Back to School.

Look at how cute this little knuckleheads are, in their matching outfits! Ellie was so excited that they could wear the same shirt, and go to the same school. Adam was so excited that his friend Nico from the YMCA Kidzone was at his school and in his kindergarten class that he walked into the room without even turning back to say goodbye to me. Which is better than having him physically pulled off of me, as has sometimes happened in preschool.

Ellie has a few good buddies in her class. Her former "boyfriend" Preston (of the "we're going to get married, we don't care HOW LONG we have to wait!" fame) is now just a friend to her allegedly, but I have seen them do a lot of strolling the play ground together before and after school. Her teacher suggested she do more reading by herself, so even though Tim and I have said all summer she should start rereading Harry Potter book one on her own, she didn't start until Monday afternoon when the teacher told her. Adam is happy to head into class and happy to see me at the end - I'm sure he's being his usual social butterfly self - I just hope he's sitting his bottom down and using his listening ears. The bigger transition for him is not napping anymore (though he did lay down for an hour today after getting up early this morning) and not being able to take Lamby with him - we are trying to transition to Lamby being a friend who only stays inside of our house

Also this week, we started AYSO soccer practice, which is quite a step up from them ding-donging around the turf at the Y with a variety of kids. This is divided by gender and ages, so Ellie won't get the chance to beat some four year old like a drum on the pitch. Thus far, the coaches are really nice, and the schedule is okay-ish. Ellie has two practices a week, including one one Friday about an hour after gymnastics, so I look forward to seeing if she's able to stay awake through dinner.

As you can see, Adam is running outside the boundaries of the field. Was not able to get a picture of him with the siglet over his head like Cornholio. Good news, BEST FWIEND NICO is also on his soccer team.

For me, the three hours between drop off and pick up are going too fast, especially since mom and dad are out of town and I'm in charge of getting Sara to work. But the good news is that since Adam is an early bird, I don't have to miss out on my favorite work out classes at the Y, but before I work out, I have coffee and cat time in my quiet, empty house.

Summer Loving.

Well, it's our last weekend of the summer! We did it!

The past few days we've been doing some additional fun things, and I've joked that I'm trying to trick the kids into having lots of good memories of ice cream and swimming and fun nights out, versus the dog days where we watched a lot of TV inside to escape the heat or I yelled at them to quit fighting with each other and quit talking back to me.

We got all of our school supplies at Target - please remind me next summer to not take them with me, as there was a lot of crying about who got to put glue sticks into the cart, etc etc. I'm sure somewhere on the internet there is a story written by a stranger who is like "mean mom in Target, I saw you snap at your son and threaten to walk out with nothing, cherish every moment because before you know it, they'll be gone to college." Hopefully she also caught the direct quote "I know you have to go potty because you won't leave your penis alone, so quit fighting me, it's time to go potty!"

Mimi took them back to school shopping and they came home squealing with joy about all of their new LEWKS, and then have told everyone they met since about their great LEWKS for the coming year. I also did a thorough closet purge, so hopefully now everyone's drawers are full of clothes that actually fit them. I suspect Adam has outgrown his 5T pants over the summer though, so a trip to Children's Orchard will be in order for more "cool jeans" when the weather gets colder.

Yesterday we went to the beach with Gigi for a few hours after our morning YMCA work outs. The tide was low as were the rip tides, so it was fairly relaxing for all, even if the ground at Doheny is super rocky. At one point, Ellie and Gigi went for a walk down the beach, and then I saw them walking out to the sand bar, Gigi hauling Ellie, since she had water shoes on and Ellie did not, and eventually I thought "this is how my mom takes a digger before another trip to South Africa and once again doesn't get to go" so I paddled out on the boogie board, and told Ellie to lay herself on it and paddle in. The best part of the kids and the boogie boards was when they'd wash up on shore and not know what to do, and seemed offended that I thought they could roll off into 4 inches of water and then stand up using their legs. As I said, meanest mommy. Adam spent a bunch of his time digging and building with two other boys. Their main material was some of the larger rocks from the bottom near the shore, and so they'd find one and shout "come and look at this big, bad boy!" Listening to three little dudes yell "look at this bad boy," "do you have a bad boy?" "come help me with this bad boy!" was pretty hysterical. If I had a nickle for every time they said bad boy, I would have at least been able to pay for our time on the parking meter.

