Brr as fall starts to set in around here I better finish remembering our summer. At the end of July we were at Cape Cod and having a lovely time at our rental house in Mashpee.

A lot of our time at the cape we spend hanging out in the backyard and playing in the pool. This year we saw some fantastic leaps in swimming abilities for Celia and Josie. Josie had been swimming without any flotation device in lessons this year but she was still a bit nervous about it. Celia loves to use her floaties, but she made the mistake of jumping in once without them and then swimming across the pool. Then I pointed out to her that she had done it by herself. At first she was shocked and scared, but eventually she was proud of herself for having done it. As always with the pool comes the ice cream! That is one of their favorite parts. I prefer not having to clean the kids up after eating, as they just get wet and cleaned in the pool mostly. They are not neat ice cream cone eaters.

My parents had brought a bunch of inflatibles, a giant ball, two turtles and two tubes. The turtles were fun for having ‘turtle wars’ where you try to bounce them into one another and see who comes up on top. The girls spent a lot of time hopping in and out of the pool with the toys, riding on different ones. Ewan was harder to convince to get into the pool. He spent more time walking around it although we did get him to wear the puddlejumpers a lot of the time so we wouldn’t feel the need to chase him constantly. He liked to play with water on the side and pour it into cups. Eventually I dragged him into the pool and he started to like riding around on the turtles which he calls ‘ugas’, short for ‘tortuga’ (turtle in spanish). I made him do some swimming too but he wasn’t terribly fond of it yet, or even jumping in. He used to enjoy jumping in last year.

Another toy we brought with us was Jordi’s new water rocket he got for fathers day. We took it out to the high schools field with lots of space, and it was good we had the space. This rocket really launches! It was super cool and lots of fun to fill it up and pump it up with the bike pump.

This was Thursday morning right before lunch. As we were doing all this I started to get some phone calls from our carpenter. Our neighbor it seems had found our front doors open that morning and shut them for us. We had a cat sitter coming in twice a day to medicate the cats (argh). Somehow she managed to leave the front door open although swears she wasn’t using it because she couldn’t figure it out. The carpenter had the keys and went into the house to check on the cats at the behest of the neighbor. He couldn’t find a cat (two were upstairs, but only one was found downstairs when there should have been two). So I called the cat sitter and she came from work and couldn’t find George either. We let things settle a bit while we had lunch, I made some more calls back and forth and still no George despite ripping the house apart. There was no sign of him so we made the decision that Jordi would go back home to look for George. Good thing we were less than two hours away at least.

Jordi went home that afternoon, confirmed George was still missing and stayed up late trying to find him. Early the next morning thankfully George reappeared outside in our garage and after chasing him a few times around the house, Jordi was able to catch him and return him to safety. But that cost Jordi a day of vacation by the time he was able to clean up, eat and drive back. Then again at the end of the trip, the cat sitter managed to lock her keys in our house and called fire department before talking to us (and our neighbors who had a key). Thanks to the AFD for showing up, but we did finally get ahold of a neighbor with a full set of keys. But that cat sitter will not be back.

Back again with one more installment about the beach, and the ‘gift’ I conveniently gave my dad for his birthday.

Tonight at dinner they decided to put their heads together and do some weird chanting. I ran for the camera. This week I did have a backup photo though, but I liked this one better. Black bean soup on the face and all.

This morning while working with Josie on her school work, I set Ewan up at the table for one hour of working. He:

-colored pasta noodles with markers

-colored on the tray

-stamped with an ink pad and farm stamps

-cut up the paper with scissors

-cleaned up the tray

-pouring water into little cups and containers

-cleaned up pouring water

-cut string with scissors

-thread the pasta on the string

All in one hour.

Had an epic fail remembering the camera while bringing Josie to field hockey and them farm school, so no outdoor pictures on one of the most gorgeous days of the year sadly. Instead the kids are enjoying the new bathroom light and fan in our downstairs bathroom which lights it up much brighter and actually removed the humid air (our last fan just sort of made noise it seemed). Our bathroom is always a busy place.

Not exactly award winning photography this week, but I forgot my camera when we went to the farm. This is tonight after dinner with Josie and Celia singing ‘boom clap‘ and Ewan literally running circles around them trying to avoid having his picture taken.

I especially like Ezzy’s expression in the background, which is why I didn’t straighten the picture to make it level as it would have cut her out.

As summer draws to a close, let’s see what I can remember from our fun trip to Cape Cod this year. We went at the end of July and stayed in the same house as last year which thankfully we all enjoyed the copious space and bathrooms. It is a nice three bedroom, three bathroom house with a pool in the backyard. We had a slow start to the week with some not so great weather but we enjoyed some indoor activities such as science projects, painting, and other art.

