A Torrential Downpour of Good Times and Pictures

School has ended! Parties have happened! We've gotten SO MUCH RAIN!

Last Day of School pic

The week was crazy. Monday was a holiday, Tuesday was a very full work day, and Wednesday was Claire's awards ceremony!

You'll be glad to know she graduated first grade, even if she isn't happy about it at all. She has loved first grade like she loved Kindergarten- possibly even more- and she is truly devastated to leave her teacher behind. Remember when I wrote my post about daycare kids and how wonderful it is to find these people who become such important bright spots of love in your kids' lives? Well elementary school can be like that too and her first grade teacher is a true bright spot.

Claire also got Outstanding Citizenship, High Honor Roll, and Reader Leader for every six weeks. It's been a great year for her. She's learned so much and, possibly not related, lost so many teeth.

Wednesday was also the big kids' first summer league swim practice of the year and Claire got stung by a bee! Tons of excitement all around.

Past experience with bees

Thursday was almost normal, except I taught two barre classes that night, at 5:00 and 7:00, which was fun and exhausting. I wouldn't normally do that except my old studio needed a sub and I love them and I so rarely miss a night with the kiddos that it felt okay. Especially since I was taking off the next day for Last Day of School shenanigans. And I'd just bought new stripey yoga pants I needed to justify. (They're beautiful, no additional justification was really needed.)

Also on Thursday, Landon did his oral presentation for his third grade state project to Claire's first grade class! It was random that their classes got paired, but it was so cute.

Claire's teacher sent me pictures- look at her listening intently to her brother's presentation!

Landon had a note card of facts and everything, but he told me he didn't really even need to use it. Then he proved it by repeating his presentation to me about 5 times while I made dinner. He may be too cool for me to mess up his hair, but he remains earnest and adorable about all academic endeavors.

Now for Friday! Landon's awards ceremony was at 1:00. He also graduated! He loved third grade, but unlike Claire, is quite delighted to move on to fourth. (Fourth!)

He also got High Honor Roll and a bunch of other things.

Claire loves school with her whole heart, Landon thinks it's great mostly because he's effortlessly good at it and he's a social butterfly who needs a swarm and a reason to do his hair in the morning. We loved his teacher this year and are so thankful for all she did to keep him challenged and excited about class each day.

It's been a wonderful year. I genuinely can't believe it's over.

Friday afternoon was a little Last Day of School pool party. James had to coach until 7 and I knew my kids would be crazy, so I wanted people over to drink margaritas while the kids play in the pool. We planned to order some catered Mexican food and make is super easy and splashy.

Except it rained. It rained the minute school got out and didn't feel like stopping. Now I suddenly had 22 people in my house in swim suits. Luckily, I also had the margaritas and 90's Smash Hits on my Spotify. So we rocked out. Twelve old people in a kitchen with margaritas in Yetis. Every memory was better than the last. We knew every word to every song we didn't know we remembered. Our kids were appalled. As every generation has noted, kids just don't understand good music these days.

make it stoooooppp

We got the food and ate picnic style on the floor. My kids, who have never eaten a bite of food away from the kitchen table found this to be AMAZING.

A million 90's songs later and the skies cleared just before bedtime. The kids jumped in the pool and I made a 4th pitcher of margaritas.

It was a good time, even if I had to pull the dust buster out a few times along the way. I can handle a lot. I can't handle food anywhere food isn't supposed to be.

Today (Saturday; it's been a full week) was Claire's MUCH anticipated birthday party! 25 1st graders and siblings coming to our house to swim! Troll themed, with lots of music, a treasure hunt in the pool, and ALL THE SWIMMING. So obviously, it started raining immediately after we woke up. Landon and I ran errands at 11 and water was just being dumped from the sky onto our heads like it was personal.

