This past weekend we finally accomplished something that Josie has been asking me to do for most of the summer, host a lemonade stand. She probably got the idea out of a book. We went for quality, fresh lemons squeezed the night before, mixed with sugar and water for a homemade sweet tart drink. The whole thing was a great way to bring up so many lessons, about business, math and customer service. We calculated how much her costs were (lemons, sugar and cups – $8.50, we spotted her the ice and non-used up items like the table and coolers), figured out how much lemonade we made and how much money she’d make depending on what she charged (50 cents a glass netted only 50 cents profit, less if there were a spill!). We settled on $1 per 12oz cup which Jordi felt was pricey, but the market seemed plenty hot enough to support that price, as did the ingredients. We made almost two gallons, enough for 18 cups and a predicted profit of $9. It was very good lemonade.

We picked a strategic location on the bike path, thirsty people walking by. I did not want her standing in front of our house for hours making our neighbors feel guilty if they walked by and didn’t buy. It was a beautiful day and my parents came by to lend their support as well. After two mis-starts of forgetting the signs at home (one on the table and one facing each direction of the bike path) we were in business. My parents each bought a glass. At first Josie was very shy about announcing her wears. But the signs were quite effective, and most people can guess what’s going on when there’s a little girl sitting at a table selling something. (plus my awesome sign above, you’d think that a 6 year old drew it, but no, it was me) We had a very steady business of dog walkers, regular walkers and a few cyclists and the lemonade sold out in about an hour. Josie was an excellent server, asking how much ice people wanted, making change, saying thank you and successfully pouring every cup without spilling!

We prepared for the whole thing by play acting, pouring water and making change. Celia and Ewan were a bit frustrated to not be more involved. Ewan often tried to run off with the money container and rip off the sign. Celia wanted to drink the profits because she was thirsty.

In the end, Josie earned $16.25 after paying us back for the supplies, and giving her sister $1 for helping. She spent a good chunk of that money on the soundtrack to Frozen this morning. I have very bad earworms now that won’t go away when I do even insist that we turn the music off. Quite the haul when compared to her $1 a week allowance! Not sure if our math was off somewhere or if the cups just held 12 oz at the rim and that combined with the ice left less than expected in each cup, but she sold a lot more than 18 cups, more like 30. Once the lemonade got low, she decided she had earned enough and she was just going to drink the rest. We even had people show up disappointed because we didn’t get the signs down fast enough.

Overall it was a great experience with Josie learning about tips, pricing, market supply and demand, counting change, planning for errors, spills and sibling induced disasters. I foresee a cookie and lemonade stand in future years as I think Celia is ready to get in on the business soon too, she just needs to learn how to add and subtract so she can make change.

We just came back from the cape, and while I tried to stay in the moment a lot of the time, I also had fun pulling out the camera at other random times, like at IHOP where we stopped for lunch on the way to the house. If you want to see me, you can look in Ewan’s eye, otherwise here’s the rest of us waiting for the food.

Spent tonight on an impromptu picnic with the neighbors in their yard. BYOD – bring your own dinner and had some fun times.

He picked his own outfit.

He’s getting harder to photograph lately because he just charges the camera and tries to touch the lens, with a giant smile on his face!

Right about 11 months, Ewan learned how to point. If I ask him ‘where’s Mio?’ he’ll point at Mio. Doesn’t work if I ask ‘where’s George?’ But at dinner he pointed at the food he wants. He’s also learned how to say ‘all done’ with sign language. He uses it frequently not only at the end of meals, but when we put him in his car seat, and when we try to change his diaper. At the grocery store, he was clearly calling Celia whenever she strayed too far away from the cart. Scolding her perhaps? poor girl’s got everyone on her case. He also goes and bangs on the bathroom door when Josie is in there and says a two syllable word (Josie gets distracted sometimes and overstays her turn), as I am prone to doing occasionally. We hear lots of ma ma ma ma still. He also understands the following words ‘nurse, milk, out, up, dance, share, guitar, ball, cat, kiss, hug, besito.’ We hear mama all day long, it seems to mean many things from ‘pick me up’ to ‘look at that’ to ‘I’m upset’ to ‘someone else screamed mama and so can I’ and more.

He is generally a very happy little boy so long as he’s not tired or hurt. He loves to chase after her sisters, and will play by himself too around them. He will not be left behind. He’s also convinced that once he knows how something works he insists that he gets to do it. Such as holding my credit card whenever he see’s it come out, brushing his hair, or stepping on the scale. He makes a big noise that signifies ‘stand back everyone! I’ve got this!’ and makes his grab. He’s getting to be so much more of a little boy, and less like a baby.

Ewan is not a very adventurous eater. He generally rejects anything new and won’t try most things. If I ever try to put something in his mouth it is automatically spit out. He insists on self feeding everything, so things like yogurt we aren’t getting far with these days. I’m super excited for him to be a year old when I open the flood gates for new ‘more-allergenic’ foods like milk, egg whites and everything else but nuts. He mostly wants to eat a set diet each day of oat cereal for breakfast, pasta for lunch, and beans for dinner. We can get some carrots, broccoli, peas, carrots and cheese into him if he’s in the mood. Sometimes he just about rejects the meal entirely and prefers to nurse instead.

He loves to head outside and is very excited every time I put on his shoes as he knows we’re headed out. He also loves to be carried and snuggle. He gives wonderful kisses and blows them to us! He also has learned how to dribble a ball as in soccer, he follows it and keeps kicking it. Another one of his favorite activities is dancing. He see’s me turn on the music and he starts dancing before the music even starts. Then he goes over and touches the corner of the TV as if it’s an ipad and he’s controlling it himself before dancing some more. If he’s in a good mood he’ll often dance when daddy gets home at night too. He’s pretty shy around strangers but he’ll come around after a few minutes of getting to interact and watch them.

