It was hot — and I mean HOT — here this weekend. Today’s 95 degree temp was actually a respite from the 107 we’ve had for the last few days. The boys were undaunted by the heat and rode their bikes for a couple of hours this afternoon. I took some pictures with my new favorite iPhone app, Instagram.
Ezra’s also sporting some boo-boos from running and falling yesterday, but he’s OK.
Well, I’ll clarify that — last day of our first session of swimming lessons. We’re signed up for another four-week session starting next week, but this time we’ll go two days a week instead of five. So, Friday was the last day of this session and I have to say it was a rousing success. From not swimming to swimming in two weeks! Bruce had the day off so he got to come along this time and see the madness that is our boys swimming without swim vests or floaties of any kind.
Being the last day, the teachers pulled out the big floating animals and gave the kids a ride. Finn and his class had a lot of fun with this.
Ezra did, too, for a minute.
But really he just wanted to swim so he hopped off and went under.
After class we took a drive to look at a few of the gardens one of our landscaper candidates did. Fun for us, but not so much for the kids, so we bribed them with frozen yogurt. Finn thoroughly enjoyed his … every last drop.
Then, while we drove to see one last garden, he fell asleep. It was 5:15. Luckily, he slept all night. His 5:30 wake up call, while painful, was much better than the middle of the night one I had envisioned.
I realize that these swimming pictures and videos may be very hard to follow for anyone except me since I was actually there to see it in person. But whatever, I’m posting them anyway!
Yesterday, Ezra swam all the way to the barrier again and got a high five from his teacher. (He really likes this teacher.)
Then he headed back. He had to stop half way — I imagine he was pretty tired — but he made it all the way.
As for Finn, well he’s swimming his little heart out, too.
Just as the boys and I were sitting down to dinner tonight, Finn noticed another gross bunch of ants on the floor. So, for the third time today, I grabbed my trusty 409 and sprayed the heck out of them. As I was wiping up the mess, I said, “Sorry, it’s kind of smelly, guys. Well, at least it’s only 409 and not …”
And then I paused, trying to come up with the phrase “ant spray” when Finn finished my sentence for me with, “406.” I couldn’t stop laughing. I have no idea where he came up with 406.
Later, after they’d finished dinner, I cut up the rest of the delicious organic watermelon we got in our biweekly organic produce box and was grabbing a bowl to have some when the bowl slipped from my hand and broke all over the counter, shards of glass going everywhere. (Isn’t Pyrex supposed to be unbreakable?) So that meant a) big cleanup job and b) I had to throw away the watermelon I’d just cut up. So I was not very happy.
Ezra went into the other room and implored me not to come in there. About 20 minutes later, he presented me with this to cheer me up.
Iron Man, complete with a butt. Ezra explained, “I’m really good at drawing butts.”
He’s also good at learning to swim — check this out from today’s lesson. Hint: he starts in the upper part of the screen, because he’d swum all the way to the barrier by himself!
Yesterday we headed to the Natural History Museum to check out the new Dinosaur Hall with the Bannings. First stop, picture in front of the big dinosaur.
Once in the new hall, we checked out some bones.
And several hands-on exhibits.
And in general were in awe of the bones.
Later, we had swim lessons again and more progress was made. Finn swam back and forth to his teacher.
Ezra had a new teacher who was able to break down some of the steps for him. Here they do their “bobs.”
I think Ezra is happy with the new teacher. I saw several smiles during the lesson and afterwards he said, “I think this teacher is … nicer.”
I was having, as Alexander would say, a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day on Friday. It started to look up when a friend met us at the park for a play date and brought a picnic lunch for everyone, complete with caffeinated beverages. It felt so nice for someone else to decide what we were all going to eat, and the caffeine went to work on my headache immediately. Thanks, Erin!
Later in the day, the boys requested a play date — they are bored to tears of playing with each other, apparently — so I called my friend Cari, who luckily was available. They came over and fun ensued. The kids dove head first into the costume box and the various iterations of their characters were pretty great. Finally, they were all dressed up at the same time, and I asked them if I could take their picture.
The first one was pretty good — everyone was actually looking at the camera.
But the second really captures their personalities better.
Finn’s chatting up Ruby, and Ezra and Chapin are just about ready to jump up and run away. Only Ruby is able to sit still for more than a second. I also love that this one shows that what’s on Chapin’s head is a Santa hat. Classic.
Bath time Saturday night gave me a glimmer of hope that my boys will actually one day swim — for real. Much to my surprise, they were eagerly dunking their faces, in fact, their whole heads in the bath water! They’d seen Finn’s friend Amelia do this in her kiddy pool earlier in the day; apparently they were inspired. And so was I; I high-tailed it onto the interwebs to see where I could enroll them in swim lessons. Luckily the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center had a two-week session starting Monday and the boys agreed to give it a go.
The first day was great! Faces went in the water!
Here’s Finn doing it even though is classmates won’t.
There was floating!
And paddling!
And swimming!
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some reluctance still and the whole coordinating blowing bubbles, taking breaths and kicking is a challenge. But he’s doing it!
Finn’s class is younger, so they’re getting more help from the teacher. Here he is practicing the “scoops” he learned first from Erin in Belize.