The party was supposed to go from 2-4 and I was standing in Michael's at 12:30 trying to think of backup craft activities to do in the house when I just couldn't handle it and sent a red-alarm emoji-filled text to all the parents officially postponing the party until 3. We've never had to do that before but the chance of rain went down every hour after 1:00 and I just hoped and prayed it would help. And we couldn't push back more than that because we had ANOTHER pool party for a friend that started at 6:00. So we continued our errands, forgoing the practical craft-filled backup plan and going for hopes and pretend sun god sacrifices instead.

It totally worked.

I set up all the snacks and decorations inside beforehand, because I have to party-prep somehow and it was actively raining outside until EXACTLY 2:55 p.m. So everyone admired the spread and then went straight outside to swim, hallelujah.

Eventually I trusted the blue skies enough to transfer all the snacks back outside where they belonged. I made Trolls-themed chex snack mix with multiple eye-searing colors of candy melts.

We had 48 bags of cotton-candy "Troll hair."

Poppy's pink party punch for grown-ups and water and juice for the kiddos.

A giant rainbow cake from Costco because "rainbows" felt the most Troll-like of the options.

But mostly, there was swimming.

James even got to swim when he jumped in fully clothed to rescue a drowning child whose parent dropped off their kid without telling us he COULDN'T SWIM. When I told the parent what happened at the pickup, he shrugged and said "yeah, that's happened before." [RAGE]

But everyone had fun. Even the poor child who couldn't swim but happily played on the steps under the eagle-eye of James and his wet shorts for the rest of the time.

Claire opened her presents- lots of Trolls and arts and crafts, utter perfection for our shiny happy near-7-year-old. The $10-20 birthday price point is really her jam.
She has no long-term collections or preferences, she just loves lots of little things she can squirrel away in her 1,000 shoe box treasure boxes like the happy hoarder she is.

I'll write about her birthday milestone tomorrow- she's owed her own post, so I'll wrap up with a pic from our super fun second pool party of the day. Our kids somehow found it thrilling to swim hard for 2 more hours, including this kid who is now too cool for goggles at a coed 9-year-old birthday party and who I honestly didn't recognize when I spotted him across the pool.

And now, moments before midnight, we're off to bed so we can celebrate our sweet sunshine girl in the morning. Can't believe my Biscuit is turning 7. What fun it has been every year so far.

Hey Girl Hey

I don't know where I've been. Mostly I've been here. We celebrated the kids' summer birthdays at school last Thursday. Claire was thrilled down to her toes and even Landon was still excited to see us in his daytime habitat. I feel like our window is going to start to close on that with him, so I'm soaking up my publicly excited "Mom's here!" faces while I can.

Cora asks us daily "but when is my birthday?" She just turned precisely 3.5, so she has a while. She is the only person sad about this.

I feel like last week was really busy and I know the week ahead is full of crazy, with end of school ceremonies, parties and other shenanigans, and then a Last Day of School party at our house Friday followed by Claire's birthday party Saturday followed by Claire's birthday Sunday. But this past weekend? We barely did a thing.

I went out with the PTA Board Friday night in a new shirt I can't decide if I like because while it's not super flattering and I'm not sure I'm a tassel-person, I do love crazy patterns and colors and this has both. Plus I got in on clearance, but then I wonder- was it on clearance because everyone else accepted it wasn't flattering?

I got home right at bedtime, just in time for goodnight kisses and Cora love. She likes to pet my hair and squish my cheeks and tell me she "just loves me so much mama!" It is an excellent end to a round or two of frozen cucumber margaritas.

The weekend began and I went to yoga class every day while the kids did lots of fancy dancing.

James grew up going to cotillion and is the only one in the house who actually knows how to fancy dance.

We ran a few party-prepping errands Sunday morning while it was raining.

This is how Cora does Costco.

Pretty much every other minute of the other three days was spent in the pool.

Or the kids did. I touched my big toe in once and then settled back in my lounge chair in the shade with my Mother's Day laser monogrammed Rambler. Perfect for keeping your summer beverages chilled, whether it's some refreshing tap water with lemon and/or possibly a cucumber mint vodka soda or watermelon margarita. Depends on the hour and day and which friend you have over at the time.