We had been fighting this bad rash for many months but we’ve finally cleared that up and returned back to cloth diapers which makes us all much happier. Getting so close to a whole year old now!

• Size/weight: 18 months clothes; 20 lbs
• Favorite food: breastmilk, organic cheerios, black beans, pasta
• Favorite toy: ball, whatever his sister has
• Favorite book: just about no patience for that
• Favorite activity: Pushing things and playing outside
• New game: soccer – he follows and kicks the ball!
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8:00; one short nap at 11:30; gets up 7am (on the good days, 5:30am on the bad)
• New skill: demonstrating his listening skills and understanding
• Teeth: 8. New ones are starting to cause pain
• Vocalizations: mamamamama, he signs more and all done

The world keeps spinning and Josie makes her sixth trip around the sun! And what a trip my lovely first-born child has become. She continues to have lots of opinion on how things are going in her world, lots of thoughts about them and how she wants them to go. She is a non-stop talker ready to engage with her world all around her.

We’ve had a busy spring with her staying at home for the rest of her kindergarten year. She’s been working hard and learning many things about the world around her. She’s been interested in cooking, the planets, the amazon, penguins, the arctic and butterflies for some examples. We do art projects with those ideas, science experiments and all the field trips we can make applicable. We read many many books each week and Josie has become a voracious reader herself. Her favorites right now have been the Ramona series that we all know from our childhood and she’s also been a huge fan of listening to the Penderwicks series which is more recently written. She also reads Celia many books and even works to teach Celia her letter sounds plus math skills. She reads everything written on signs everywhere we go, so we have fun explaining things like ‘dead ends’ and ‘blind drives’ and why ‘rockland trust’ isn’t a rock climbing gym, but a bank. Some weeks she was not so fond of a subject we were working on, but then often a few weeks later that would be all she wanted to do, like math. Some weeks she was excited, others she was not. So I try to adjust to her likes and ideas while still covering all the important skills. She’s adding multidigit numbers, subtracting them as well and even doing some small multiplication problems even if she doesn’t know it yet. She did a great project on plans this spring as well documenting a plants growth over a week and graphing it.

Josie likes to spend her days playing pretend games with Celia, reading, playing with other friends, hanging out at the park and generally making a mess whenever possible. She likes to sing and dance and make her own plans. She just finished up two sessions of swimming lessons and is down to only using one bubble in swim class. Her teacher says once she can drop the bubble she can move up to another level. Hopefully by the end of summer she’ll be ready! She’s gotten so much braver and stronger in the water from all her hard work.

Another activity that she loved this spring was a six week program at a local farm for homeschoolers. She learned about the different animals and how the farm works. She helped to plant, harvest and take care of the animals. We even got eggs from the farm and some of our plants. She’d love to do it again in the fall if it ends up working out.

Josie continues to love to do art, painting is a favorite as well as drawing and we’ve even made some sculptures from wood and recyclables.

She’s a slow riser in the morning, she needs some time to get up to speed like her dad. She likes to read in bed for a while before getting up, and we all appreciate her getting that time to center herself ready for the day. Wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world and she’s a great big sister, helping Ewan, teaching Celia and holding doors for me while I carry all the stuff!

• Size/weight: 7, 48.5″ tall, 51 lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, pasta, dessert
• Favorite toy: art supplies
• Favorite book: Ramona series
• Favorite activity: playing with her friends, pretend games
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: jokes
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: reading chapter books for 8-12 year olds

While I’m laying in bed helping my kids to get to sleep I think about things, like how I don’t want to fold and put away all the laundry that is always amassing. I don’t mind washing and drying it, it’s the folding and putting away that is the hardest part. And I even make my kids put away their own clothes, except Ewan of course, he tends to be better at emptying drawers than filling them. I also gave up sometime after Josie was born with sorting clothes before washing them. So far no mythical laundry police have come to arrest me for not doing that. Sometimes if there’s a big enough pile I try to just put sheets and towels in together. But why?

Plus I consider, why should I fold it all, it’s just going to be worn again? The girls unfold the laundry as they put it away, even if they do help me fold it sometimes. If I’m lucky my mom will always pick up a basket or two when she comes over to fold, but maybe I should just make a big pile and we can just put the clean clothes in it. We all wear easy-care clothes anyway, nothing really wrinkles too much and I could put those away special. I could get valuable time back in my day.

I can just imagine the pile, I’d put it at the end of Ewan’s bed so that when he falls off the bed (which has really only happened once so far) he’ll hit something soft. Things that remain in our drawers really should just be given away because we don’t wear them regularly. What a good way of finding our excess clothing!

But alas, the problem is the feline population of our house. They too would love to climb and sleep on mount laundry. Anywhere they sleep unfortunately will at least have cat fur, and then every few days it would end up as Mount vomit when they spew up a hairball. Then I’d have to wash it all again. But at least I wouldn’t have to fold it.

I remember one of my best friends in high school’s family made the kids fold all the laundry. I think that will be the forthcoming solution, just as Ewan starts to understand how to fold instead of destroy.

Celia has been constantly shifting in her chair all dinner. We keep reminding her that it hurts to fall off and we want her to be safe. So she of course keeps shifting and falls off and we hear ‘I’m ok. I’m super super OK!’ Well then, if she’s super super ok, guess she should keep squirming.