We had a fun play date at Kyan and Alex’s house on Monday morning — I got to catch up with my old Cottage friend and Ezra and Finn got to play with Kyan and his plethora of toys. One highlight was when Kyan took the boys upstairs to try their hand at Wii sword-fighting. My boys are unfamiliar with this thing called Wii, but after a few rounds of watching Kyan play masterfully, it didn’t take Finn long to put on his fiercest expression and start pushing competitors off the platform.
His celebration was low key.
As a bonus to the fun, we were lucky enough to inherit some of the toys and costumes that Kyan no longer plays with — four bags full. Ezra tried on every costume, but was particularly enamored with the firefighter.
The fun only stopped for bed time. But rest assured it started right up again in the morning when these two characters showed up in the kitchen.
Officer Ezra had to do a lot of questioning to find out who the mystery man was.
Later, Finn got a ticket.
Luckily he wasn’t too upset.
I didn’t post much last week so here are a few items as a make-up. Bruce finished the peg board for Aveson and Finn got to try it out. Here he is explaining one of the early runs.
Ezra did three days of morning camp at Kidspace. There was a little too much togetherness going on at our house, and he was happy to be elsewhere. As were we all. Here he is on his first day, sitting down to do the art project.
On the second day we ran into the Google street view car while taking Ezra to Kidspace. That was kinda cool.
On Friday Ezra and I got to spend some time together, just the two of us because Bruce was home and had Finn. When I picked up Ezra from camp, we went to Whole Foods for lunch and then checked out the installation of the Cottage door there. Here’s the view from the escalator.
It’s very fun to have our little preschool’s art represented at the store.
On Saturday we had a lovely visit from Bruce’s friend Peter. After a tour of the house, we went to the Huntington Gardens. I didn’t end up taking many pictures, but here’s one of Ezra just before he got yelled at for being on the rocks. They are so persnickety there.
And lastly, here’s one of Ezra via my iPhone’s Instagram app. Kinda sweet.
On the way to pick up Bruce from work, I was explaining to the boys that we were going to a party for JPL. Ezra asked if it was at JPL. I said, “No, it’s at the house of man Papa works with. His name is Fabrizio.” Ezra thought about that for a minute and then said, “That name is … a little bit crazy.”
Later, as we were walking to our car after the party, Finn spotted an American flag. “Look,” he said, “That’s an American flag … this must be America!!!”
Ah, the power of deduction.
We had one of those Sundays where we never left the house. Well, that’s not entirely true. The boys and I drove five minutes up the road to do a little hike with the Heffernans. Bruce stayed behind to work on the pegboard activity thingamabob for Ezra’s Kindergarten class. Wait a minute, you might be thinking, isn’t Ezra going into first grade? Why yes, yes he is. We’re a little behind on that project.
Anyway, post-hike we had some restless little boys running around, so I decided to get some water on the almost-dead lawn in the backyard and let the boys do their running through the sprinkler. Finn was in heaven.
He even did this little wiggly happy dance at one point.
Seriously, they were out there for hours. Ezra had his own technique.
They even … gasp … worked together sometimes instead of fighting.
They picked the pumpkins that had come up as volunteers from the compost and made sure to wash them off before bringing them in the house.
And Ezra watered some of the other plants, too.
Meanwhile, Bruce sawed, glued and drilled.
We’re getting there …
We just may finish this project yet.
Much to the delight of the kids, Aveson has chickens in their kindergarden yard. They asked for volunteers to care for the chickens during summer vacation and we signed up for a week. Ezra was thrilled; he has fallen in love with birds of all types lately. He couldn’t wait to get to the chickens; here they are in the coop.
Ezra really wanted to pick one up.
Look at how happy he is!
Finn, on the other hand, alternated between excited and terrified by the chickens. Here he is after he finally worked up the nerve to pet one.
Unfortunately they didn’t produce any eggs for us this week, but we all had a good experience and we definitely see a chicken coop in our backyard in the near future. We’ll get Bruce right on that.
A couple of goofballs want to say hello.
We’ve had lots of water play in the last few days. First was our new little pool — a snake this year.
Finn’s very serious about pools, apparently. Here are some other shots.
Even better, Bruce finished the water table he’s been working on for Cottage and he asked the boys to be his testers to make sure everything was working properly before taking it to the school.
Here it is still in the garage.
Then Bruce put on the finishing touches.
And the boys got to fill it up.
Of course, nothing’s complete without food coloring.
And then they were off — discovering how the hoses work, how the colors mix, how the different valves work, etc. Perfect for Cottage.
And here’s a video of the fun.
Ezra and Finn started Cottage’s last two-week summer camp session yesterday and I was the snack parent. Ezra was thrilled to get to go back and play at Cottage. It was an interesting morning. We had spiders on the play structure, namely this big guy.
Teacher Art masterfully caught him and put him in one of the bug catching containers so the kids could have a look (and so he could later be released back into nature). Teacher Art was triumphant. And the kids were squealing with delight and a little fear.
Later at group time, there was show and tell and Finn told everyone about Belize. “… you have to take a boat everywhere and … THERE’S A POOL!”
Later they got into swimsuits and went in the pool. Not quite the same as the Belize pool but fun nonetheless.
My guys were the last two hold-outs in the little pool.
At lunch bunch, Finn chatted up friends old and new.
