Pumpkin patch and soccer

Ink

Sitting in a waiting room. My daughter Catherine starts drawing in ink all over her legs.

I tell her to stop it. "We don't write all over ourselves."

"But Moooommmm," she whines, "When you go to a race you have ink all over."

She has a point.

I write her race number 5 (her age, as requested) on her arm.

Ant houses

The girls were on the deck today building houses for the ants. I remember doing that when I was little! However, ants these days apparently have far grander expectations about the quality of their residences than they did in my day. Today's ants have huge twin swimming pools (one with a floating snack bar) and stonework fortifications:

Day two (and counting) of day camp at the Y and so far Catherine has lost one pair of socks and one set of swim goggles. But she's having a ball swimming in the big pool twice a day, figuring out which parts of her packed lunch and snack to eat and which to bring back home in her backpack smashed next to her wet swimsuit, and I'm sure she rocks at Duck-Duck-Goose.

Elisabeth (who wasn't ready for full-day camp yet this summer) is enjoying shopping at Target with mom and picking out coloring books and getting walks and going to her speech therapy and misses Catherine terribly.

Graduation Day for preK

"Mommy, what's graduation?"
"Graduation is when you celebrate all the hard work you've done and. . . ."
"Mommy! Mommy!"
"What!?"
"Pirates don't live in houses, do they. Pirates live in ships."
"Uhhh, that's right."

A very Ariel birthday

Tomorrow is really the day my girls turn five years old, but we celebrated early so we could have a leisurely Saturday afternoon family party. The theme was The Little Mermaid, Catherine's current obsession, and we played the Broadway soundtrack for the first time so we can start learning all the new songs before we go see it with Grandpa in August!

Catherine has also been talking about a chocolate cake with pink icing for weeks, so we set out to make one this afternoon.

Here was the result! Not bad for a nearly five-year-old "helping", I think. Each girl got five candles.

Catherine loved her new stick horse that she's been asking for. I think she named it Prince. Or Princess. I guess she's not quite clear on its gender.

Grandma also sent kids' paddles for the kayaks, which we had been looking for for a long time. Perfect!!

Elisabeth got a new Princess backpack that she absolutely loved and started wearing around the house. Catherine got an Ariel backpack that she loved too, but was not quite as obsessed with it.

A very happy day! My little girls are growing up so fast!

They're still teensy tiny girls, though! We did weights and measures today:

Catherine: 35 pounds (16th percentile), 40 inches tall (8th percentile).
Elisabeth: 32 pounds (4th percentile), 38 inches tall (3rd percentile).

Yes, they're small but mighty! Healthy and lively and growing and catching up fast all the time!

When I grow up

My 4-year-olds are just starting to grasp a concept of "time" and how long it stretches out before us. We were discussing this last night and I told Catherine that some day a long time from now she would be a little old lady.

"Just like you," she says, matter-of-factly.

Uh, yeah, something like that. But not exactly.

10k to the good!

For my 4-year-olds, that is!

No, I'm not flogging them to run an entire 10K. Yet.

We've been keeping count of how many times we go over to the track to walk around it on one of the cute coloring-book-style charts at kidsrunning.com.

We started on August 14th and it took us up until now to complete 25 outings to the track. Last week we finished accumulating a total of 25 track outings for a total of about 6.25 miles (plus about another 12.5 miles walking from our house there and back that we weren't counting!).

That's an average of a little over one lap per week. Not too strenuous, I'd say, but it's more than some adults I know! (Ahem.)

We'll have to see about doing the 1 mile kids' fun walk at our local YMCA in March.

Catherine is sick

How do I know? She actually asked to go to her room for some "quiet time" today. That never happens. Then she conked out for a couple of hours.

In other ongoing stories, she has a peculiar fascination with thunderstorms. "I'm skeered of funder." She talks about how it broke the computer. But then she was punching the buttons on our little weather station in the living room, attempting to make "clouds and funder" arrive by remote electronic control.

It's started

Today was the 4th day of day camp at the local YMCA.

Catherine loves it. Plus suddenly with a flotation vest on, she's learned to dog paddle like a little golden retriever.

Elisabeth is not so sure about it -- she's a bit overwhelmed by the large numbers of fairly loud kids. Every time the girls go somewhere around large groups of loose cannon kids, a couple of girls 2 or 3 years older want to adopt Catherine and Elisabeth as their special little twin pets, it seems. Elisabeth doesn't wish to be adopted out, doesn't want to be tickled or cajoled, and especially doesn't want to be picked up by strange kids.

Then today one of the little boys in their group told Catherine, "You look very pretty today."

It didn't seem like it really turned her head, but still. . . .

Summer fun

Trying to keep the girls busy and tired to keep them out of trouble!

We found Crabby Crab at a park next to a small zoo a ways south of here!