30 is a lot of ounces

We took some breaks out of the sun for books and games. I introduced Cora to Candyland. She is obsessed with puzzles and takes pretty much everything in her world with due seriousness and extreme attention to detail. It was important that her little plastic man face the correct direction and our hands had to high-five any time we passed each other on the path.

I'm not quite sure she grasped she concept of the game.

Her top priority was getting a card with her favorite color on it. Though the yellow card would have allowed her to win, it was not purple, and thus she quit in a huff and joined the boys playing Super Mario Kart. You'll be glad to know she won that one despite never touching a controller.

Yesterday ended with a semi-progressive dinner with swimming and appetizers at our place and a cookout at a friend's after. James was coaching, but he was able to join at the end and it was all so relaxing. And not just because my Rambler was full of watermelon margarita. Also because all three of our kids are now strong swimmers and I can enjoy the gentle breeze in the new, super cute cover-up I got at Ross for $7 that matches the new, super cute swim suit my mom bought me for Easter that I don't ever actually plan on getting wet. It's like I've evolved to a higher state of summer.

Work is insane- I woke up at 3:17 this morning with my heart racing thinking of my to-do lists and deadlines and after an hour I gave up on sleeping and read the new Ilona Andrews Hidden Legacy book, White Hot, which is EXCELLENT. Though it's probably more excellent when it's not 4-fucking-a.m. They are hands-down my favorite Urban Fantasy author (unless, Pierce Brown's Red Rising series is also classified as Urban Fantasy in which case he might be tied, or at least a close second, but I think he might officially be Science Fiction by whoever decides these things ohmygod I'm so tired you guys).

And so, with a mountain of work yet to be done tomorrow, plus a 1st grade award ceremony and first summer league swim team practice, plus teaching two barre classes on Thursday night and doing some yoga in between, I am off to bed to recapture a few of the many hours I lost to impending testimony deadlines and Mad Rogan and Nevada Baylor's magical powers. Happy end of May to you all.

Climb Mountains. Fear Sharks.

Last week was a blur of end-of-school craziness. I can't complain because James handled 90% of it, but I felt busy just receiving all the text pictures. We left off at Battle of the Books on Wednesday, with Landon honey-badgering about wearing jeans, but looking darn cute and smiley in them when we saw him at the competition.

It was quite an affair. 36 teams in his grade representing elementary schools from all over town. The first round consisted of 20 questions. It was super tense. I couldn't believe how nervous I was! I'm never nervous when he races- I think then I just trust he'll go as fast as he can and if another kid is faster, then they're faster. I'm not nervous about that. But here, he was the captain and I didn't want him to miss a question he otherwise knew or make a mistake that disappointed him after so many months of practice and work.

They did great though. Overall, his team missed 2 (making them maybe 6th overall?), which based on their faces, I think surprised and disappointed them, but we were so proud. And he's got a few more years to try again.

Since I'd taken off the whole day, I got two luxurious hours at home with James who kept trying to do work while I did not and then I got to pick the kids up from school. In celebration of the non-working, I invited other friends who'd also taken off work for BOB team to come over with their children so they could swim and we could day drink. It was perfect. It became very important to me that I not be productive because I'm always productive with my time off and sometimes you need to revel a little.

Then I pulled myself back in line and ran a bunch of errands with the kids that I regretted not doing earlier and ended with a happy hour dinner at a new taco place that somehow resulted in a bill for $15 for two orders of queso, 8 flour tortillas, 3 tacos, lots of chips, and a prickly pear swirl margarita. That seems like magic, but who am I to question?

Officially we were eating out to celebrate Landon's last meal before braces, but unofficially we were eating out so I could drink a margarita and not make dinner on my big day off. Burning 8 hours of annual leave for a non-vacation requires a LOT of vacation-like add ons.

Thursday began with Landon's Field Day. James observed, sending me pictures along the way which made me feel like I was there and also warmed the cockles of my heart because he NEVER texts me and I always feel like maybe he should.