We finally found out their teachers - Adam has the same teacher for kinder that Ellie had for kinder and first. She was a brand new teacher when Ellie was in kindergarten, so it's kind of fun that we get to three-peat on her career. I know nothing about Ellie's second grade teacher, but a couple of her girlfriends from last year are in her class. She loves learning and is such a teacher's pet that I don't really worry about her too much (plus in this day and age, public school teachers are doing it for the love of the job, not because of the outrageously high salary and great benefits.) I can't wait to see what they think of day one! In the meantime, just getting all of the lunch items ready to go, back packs pulled out of closets, and mentally preparing to set the alarm and be up at a decent hour after a summer of sloth.

Prime Numbers.

If I have been remiss in updating this blog, it's because I am now very elderly and received a grave shock, and haven't quite recovered.

So this past Monday I turned 37. Saturday before, I went out with a couple of girlfriends to hang out for the day, to celebrate that three of the five of us are summer babies. We had pedicures, lunch and cocktails, and Sara Jo drove me back to my house, where I expected we'd hang out with our kids and husbands and order pizza and drink a few more beers. But then I opened the door of my house and the three other ladies were there with their families, as were a bunch of my LA-based girlfriends and their spouses, and Jake was holding a tablet with Becca skyped in, and everyone was yelling SURPRISE. I have never been more surprised, shocked or pleased in all of my life! I've always wanted a surprise party but figured it wasn't in Tim's wheelhouse! Boy was I happy to be proven wrong! He'd organized the whole thing, had it catered by the local Mexican place we love and gotten Jake to come over and babysit all day so that he could run to Costco and pick up cake and beer (that's right, Costco cake, my truest love language.)

IT WAS AMAZING. We had a really fun, relaxed night - the kids all scattered to play in the house and the adults sat out back and gorged ourselves on tacos and enchiladas and chips and guac. It was so, so fun. I went to bed smiling like the Chesire cat, feeling so very loved.

And then the next day, we had some time to fart around in the morning and then it was time to pick up Becca and Hazel at the airport for additional SURPRISE time! So I got to spend my birthday with my best friend, and Ellie's new best friend.

And while Becca was here, we even managed a drive up to Woodland Hills to see Lauren and baby Piper, who is roughly a month younger than Hazel Bazel. Ellie was in total heaven, having two babies to shoosh and kiss and love upon.

PLUS I got to have my usual fun birthday dinner with my folks - the kids helped Auntie Sara make a dirt cake, many delicious gummy worms, and we had dinner with the Fords as well during the week, so I am well and truly spoiled rotten. And still surprised about it all.

Bonus picture of Adam wearing a wig, at birthday lunch with the ladies. I feel like if you put a squash blossom on him, he could be your zany anthropology professor.

What else? The Friday before, Blizzard rented out the Long Beach Aquarium for their summer party, so we got to go and see a bunch of fish and pet a bunch of sharks. They also fed the otters while we were there and threw in a bunch of toys for them, so that was really adorable to see.

The kids go back to school a week from tomorrow, and we find out their teachers on Thursday night. The last couple weeks have been very fun and relaxed - it was lovely having such cute houseguests for a few days, and the week before the kids were in YMCA art camp in the afternoons and made all sorts of good arts and also crafts. This coming week they are going back to school shopping for first day outfits with Mimi, and we need to get everyone's hair cut and school supplies purchased. HERE I COME, TARGET! We went out to brunch today with some friends and there was a Nordstrom Rack nearby, so we went over and got new shoes for everyone - Adam's tennies were beat to death at the beginning of the summer, but since he's only needed them to have closed toed shoes at the Y, I didn't want to replace them until the last minute. Ellie got some new slip on shoes, as I discovered her kerplotchies are almost a size too small, and we stopped at Boot Barn to upgrade her the next size in cowgirl boots. She's not even eight years old yet, and is in the last size of children's shoe sizes, yikes.

Meanwhile, at brunch today Adam was doing a word search, and pointed to LE and goes "that spells Lee." I pointed out the letters C-O-P to him and he said cop. Also figured out Run and Go. MY BABY CAN READ! (a little bit.) Makes me feel better about kindergarten upcoming, because it's not like I've been making them do summer homework (though we read to them every night.)

Campfire Stories

Ellie had a really nice wrap up with her final week at day camp. They had a farewell ceremony on Friday where they invited the parents to come and hear all of the songs and say goodbye to everyone. They said everyone was also going to get an award, and I was a-feared that it would be one of those ceremonies while you listen to EVERY kid get an award and try not to whistle at them to hurry it up because you don't care about everyone's special darling, but thankfully, awards were written down and awarded afterwards, so we could privately coo over how sweet and amazing our girls are.

Also thankfully, it wasn't too hot and we were in the shade, with a breeze. As you can see, Adam found a spot next to his sister, while Ellie has her death grip on her forever bestie. She tried telling us that she loves Lexi more than her parents, and Lexi was like "I still like my parents best." Which, correct answer, I knew Lexi was my favorite daughter.

