub any more.”

Me too, my dear. Me too.

Princesses

Molly recently discovered princesses. I guess 'discovered' isn't the right word. She's technically known about princesses for a while. But for a long time she seemed to know about them in name only (and she'd often mix up "prince" and "princess" - is it terrible that I never correct her?). Or maybe she only had a vague understanding of what the whole princess thing was all about. Or maybe fire trucks were really just that much more interesting.

But recently, she's shown a whole new level of interest in princesses. A few months ago my boss gave me a pile of princess dresses to add to our dress-up collection. I hung them in the back of the closet for Molly to discover when the time was right. Well, when Molly discovered them she had about the same reaction as when that same boss sent me home with a 2' long fire truck: awestruck disbelief.

So, now we've added to our list of haloween cosutme ideas: Princess. The kind with the fluffy dress. Preferably pink. With shiny parts. And "poufy" parts. And a crown.

She did later add "goat" to her list of costume ideas. And when she asked for princess books I did try to look up stories where the princesses actually do interesting things. And her friend Ruby announced today that she's just not into princesses anymore. So we'll see how this pans out.

Maybe she'll be a well-dressed goatherd.

Hot Day

It got up into the mid-80's here today. By our standards, this is a "scorcher". Rebecca was visiting from Colorado, Jen & her girls came over, and we celebrated with a dip in our little pool. Clara was a little confused - we had swim classes this weekend, so I think she was expecting the big pool. But she loved it. When we went to gymnastics later, she checked in again: "poool?" "wah-da?" (water).

Before the little pool, as the day was heating up, Clara & I went off for a walk. I loved the colors: her yellow-orange-purple ensemble, plus the green fence, the red truck, or the red playground equipment.

I'm going to miss these family Mondays. In September I start back full time. We haven't completely decided what my schedule will be like, but it's unlikely it will involve weekly family Mondays. I might be able to pull off bi-weekly family days, but the tradeoff is longer work days, which means less evening and/or morning family time. Too bad I like my job. Too bad they don't have a part time version of my position. Luckily, though, I have a job, with amazing benefits.

Babies, leopards, trucks, flowers, + pandas

Clara loves her "Babies". She holds them. Sings to them. Changes their diapers. And doesn't want her big sister to take them. Which is fine, because her big sister isn't actually that interested in them anyway. She prefers her leopard print stockings, truck turtleneck, flower skirt, and panda lunchbox. To each their own.

Clothes

These girls won't go naked (although they'd love to!). Thank you, grammas for the fun clothes!

Molly calls the heart shirt her "special shirt" - I think that's because she was trying it on at the same time that Clara was trying on the dress and I made a comment about it being a special dress that we don't wear all the time (like, for the pasta with red sauce dinner we were about to have).

In the first photo, Clara is showing off the "undies" that go with the dress (Molly realllly wanted those undies, even though I tried to convince her they aren't really underwears, but rather diaper covers). And in that last photo of Clara, she's posing for the picture, that's why she's got a funny look on her face.

Also, note the frog... it is a member of the garden animals collection that is slowly moving from Takoma Park to Berkeley. This one has taken up (temporary) residence in our living room. For now.

Sister Bed

This week we started an experiment: the Sister Bed. Clara had been wanting to sleep in Molly's bed. Molly wanted to get in the crib with Clara. Clara was gearing up to climb out of the crib anyway. So, we put a mattress on the floor and declared it the Sister Bed!

Sister Bed Rules (posted on the wall above their bed)
1. No pillows on faces.
2. If your sister cries: Talk or sing softly to her. No Yelling.
3. If you're scared: go quietly to mama & daddy's room. Or poke your head out the door. No Yelling.

So far it hasn't been any worse than the previous setup. And it's incredibly sweet to listen to Molly talk to Clara, and see them sleep together.

This morning Clara ventured out of their room on her own for the first time, and tonight she tested that boundary again. But Zach's got a real good handle on them. (me, they pull all my heart strings and I end up spending an hour coaxing them to bed).

Pictures: sisters trying on the dresses Nona sent; Sisters ready for school and daycare in the morning.

Birthday Zach

Belated Birthday Zach pictures...

Family Hike

Two weeks ago after swim class we decided to take a short hike. Molly wanted to keep going. Clara wanted to check the map.

Salt Point State Park

It was cold. It was hot. We liked it a lot.

We had a lovely weekend at Salt Point State Park (on again off again on the park closure lists... somehow folks think "closing" parks like this will fix our state budget issues...). Nana and Pa took "Nick" and "Nora" their truck & trailer combo. Molly slept over in the trailer with them. Clara was upset about this inequity, but got over it, mostly.

One of the nice things that we've discovered recently is that Molly loves hiking! Just one year ago it was like pulling teeth to get this girl down the trail to a waterfall. This year is another story (so far, at least... knock on wood!). She even has asked for more (as in, can we keep going? I'm not done yet.).

In other news, I'm a little surprised that I was able to take so many pictures: all three cameras that came on the trip warned of imminent battery failure on the first morning. I was able to coax two of them through the weekend (maybe it was the fog that helped?).

As usual, click on the image below to start the slide show. Click again to go to the pictures folder where you can view them larger (especially the poppy + ladybug picture: that one's great full screen!).