We saw a lovely plump jaguar that the girls were sure belonged to Diego.

First day of summer vacation

School is done for the year for Elisabeth as of yesterday afternoon! She's a preschool graduate! So both of the girls are going stir crazy already.

So far today they've:

• Woken me up at 6AM
• Squabbled about 18 times
• Peed in their Big Girl Panties 3 times
• Torn their lunch sandwiches apart and thrown everything but the meat on the floor
• Thrown blocks at each other
• Insisted on putting on their old Hallowe'en costumes
• Played in the bathroom sink and got aforementioned Hallowe'en costumes soaking wet
• Poured half a bottle of mouthwash (with a "childproof cap") down the drain
• Wrote in marker all over the bedroom walls
  
• Driven Mommy nuts

Good thing the babysitter is arriving in a few minutes and I can go run.

---

Update: The run worked! Well, it worked to give me a sanity break for an hour and get my perspective and patience refreshed a bit. Didn't do a thing for their behavior. Tonight the main problem was the girls insisting on working the crank on our new patio umbrella. Up and down, up and down. Finally I had to fasten it down in one position with a computer tie.

The birthday girls

My camera's exposures were all messed up today, but here are a few of my big four-year-old girls.

Happy happy birthday!

It's a happy and exciting day! Today my girls Catherine and Elisabeth are FOUR YEARS OLD! I'm sure I'll have lots of photos to post later on.

Our new local YMCA

We (me and my girls) just went over for the open house at the new local branch of the county YMCA. I believe they said it was actually opening next week. Hooray! It's a small storefront place, without much room, but they've packed a lot in there.

I was happy to see a bike rack out front in front of the windows (so I can ride my old clunker bike the ~1 mile over there).

Best of all from my perspective was quite a large child care area - glassed off for sound-proofing. Yay! Seen but not heard - perfect! Catherine and Elisabeth went straight to work trying to break all the new toys in there.

They have a decent freeweights area, an array of weight machines, 4 treadmills, 4 reclined exercycles, and 8 elliptical trainers. I think that should be plenty of space to get a free spot for a workout in this small town.

Best of all, it's 3 doors down from the new Chinese restaurant.

I doubt I will use it much in the summer, but I'm looking forward to having it as a nearby workout alternative in the winter. I may just get back to doing some actual weight-training again!

Catherine kept asking where the pool was, but alas, after Labor Day (when our two local outdoor pools close) we'll still have to drive a dozen miles back to Easton for that. I had to leave when Catherine started getting into the bagels and cream cheese, and wiping the cream cheese from her hands on their brand-new couch. Sigh.

The official calendar

This is what this month looks like on the Official Toby Family Calendar, after Catherine got ahold of it with a Sharpie and added her entries.

All I know is that it's looking pretty scary towards the end of this month.

Weekday afternoons with Catherine

For the whole school year Catherine and I have been able to play and shop and play some more while Elisabeth has been in school in the afternoons. Only one more month of these sweet times together! These are all from today's beautiful sunny time at the playground.

We love chalk

At least Catherine loved it. All over the decking, the railings, the grill, the screen door, both girls. . . . we went straight inside for baths after this.

The picky eater

I'm one of the un-pickiest eaters on the planet. I like just about everything with the possible exception of mutton, anchovies, and liver. Truth be told, I actually even like most vegetables if they're prepared well and served with something yummy (bearnaise sauce works wonders) in a restaurant. Yes, even broccoli and brussel sprouts. I just don't do a lot of fancy cooking at home.

So I'm just saying that my girls didn't get their picky eating habits from me, that's all.

Today they had a special on strawberries at the grocery store so I bought two big containers. I thought it would be a nice treat for the girls to have sliced strawberries in yogurt for dessert.

Instead Catherine objects. She gets a paper towel and wipes the yogurt off the strawberries, one by one, and lines them up in front of her on the table, all wiped clean, before she will eat the first one.

It must be her father's fault. He's the one who (inexplicably) insists on smooth ice cream and smooth peanut butter.

Kid logic

Kid logic is different than adult logic.

Three-year-old logic says that if they are playing musical instruments on TV, you MUST play along. And if you want to play a trumpet, the best place to get one is from the inside of a roll of paper towels. And all you have to do is remove all the paper towels from the roll and stuff them into the kitchen sink, tucking them in around the dirty dishes, and voila! You have a working trumpet!

I lose more paper towels that way. . . .

Good girl!

My daughter Elisabeth is standing in front of the TV right now with the Boston marathon on, in her
diaper and nothing else, pretending to run.

Then she made the "swimming" sign to me.

She wants to be a triathlete, not merely a runner!!

Go go go Boston runners! Also, don't forget, those of you at work today looking for a distraction, that the Tour of Georgia live webcast begins today, at 12:30 eastern time, I believe.