This August we got to make a fun trip up to storyland with our friends Sarah, Alex, Anna and Sophie. We drove up on Friday afternoon and the kids did pretty well, Ewan slept almost the entire time and the girls made it through the long drive with only one stop for Panera. We checked into the condo hotel and headed right over to storyland to blast off for some awesome rides. This year Celia was much bigger than two years ago and so she could do almost everything, and Josie was big enough to do every ride she wanted to do, most of them she could do alone even.

First off Celia was mesmerized by the animatronic fruit and vegetables in the front. Sophie and Anna decided to spend their money on storyland drivers licenses. Up we went to the clock-cups ride. The first time we took the bigger kids, and then I tried with Celia and Ewan. Ewan tried to explore the door, Celia grabbed him because she didn’t want him to do that, and then bonked his head on the black center wheel. So before we even got moving, he was off.

The train was interesting for all, just Ewan’s speed and helpful for getting around the park for those who didn’t have to push the stroller!

On the way out of the park we met up with Cinderella to say goodbye!

That first day was short because we went for the deal where you buy a ticket in the last three hours of the day, and you can come back the following day. The next morning we were up bright and early and got to the park way before everyone else. Because I mis-read the opening time, oops 🙂 So we had a bit of time to kill and muddled around outside the gate.

Once we got inside we ran for the antique cars and enjoyed a shared loop around with Josie and Celia driving. For some reason this is the only ride that their height charts are messed up, every other ride Josie was over 48 inches, but apparently she had shrunk overnight and then grew again. Soooo some of the favorites of the day were the polar coaster (Celia and Josie), the new roarosaurus (my favorite) and the farm cars (Ewans). Josie has also taken a new liking to the tilt-a-whirl (called the turtles here) which was a favorite of mine as a kid. Now apparently my inner-ear fluid is solidifying and that ride comes close to making me sick. But of all four adults, I was the only one willing to go on spinning rides and roller coasters, so I got to go on a lot of rides! I let Jordi do the wet rides though, and went with Ewan to have some fudge and explore the nursery rhyme section.

In the early afternoon we also had booked tea time with Cinderella! She had a whole lot of tables all set up with tea and a rice krispie and talked with all her guests before reading them a story, taking a picture, and giving out a coloring book. It was very sweet

At the part and all weekend we had a great time, ate some ice cream, and took it easy back at the hotel. The less fun part was coming home, Ewan came down with a fever later on Saturday which came back on Sunday. When we stopped for lunch at a brick-oven pizza place, and were seated right next to it, it made his fever spike even higher and caused a febrile seizure. I had the hostess call 911 and I went with Ewan to the hospital in the ambulance where it took him a long time to feel better. Eventually Jordi and the girls caught up with us after finishing lunch and we kept waiting for him to smile but the poor kid wasn’t feeling so good. About 3 hours later he did finally get his fever down fairly low thanks to tylenol and motrin and we were able to bring him home. So the memories of the weekend are a bit overshadowed by the big scare, but they said that the fevers won’t hurt, and aren’t likely to happen again.

Josie’s a real stickler for realism in photos.

Ewan now keeps me extra on my toes, as he got up into this spot by himself.

This year at the end of July we went on our annual trip with my parents to Cape Cod for a week. This time we tried out a new house, still with a pool, but it was overall a bit smaller. We had a great time, but it’s always a pretty chill and relaxing week for us. We get there, play in the pool, go to the beach a few times, do an early morning trip of just me and the kids to dunkies and the beach, play more in the pool, do some grilling, eat lots of ice cream and pretty much that’s the week! The kids get older so their habits change a bit.

This year Ewan could do something on the beach other than just nap in the tent with me. He loved to dig in the sand and found low tide to be super fun to run around in the small puddles, jumping and throwing balls into them. We spent two whole days at the beach and low tide was near the end and they still all loved it. The water was warmer and shallower to run in.

Josie and Celia enjoyed their boogie boards going way out in the water with a grown up. They also liked finding hermit crabs and snails in the tide pools. Celia is still very big on digging and making castles whereas Josie wanted to spend more time in the water and even practiced a bit of swimming.

For our morning trip to the beach we were all a little too late with the super-early sunrise in July (rather than late August) to really get the good light, but we made an effort and they had fun digging and eating some munchkins.

The house this year was further from the beach, and so that made evening beach outings not so frequent. We only made it out once to fly kites and take pictures. But two of those days we were just barely getting home for dinner anyway from the beach. We also made it to one cotuit kettleers baseball game. (Note to self: no vegetarian food, bring dinner next year) We fed them a well rounded diet of popcorn, nachos with cheeze Celia refused to eat, ice cream and a cheese on a hamburger bun.

As always we spent a lot of time hanging around the house, letting Ewan nap, doing art projects and generally relaxing.

One of Ewan’s favorite activities, typical of a 1 year old, was play with the pots and pans. The kitchen was super loaded with supplies and we only had so many cabinet locks so he had his pick of several pots and pans and enjoyed stacking and banging them.

On Thursday night we managed to get a beautiful day, an early dinner and got us all clean and out to the beach to take pictures. Last year was a serious flop, but this year we hit it right and didn’t have any diaper blow-outs. I’ll leave you with some of my favorite photos of the year so far of us all!

When Ewan was born he ‘brought’ with him a family gift of a zoo membership, so that expired this July as he was born in July! The kids and I made one last trip down to the zoo together to enjoy all it had to offer. We spent the whole day there from opening till almost closing and still didn’t quite see everything! First off we learned that Ewan uses the word ‘woof’ to mean more than just dogs, because they don’t have dogs at the zoo and he said ‘woof’ for a few of them. He was also very impressed with the giraffes.