Landon won the hula hoop contest for the third year in a row, which is surprising for a hipless child of mine. I am useless with a hula hoop and we don't own any so he can practice.

He was then barely beat out of a repeat victory in the 50-yard dash by his good buddy. They're going to have quite a track team come middle school. And then, after Landon's class won the Field Day trophy and James go to go home for maybe 30 minutes of work, it was braces time! He was SO EXCITED he made me set the appointment while school was still in session and was totally thrilled with his rubber banded results.

On day 2 he decided braces were a little "less awesome," but overall I feel like it's gone very well. Especially once we filled the fridge with jello cups.

Friday was Claire's Field Day, which James also attended because he is the best and also works 1/2 mile from school. Claire also won the hula hoop contest, tying with a friend, but seriously- how do they know how to work hula hoops? I'm weirdly proud of this because they are a mystery to me.

Cora did not have Field Day, but has spent a lot of time "fancy dancing" with Claire in our living room.

It is the best thing.

She also will spend a very long time alone in the play room, singing and dancing by herself. Cora enjoys others- particularly her family- but she is by far my happiest child when left alone. Claire actively hates being the only person in a room and Landon never prefers it. But Cora? Cora is totally fine. For hours. Talking to herself, singing to herself, playing intricate and complicated games with imaginary friends- she narrates everything and I love it so much.

I would have thought thirdbaby would be the least adept at playing alone since she never really had to entertain herself, but while she still never has to, she does often prefers to.

Like on Sunday. Landon was at a birthday party, so I invited Claire's friend over (apparently now her "boyfriend" for whom she left love notes stashed all over the house) and his little sister who is one of Cora's besties. The arrival time was 1:00, but since Cora misses her nap all the time I figured she'd be fine. And she would have been, but I forgot that when she can sleep, Cora very much prefers to do that. When her friend came over Cora was super excited for 10 minutes, giving S a tour of all her princesses and gowns, then, having ensured that S would be adequately entertained, she made a pallet for herself on the playroom floor and tucked herself in bed. I desperately wish I had a picture.

Later, I overhead S declare, "okay, you chase me now!" and heard Cora reply with a regretful but very firm, "No. I not do that."

Ten minutes after that I found Cora in her real bed while S tried on all her princess dresses in her room. Both toddlers seemed totally happy with the situation, so I let it be.

Back on Saturday (we're out of order, but it's working for me) I finally purchased a strapless bra just so I could wear a new shirt to a benefit concert our friend's band was playing in. A band also made up of our Vice Principal on drums, so obviously we had to turn out in force to cheer them on. They were so good and the venue was awesome as was our weirdly cool and pleasant late-May weather.

In between bra purchasing and outdoor venue band listening, I played a lot of rounds of Memory with Claire and lost all of them. And I was trying. Like really hard. She doesn't have any teeth, but she's fierce on the Memory field. After destroying me once again she said consolingly, "it's okay mom, you're really good at War." War. A game of complete and utter luck. I need some sort of memory app I can do on my phone to get better.

Today I taught my 4th barre class in 8 days so all my muscles are exhausted and happy and I'm having serious doubts about my Orangetheory reservation in 8 hours. But when I got home from teaching, all the kids were home with Tara and everything was happy and Landon bounced up to me (sometimes he seems to travel by bouncing, like a puppy with his giant puppy feet) with a folder bursting with all his GT work from the year. I loved all of it, but this poem with self-portrait is my favorite.

I love literally every line. He loves swimming. He can climb mountains. He cares for his family. When asked when he feels happy, he said when he's reading. Because he's super athletic and social and contains endless energy, but he is happiest when he's reading and I love that so much. I love that he dreams of exploring different habitats. Not just different places or destinations, but habitats. It delights me.

I'm just generally feeling delighted. Tired, enervated, and concerned that I didn't cancel my OTF class while writing this post because I'm now outside the free cancel window and I don't know how I feel about the fact I'll be on a treadmill in 7 hours, but also delighted having read his poem for the dozenth time.