Because then after two weeks of solid camp, Kristen graciously allowed the kids to sleep over on Friday night, so in total, Ellie and Lexi spent two whole days together. Saturday instead of just picking up our kids, we spent basically the whole day in their pool. That's friendship for all!

This week the kids are doing an afternoon art camp through the YMCA, which is great for all. We go to the Y in the morning so I can work out, then have lunch and fart around, and then they get three hours of art-ing and I get three hours to relax or get work done. Note to self: put both kids in the same camp during the earlier part of the summer, to save on sanity. It's also awesome to be at the Y where everybody knows our names. It's funny - yesterday when we arrived, the director took Lamby from Adam and showed me that she'd put him in a cabinet. I grabbed him on our way out at 5, but then poor Miss Elizabeth told me she woke up in the middle of the night last night panicked that we hadn't picked up Lamby and that Adam was also lying awake in a panic. No worries, we have many lambs! And as I've been telling Adam, when kindergarten comes, Lamby's going to have to learn to live in the house, like the animal he is.

"Yes, hello, I heard you are looking for wild animals? I have made a fort."

Attention Campers!

Ellie and Lexi are half way through their two weeks at day camp, and having a blast. The camp is 9-3 and it's all outside, all day. They've done archery, they've skate boarded, they've ridden horses, they've had a lot of fun just playing outside in the water. I picked them up the first day and asked if they had any camp nicknames yet. They were incredulous in their denial, and then told me "our counselors names are Mangia and Comet. And the head person, her name is Toaster, which is short for Brave Little Toaster. Those are their real names." Okay girls, whatever you say! They've been told that the camp only hires people with odd names, and boy howdy do they believe it.

They're having a great time - every day they're happy and tired, and with our commune parenting going on, they usually get to hang out until 5pm or later every day, and yet, cry when we tell them that we can't do group dinner, or that we have to take Lexi home. Gigi and Grizz have graciously opened their pool to us in the afternoons, which is a great treat after a long hot day.

We also went and got gelato one day, also a wonderful treat.

We also had a fun weekend - had a big pool party on Friday night (I'm amazed my children didn't fall asleep in the water) and then Saturday morning they had swim lessons and then we headed down to the Laguna Beach Ruby's for a Special Olympics Tip-A-Cop.

It was a really fantastic morning - lots of officers, lots of great athletes, and then a local exotic car dealership brought over a bunch of fancy cars. There were literally millions of dollars worth of horsepower out in the small, PCH-adjacent parking lot. Oh, and there was face painting, obviously.

From there, down to Oceanside to celebrate Coco's second birthday and hang out with the cousins.

What more could you want than all of these sweet little faces? Adam was very enamored with Coco. He's so sweet when it comes to smaller children and animals (I love how he always calls Taco "Taco Baby" and coos at him.)

Yesterday we grabbed Gigi home from the airport and did some swimming, and then Tim and I ditched the kids with Julia, once our little lady flower girl, so that we could go out to dinner for our anniversary.

Lucky Number 13!

Another Gross Milestone.

Apparently, this summer I'm checking horrible things off my parenting bucket list/worst case scenario chart. Stitches? Check! Head lice? CHECK. GROSS. Ellie's been itching her head for a few weeks now - most of the summer really. I've looked at her scalp, mom's looked at her scalp, Eileen has looked at her scalp. Probably a solid dozen times over the past few weeks and seen nothing, until Friday, when mom saw one crawling on her. HORF.

The bad news is that you still have to burn your house to the ground to be sure the lice are gone. Just kidding - it's a lot of vacuuming and running the washing machine (RIP Mom's washer, ugh) and either bagging soft goods or running them through the dryer. The good news is that the most effective way of ending a lice infestation is to clean the scalp of all nits and eggs, and they have salons where you can go and pay a nice lady to scrape your scalp like she's trying to tan a piece of leather. It took her ninety minutes to clean me and the kids - if I'd been trying to do it by myself it would have taken me twice as long to do Adam's head. Then we had to sleep with a bunch of oils on our head to smother anything that might still be lurking, and the kids were so good about having their beds stripped, new quilts put on and being made to sleep on a towel so that they didn't stain their bedding.

We've all been cleaning like crazy people, so hopefully we're good to go. Though, much like stitches, we could easily get lice again, though maybe I'll turn into one of those germaphobes who won't let their kids share hair brushes. Gigi already got Ellie her own hair brush for their house, for when we're brushing out her rats nest after swimming.