Each year since Josie was little, I’ve taken the kids out early one morning to the beach to have some dunkin donuts and play on the beach while everyone else sleeps in. I take pictures, they enjoy some morning quiet time. Lately though the kids are sleeping in too late for the sunrise, I started when they used to get up waaaay too early. This year though, there was a fairly heavy but not total cloud cover that I knew would burn off as the morning got going. So I rushed them out the door, found a new local tiny beach that was only a few minutes away, and had them try HoneyDew donuts and egg sandwiches instead. We made it to the beach and I got a bit of good sun, and enough shade to take some fun pictures at least although not the most gorgeous ever. They did a whole bunch of shell collecting and watched some kids show up to an early morning boating camp.

We went back to HoneyDew a few times as I took each of the girls out for some one-on-one time with me during Ewans nap. Donuts are much bigger than dunkies!

Last week began our first day of school. The girls were eager to get started even though local schools didn’t start until today officially. Seems right given that we ended earlier too. The girls were helpful for their individual shots, but the group was a disaster as these were the only two shots I got, always one was refusing to cooperate.

Everyone’s at home this year, and so far we’re off to a good start studying about compost, farms, worms and the general math and reading.

Last month Ewan turned 2 according to the calendar, but he picked up the attitude for 2 several weeks before that. He’s decided he has a lot more opinions on how he lives his life, and what he does with his time and he’s not too concerned with our opinion on his ideas. It’s his way, or the high way, or some clever convincing on our part. He has gotten a lot pickier in his eating and won’t even try a lot of foods that he’s previously enjoyed. He also will not be easily deterred from touching and man-handling something that he’s interested in, or retrieving the stool from the bathroom to read something up higher too. He keeps us on our toes.

Ewan is a very happy and energetic guy if he’s gotten enough sleep. He loves to run, jump, pose, point, yell, twist, dance and bounce. He always wants to be on the move and loves to spend time outside, digging in the sand or riding on his bike. For his birthday we took him to Drumlin Farm where he could see the animals, pet the goats and enjoy farm life (before the heat became too much). He has loved to visit Wright-Locke farm which is near us in Winchester and feed the goats carrot peels. When he comes home, and any other time he can get a gate or fence object he uses it to ‘play goats’ where he is the goat that is locked up and then escapes. Then he needs to be herded back into his pen again. He likes to be petted.

In other animal related stories, Ewan calls horses “neigh-boos” because of the sound we have them make with a whinney and then a snort. Jordi does it best. He’ll point out all the neigh-boo’s on the sheets, in the books, driving through the country last week. It’s funny and cute.

Never one to be left out, Ewan also loves to dress up with the girls, including the sparkly tutus. He’s got one small blue one that he considers his own and chooses every time.

Another of Ewan’s favorite games is to play “google express”. That means he rings the doorbell, announces that it’s google express, brings a package into the house and opens it for us. Before doing it again and again. It’s a good thing there aren’t any more neighbors upstairs to be bothered by the bell ringing.

One of Ewan’s most endearing traits is his kindness when his sisters get hurt. He’ll drop everything (including stop nursing) to run to their side and help them stand up and give hugs. I’m glad to say that he’s learned it from them (and me) about how to help someone when they fall down. Let’s hope he continues to keep his loving tradition. Of course we often have the kids hurt because he whacked them with something, he’s not usually so comforting then, more when they fall down on the sidewalk or something.

Just in the last few weeks even his vocabulary has been booming! I hear new words all the time now and he uses full sentences occasionally and usually 3 or more words at a time. He can definitely tell better stories, but he’s also learned how to interrupt more effectively. But we’re onto him as it’s clear he understands what he’s doing!

• Size/weight: 2T month clothes, 25 lbs
• Favorite food: breastmilk, pasta, sweets, broccoli
• Favorite toy: other people
• Favorite book: A Birthday For Cow (or he calls it ‘toot!’ because it’s the first word in the book)
• Favorite activity: running and biking
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8:35; one short nap at 1:30; gets up 6:30am
• New skill: All those words
• Teeth: I should check, haven’t looked in a while
• Vocalizations: Whole sentences!

Last week we went to camp, which I’ll write lots more about too, but here’s the kids on the way out of camp as we made the sad march to our car as camp ended. All the walks were tough to keep the kids on track as there was always so much to see, such as sticks, rocks, trees and dirt 🙂 Josie and Celia are carrying their fairy houses and some backpacks because we just had so much stuff to carry each and every way it was all hands on deck! We were lucky when we didn’t have to carry Ewan too. They all had a great time coming home with lots of dirt under their nails.