Skipping Town

There were no tears from Greta on the first day of pre-K! As I said in my last post, I really thought it could go either way--no tears or big tears. But she was excited to go, and joined the children in the pre-K line with nary a backward glance. And it's been like that all week. She's talking about new friends, the pre-K kindness cheer, and center time. At the end of the day, she plays on the hill outside the school with her friends. There's something about the pre-K teachers that's truly magic. Even after just one week, I see a change in the little miss. This makes me happy....and sad. She's my baby! One of the things I've had to talk to L&G about a lot lately is tone. From school and YouTube videos, they'd picked up "Duh!" with its attendant insolence and eye-rolling. I explained that saying "duh" isn't polite, that it is, in fact, rude, and they took it to heart. If they slip, they theatrically clap their hands over the...

We made it through the first week of the school year. Lucia has settled into first grade with nary a blip. She seems very happy. She was also very happy for the weekend, when she and Greta could just stay home and play. All weekend they played with Shopkins, ponies, and Magna Tiles. Lucia also requested we do a craft: she wanted to make homes for her toys. So we made a few box-homes with wallpaper and carpet scraps. We did have some disruption on Saturday because we're doing a facelift of our bedroom, and the workers were in our house all day replacing the windows in our bedroom and my office. Tomorrow, they'll paint. We're trying to find wallpaper for one wall of the bedroom but have so far failed to find anything we like. This is proving to be difficult. But the new windows look amazing. Today I went to yoga and then we just stayed home and relaxed. Andrew made fried chicken for dinner--our summer favorite, made in a cast-iron skillet on the grill. We're gearing u...

Lucia was so excited about starting first grade. Without all the unknowns of last year, she was a little freer to just enjoy the excitement of beginning a new school year. We all walked to the bus stop, and then, once she was on the bus, we drove to school to meet her. We got to see her classroom and meet her new teacher. She has a few friends in the class, which is great. She was a teeny bit sad when we left, saying she'd miss us, but she got off the bus at the end of the day happy. She told us she knows she's in real school now because there's no rest time and no play time. Just work. I had to go to Target yet again after bedtime for still more school supplies. I don't even know how many times I've been to Target over the past week. I threatened to just buy a tent and set it up in the parking lot. Sigh.

Last day of summer. We spent the day close to home, and made a trip to Pier One to buy new bedroom furniture. Fall brings two home renovation projects: a small renovation of our bedroom, with new windows, paint, furniture, and carpet; plus a larger renovation of our basement, involving a full demo and brand-new everything, including a bathroom and laundry room. Nothing will be as disruptive as our kitchen renovation, so we're excited to get these started. Otherwise, the girls just played. Last day of summer. By evening, Lucia was jumping up and down with excitement about starting first grade. I'm very glad I did this (more or less) daily blog this summer. In June, the summer seemed like it stretched ahead endlessly--the first couple of days really threw me for a loop, with both kids home all day, and no time to myself at all. But we hit our stride as the days went on (though I never did get any time to myself). The first half of the summer was somewhat of a trial, with lots...

We continued our Ocean City makeup weekend by taking a day trip today to Storm King Art Center, something I've been wanting to do for ages. It's about an hour and fifteen minutes away, an easy drive, and so worth it. We had a great time. Storm King is a sprawling sculpture park, 500 acres, with gigantic sculptures by Calder, Serra, Maya Lin, and many many more. It's a beautiful place, and walking through the enormous fields, with sculptures towering overhead, was stunning. We'd brought lunch and had a picnic under some trees. L&G had a lot of fun too, not least because I'd let them each bring a small purse with four ponies. The ponies came out to play whenever we stopped to take a break. A highlight for all of us was Maya Lin's Storm King Wavefield. We climbed along and over and down the grassy waves, feeling much higher up than we actually were. We walked around for well over two hours and had just hopped on a tram to head toward the parking area when L...

To assuage our disappointment over canceling our Ocean City trip, we planned a fun city excursion for Saturday. We drove in and went to the New Museum to see "The Keeper," an exhibition I've been wanting to see. I thought the girls might like it, since it's about collections and collecting, and I'd seen a writeup in the Times that there was a family event on Saturday morning--a teddy-bear-decorating workshop to complement the centerpiece of the exhibition, a collection of vintage photographs that all contained a teddy bear. L&G were thrilled when they were each handed a small white teddy bear when we got to the museum's workshop area, where tables full of art supplies had been set up, along with hot glue guns. They worked for a long time making things for their bears, less interested in making clothes and hats and more focused on making accessories--which I guess is no surprise. Bears complete, we headed down a few floors to the exhibition, which was pre...

Tues. 8/30 & Wed. 8/31 These days have kind of blurred together. There was more swimming at the pool on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the girls and I went to the zoo for our final trip of the summer. We had a lot of fun doing all our favorite zoo things--riding the zoo train, feeding birds in the aviary, riding the carousel. I definitely felt some end-of-summer melancholy. We went swimming later on Wednesday afternoon. However, an hour into swimming, Lucia began complaining that her ear hurt--we headed home, and her pain quickly escalated until she was sobbing. Fortunately, it was walk-in hours for our pediatric practice, so after changing out of our swimsuits we rushed over for a checkup. It turned out to be nothing--just a tiny inflammation that a dose of Motrin seemed to take care of. Poor Lucia, though--she's not a complainer, so I really thought this was going to be a raging ear infection. Thurs. 9/1 Thursday we had a regular day at home. We also went to Target,...