If I could have interpreted his baby language it would be ‘wow look at THAT THING! hey look dirt down here!’ Josie and Celia love to scamper all over the climbing structures that abound. Ewan was also suitable impressed with a kangaroo that looked like it was just showing off for us, hoping back and forth super fast. Ewan tried to jump like him, not a skill he’s mastered yet.

Then they played in the dirt some more, then we fed the budgee’s. No pictures here because I was trying to keep Celia from freaking out about the birds flying down and trying to land on us. You’d think someone had shown her Hitchcock. We bought some food to feed the birds who then flew right down to my hand and ate it. I was carrying Ewan on the front at the time so he made a few grabs for a bird and a few of the birds considered landed on him to see if he had food too. Celia was too scared but Josie tried a little but didn’t like the feel of the birds nails on her. Ewan and I thought they were pretty cool. I easily had six little birds on my hand and arms at a time, so cute.

We had a picnic lunch. Celia fell (not far) out of the tree and landed on a rock on her bum, ouch. Then we headed over to the Gorillas who were very sleepy at this post-lunch-time. Ewan managed to make the big one smile, and lots of other people watching the gorillas smile as he ran around and hid from me.

And here’s a realistic picture of what really happens when I try to photograph them. Celia hides, Ewan makes faces, and Josie doesn’t stop talking.

In this case, while it was a nice location, the photo just wasn’t worth it as they were not in the mood. Mostly they wanted to play with sticks and dirt.

Next we went to see the flamingos. Celia thought they looked thirsty I guess, and dropped her water bottle into their enclosure. Oops. And the dang thing has our name on it so the zoo people could track us down if they wanted to. Not like there are any more than five people in the world with our last name! Thankfully it didn’t actually fall into the birds, just the space around them.

We saw more birds, and more stuff that people dropped into the enclosures, sunglasses, pencils and such. Then headed back to the gorilla statue that had been monopolized by camps earlier in the day and got another mom to snap one of us.

Celia couldn’t manage to look away from the impending camp group coming toward us, we had been dodging the many groups all day as they were loud and rambunctious. Then she fell down the statue. Poor kid had a rough day.

After a nice recharging snack we went through the barnyard and finally I let them go to the massive giant expansive playground. I had been avoiding it because once they were there no way were they going to do anything else. It was so late the camps had finally cleared out though so it wasn’t super busy and I felt comfortable letting my eyes off of Celia and Josie once they promised to stay together. Ewan thought the place was fantastic and I chased him around for a while till it was time to head home or risk sitting in insane amounts of traffic. Plus Ewan hadn’t napped since the drive over, and he definitely needed to nap again. One more picture by a stroke of luck they were all looking. It was an exhausting but great final trip to the zoo for this years membership!

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.

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

Oh how I keep falling behind on here, lots to keep us busy elsewhere! Earlier this month Josie decided that instead of a party, she wanted us to go to the Cape Codder Resort again with my parents for the weekend. She had the whole thing planned out, at least for the swimming and eating part of the weekend. She took us to Olive Garden on Friday night, Dunkies, Friendly’s and a local burrito place on Saturday and then IHOP and Not Your Average Joes on Sunday. And in most all of these places she told them it was her birthday trip and so we got lots of fun bonuses of singing and cake and ice cream. It was the first time my parents had ever been to the hotel and they enjoyed getting to see what we do every year! Since it was May and not February we got to spend some real time in the outdoor pool enjoying the lack of chlorine and some real sunshine. It felt nice and warm and not insanely freezing or snowing on our heads while in the pool. Josie and Celia have really been taking to swimming more lately as they’ve been taking lessons at the Y. Ewan mostly got put in the pool right when he was ready for naps, so I was often bringing him back to the room to snooze after a short time.

We had a good weekend and it was great to have the adult favored ratio of adults to kids. I even got to go shopping for a new bathing suit. On the way home we stopped at a beach to enjoy for a short time before some heavy rains came in. Ewan enjoyed his first time in sand since last summer. Lots of pictures!

Happy 6 years around the sun to my lovely Josie! She designed her own cake, I implemented it mostly, but she helped with the baking of the chocolate cake part. There is a ton left, anyone need some cake?

She also planned the whole day, starting with the food. We had blueberry chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, then we had gymnastics class. Then off to Friendly’s for lunch with my parents including a design your own ice cream sundae. From there we went out to the Stone zoo and met up with Josie’s friend Bronwyn. Home again for a short time to play with the birthday gifts she opened in the morning before going to Comellas for dinner with Jordi and my parents. Then home for cake, more presents and bed. She forgot to ask for the ice cream with the cake at dessert tonight, but I don’t think anyone went away less than stuffed. Then she’s also got us booked for this upcoming weekend, but I’ll update on that later.

The girls started a new set of swimming lessons this spring. Josie was super excited as they moved her up two levels after the first day. Celia was not so pleased by the second lesson though because now her sister wasn’t in class with her anymore (although they were at the same time). But we persevered and went to family swim as well to help her get more comfortable and now they’re both swimming like fishes. Well sort of, Celia swims like a fish with a big piece of styrofoam on her back, and Josie swims like a fish with a lot of water getting in it’s mouth, but it’s been big progress for both of them.

They’ve just about finished up the first session and will start a second to keep the moment going for summer. Josie got moved up a level so she’s thrilled, Celia’s teacher says she made fantastic progress, but will need to learn to swim with fewer bubbles on her back (4 currently) before she’ll be ready to move on to another level. Celia has thus far refused to move down to three bubbles, but she says she’s going to jump in off the block next time. This past week was ‘peek week’ which meant the parents got to come in with cameras and take pictures. I was the only looney one doing that pretty much. But I’m pleased. My dad came and hung out with Ewan so I wouldn’t be trying to balance a baby and my camera next to the water.