Ellie started camp this week - I look forward to her being totally exhausted and happy the next two weeks, spending all day every day with Lexi. She finished up her last stint of diving lessons (for now) and really came a long way in eight lessons!

Meanwhile, Adam has gotten a lot of his own skills this year. Last summer, he'd scream CANNYBALL and then just jump in. Now he knows the name of his jump, AND actually makes himself into a ball.

My baby! Growing right up.

Fun Parents.

This has been our last week before the kids start going to their camps, and so everyone's been trying to get as much swimming and lazing it.

Last Friday, I left for Chicago for a long weekend to hang out with Becca and Brian, Benjy and new baby Hazel. No real plans on the agenda, just being a third adult in the house and lending my hands where I could (oh, you need me to hold this sleeping baby and smell her head while you shower? Twist my arm, why don't you?) I remember how wonderful it was when Becca stayed with us after each of our kids was born, and I'm glad I was able to do the same for her.

Clearly a struggle, but someone has to do it. It was also a good reality check about my own kids. They're frustrating, sure, but they're not quite as irrational and hard to deal with as a newborn and a two and a half year old. Benjy would be giving his parents the business about bedtime, and I'd be in the other room trying not to laugh out loud about the ridiculousness of it all, even though when Adam pulls the same kind of crap with me, it takes all I have not to just lock him in a cage under the house (I would make him dig a crawl space first, downside of not having a basement.)

Meanwhile, Tim was able to take the time off from work and stay home and be Fun Dad. Which, turns out Fun Dad Tim is basically college Tim - seeing as many movies in the theater as possible and eating fast food. Whatever works, right? They saw the Incredibles 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3, they got to have Happy Meals and sleep over one night at Gigi's house, and spent some time hanging out with Mimi and Poppy as well. Plus met friends for pizza at the park on Sunday night, which everyone reported was a blast. I appreciate that Tim gives me no guff when I book my plane tickets - I think it helps that he remembers too what a blessing it was to have Becca come and sit with me when I was in the depths of post-partum hell.

Not to be out done by Fun Dad, I did my best Fun Mom impression yesterday. Kristen and I took the kids up to LA to bum around Miracle Mile and all the museums for the day. Again, I'm grateful my kids are the age they are - it was nice to know we could all power through without a nap. The girls can wear their safety vests (they make the adult seat belts go correctly across a smaller body) so that they can sit in the third row of Kristen's car and we could all go together. She drove - I threw snacks back to the kids.

We started at the Petersen Museum, which I thought the car loving boys would really dig. I worked there from 2006-2008, and my last week was actually exactly ten years ago this week. They've done a total renovation, inside and outside, since I left, so it was quite a trip to see how different things were, and what's still familiar. The biggest downside is they took out the first floor Streetscape exhibit, which was about the history of the car in Los Angeles. And they've made the vault something you can pay to tour on the regular, so it felt like a lot of the most interesting cars were downstairs, for $30 more a person (and our kids were too young to go on the tour anyways.) But the kids had a great time looking at everything - they mostly loved the dates on the vehicles and figuring out how old I was and Kristen was when whatever car was built. And they loved the kids area, especially coloring, and building lego cars to race.

I feel like the amazement on my kids' face when I told them this used to be my office is probably the coolest I'll ever be to them.

Afterwards, we went over to LACMA. I hadn't realized that it's closed on Wednesdays, so we didn't go inside. Which was fine, the kids were starting to get tired and crabby, and being at Urban Light and Levitated Mass is probably enough weird art stuff for them at this age. We also peeked at one of the Koontz statues, so plenty of goofball times.

We also walked around the outside of the La Brea tarpits and learned about all of the creatures that met their death there.

Here are the girls being sad about the mammoths. Again - another one where the outside part is almost as good as the inside museum at this age and time of day.

Afterwards, we took them to my favorite restaurant (now Ellie's favorite as well) Bottega Louie, for dessert snacks and a small happy hour break for the moms. The girls were delighted to have their own table, and I overheard them toasting to "a long day." Kristen and I cheered to the same.

They all went nuts looking at the display of macroons, and then three out of four said that the cookies were gross - the girls didn't like the filling inside (vanilla frosting!) and Judd didn't like that the cookie was crumbly. Adam shoved his right into his pie hole. They did great on the drive back, and traffic wasn't too awful. I got to show them the building I worked in right after grad school, and the building that I was in right before I "retired." It was like a tour of my young, professional years! (minus all of the really wretched temp jobs, thankfully.) Fun Mom day, showing them back when I was actually fun, and not yet a mom.

Tim picked up Mexican food for us to eat upon arrival home, and then the kids cried when we told them it was time to go - sometimes twelve hours straight with your bestie isn't enough, I get it.