It's summmahhhhhhh!!!
Which means we've been doing one of two things lately.
Either 1:
Or 2:
We've been basically living in the backyard or the park each afternoon. The backyard last week, loading up with all the water activities we could think of because it was hella hot out. The park this week because it's back to being slightly cooler, a little bit breezy. It's actually my favorite kind of weather (aka not breaking a sweat just because you walked out the door), but shhhhh...don't tell all the SUMMER IS THE BEST SEASON EVERRRRR crazies that. And I will definitely take a break from the swimsuit washing/sunscreen re-reapplying/swim diaper dealing with that was our constant last week.
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Though we have been up to some other things. Soccer, for one.
Yeah, mom, we should totally take a picture looking right into the sun. Good idea.
The twins are enrolled in the local parks and rec "Pre-Games" class for the summer. Their two-week soccer intensive (like, all of four days) is over now, and they'll soon tackle kickball, t-ball, and tag games to take us through into August. It's so nice that they can actually sign up for these type of activities now. Last summer about killed us because 2 1/2 is juuuust too young to sign up for basically any organized sports or classes. Though we'll run into the same exact problem again next summer with Nolan, who already runs onto the soccer field every chance he gets to snag a ball and score a goal. He basically thinks he's a three-year old, too, and who can blame him? To be fair, he could probably take them. He walks right over and throws the ball in the net like, "See?!? I get it! I got this, guys."
He probably would help them score more goals than they did at their game on Wednesday, where (if we bothered to keep score at 3 and 4-year old soccer) the score ended up at something like 32 - 1. Team Green Alligators didn't do so hot at remembering to put that ball in the net. Goalie Brooklyn stood and watched as the ball went right by her, and then immediately started clapping because: Yay! Somebody made a goal! That's a good thing! We clap for that, right?!? I heard Coach Cody tell the green team that they could take the ball from the other team and Caden asked, "But what if they say, 'No, don't take my ball?'" and Cody was all, "No, this is soccer you can still take it anyway!" and so I guess the real problem here is that we've raised kids that are too dang polite. Good job, us.
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They've also started up with school again. An outdoor class for summer, just for a few weeks. It feels like I've over-scheduled myself through the middle of July, since Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are filled up with activities in the morning, but I know that come early August, when it's down to only Monday and Wednesday, we'll be trying to figure out what to do. And I shudder to think of the end of that month, those few weeks when the summer activities all cease but preschool has yet to begin, and we'll be walking around in circles and probably overdosing on TV and what the heck it's still summer can we move on with things already and it will probably be too hot out again making it just too difficult to try to figure out anything to do.
They do a pretty good job of looking like they know what they are doing when the amount of fishing knowledge combined between the three of them is exactly ZERO.
I'm not exactly sure what the sweet spot is as far as scheduling goes. Three mornings a week, plus another one for grocery shopping, almost seems like too many activities, but two mornings a week doesn't seem like near enough. The way it is, once Friday morning rolls around, we're ready to be off and running again.
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Nolan continues to add words on top of words on top of words. His new favorites are to say "hi!" and "bye!" while he waves at anyone he sees, probably for an uncomfortably long time. If someone walks by our house he will wave at them the entire time it takes to walk past. He's still obsessed anytime a dog walks by ("pup-pup!") and is probably wondering where all the buses went ("It's a bus! It's a bus it's a bus it's a buuussssssss!"). His favorite word is "push", which he uses all day long to to refer to everything from the buttons on the microwave to being pushed on the swing to every light switch ever in existence. He's also mastered saying Brooklyn, "Book-ah!", and has maaaayyybeee finally started saying "mama" this week.
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Overhearing this as they watch TV together, even more pea-in-a-pod than usual:
Ever-present fishhook and all...
B: Know what? I love you. Do you love me?
C: Yeah, I love you.
*hugs*
Me: *melts*
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I planted a garden for the first time this year. Okay, "garden" since everything is entirely contained in little planter boxes. It's the first time I've really had the opportunity since we'd only lived in apartments previously, and last summer - our first as homeowners - was taken over by a fairly new baby.
I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure everything is planted too close together, but for the most part things are growing and getting taller and budding and perking up and turning greener and generally looking like they should (says the gardening novice). The cilantro doesn't look like it's going to make it and I'm not so sure about the cucumbers but everything else looks alright. The rest of the herbs look and smell downright yummy and the carrots seem to be flourishing, not to mention the broccoli is growing things that actually look like broccoli. For now. It's definitely an experiment. A $150 experiment.
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Mostly, life lately has been this:
Life happening in the foreground (5-minute bread), chaos in the background.