Climb mountains, love reading, and fear sharks everyone. Have a fantastic week.

Honey Badgers and Hump Day

I have 30 minutes before we need to leave to watch Landon compete in Battle of the Books at TCU! All the competitors have to read a set list of award-winning books and then they're asked questions, confer with each other in whispers, and then the captain holds up the card with the answering book's title. He's the captain of his team and his class won the school competition in December in an intense hour-long match that ended up being one of the most exciting, fun, and stressful hours of our last year. I had no idea what BOB was when James and I walked into the cafeteria that morning, but our stomachs, hearts, and brains were ALL IN when it got going. So fun and I just love when an academic competition gets the whole school watching in a tense silence, groaning and cheering along with the successes and missteps of their classmates.

They had to read 6 new books for the city competition and he knows them backwards and forwards so I'll know they'll do great, but I also know he was nervous because he was a cranky honey badger all morning and marched out of the house yelling "I want to lose! I want to lose!" But I texted his teacher and she said he was his normal self at school, so as usual, being away from his warm and loving home snapped him right out of his bad mood.

Mother's Day had some similar themes. As always the kids woke up early and decorated the table with a million homemade cards which are just the best.

James went and picked me up Starbucks because I can't eat in the morning but I can definitely drink Lightly Sweet Chai Lattes. He was going to make my brunch at lunch (eating before 10 a.m. makes me sick, always has) and all I wanted was a long family walk before then.

We have this beautiful 3-mile loop that takes us down some of my favorite neighborhood streets, down a GIANT hill, and then all along a park that turns into another park that turns back to a road near our house. We discovered it by accident soon after we moved in and have done it a thousand times since. We haven't been in a while because Cora is too big for the stroller but not quite strong enough to ride her new bike that far, but on Sunday she stepped it UP and she was amazing.

Seriously so proud of that girl. Claire rode along in the double stroller for at least a year after Cora was born (so until she was nearly 5), but Cora's out there rocking it on her training wheels at precisely 3.5.

Something had broken Landon's brain during the card opening, so he was furious and cranky and rode way ahead the whole time. People who passed us on the trail would tell me Happy Mother's Day and I was like yes, me and my two beautiful daughters are out for a nice stroll. Have you seen a loose angry 9-year-old? No reason. Just curious.

We got to the park and James thought Landon needed a hug.

Turns out, he did not.

We ate our tasty brunch and eventually the elevation of his blood sugar, the passage of time, and my decision to ignore him for at least an hour seemed to help and Landon slipped this card under my door and had a generally pleasant rest of the day. I think it's a hard time- he's young enough to still get thrown off by a transient moment of crankiness, but old enough to want Mother's Day to be a good day and to feel bad that it isn't, so then he's more entrenched in crankiness he doesn't actually want but can't get out of. We talked about it. I told him I was cranky too- some of it deserved (ahem), but some of it overblown because the day didn't go how I planned either. And so I also had to work through that and shake it off and move forward, just like him.

And so I went to a 4:30 yoga class and returned home to swimming splashing children and another glass of champagne.

We ate my favorite salmon dish for dinner, James made me a funfetti cake and all was well. As I noted on facebook, I don't know that it was the perfect Mother's Day, or if there's any such thing, but it certainly reminded me that I never knew the depths of my capacity for love, pride, or mother-fucking patience until I had children.

But man is it fun too.

Speaking of fun, this was Cora at dinner last night. She didn't want to get her princess dress dirty.

And Claire lost ANOTHER tooth, the first one I ever pulled (it was sideways in her mouth and freaking me out) leaving her with about 2 left. She has a lot of $2 bills, but no ability to chew.

And now we're off to watch this little (biggish?) man compete in his Battle Royale! His team uniform is cowboy themed since their mascot is a wrangler, so he's wearing jeans for the second time in two years and SUPER mad about it ("they're TOUCHING MY LEGS!"), but I'm hoping that since one his intended girlfriends is on the team (and wearing freaking jeans), he's cool with it now.

Once more unto the breach we go. Go wranglers!