Apparently there are folks out there who believe the world will end on Friday. And since I've totally neglected this blog for MONTHS, I figured I would post an update for prosperity {or something like that}. I first feel the need to provide some commentary on the tragic events from last week. I guess in a lot of ways, there are people not only in Connecticut but all over the nation who feel in some way their world has already ended. Whether that be because they no longer have a sense of security or the world has fallen apart due to the loss of a loved one. Or the innocence of hundreds of children who may never be the same. We live miles and states away from where this occurred and yet I've received two separate phone calls and two letters from the preschool B&K attend reassuring parents of safety and protocols. It is just so sad. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected.
But on to news in the BK Special world. We've had a busy fall. We took the kids to Chicago over Labor Day weekend and now Bennett wants to move there. Badly. B&K are both into new extra-curricular activities. We had a fun Halloween in our new neighborhood. B&K learned about politics and had their own opinions over the Presidential election. Santa stopped by last weekend for our annual party. We've had lots of behavior struggles and challenging tantrums and I'll go on record saying age 4 has been the most challenging yet (but I'm pretty sure you all think I'm a broken record because I've said that about every age!). But probably the most exciting news of all: NOTRE DAME HAD AN UNDEFEATED SEASON AND ARE GOING TO THE FRICKEN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!!!!!! AHHH!!! So, so exciting. I hope the world doesn't end on Friday because I really, really, really am looking forward to the game. :)
I promise to provide proper updates on all of the above. No really, I will! Because in addition to keeping in better touch with my close friends and dropping 60lbs, my New Year goals include paying better attention to this little blog of mine as we approach the 5 yr mark. So stay tuned . . .
And to tide you over, I'll leave you with this adorable photo of B&K after Halloween. Totally exhausted and totally taking care of each other.
Peace out.
Tim & I snuck away to Pittsburgh see our favorite band, Dave Matthews Band, in mid-July. It was a nice mid-summer, post-move, quick weekend trip and the highlight was getting to see a fricken awesome show (plus meeting another twin mommy friend and her husband!). If you’ve followed my blog since the beginning, you know I’m sort of a DMB freak. (as evident here, here and here). Hey, we all have our “thing”, right? (and if you want a true appreciation of what being a DMB fan is like, I highly recommend reading this post here. It actually gave me chills.) And in my defense, it had almost been 2 years since we went to a Dave concert (coming off of a year where we saw him 3 times. I’m still holding out hope for a fall/winter tour coupled with that adults only trip that Tim & I missed out on when B&K went to Mickey’s house . . . especially since our travel buddies Nick & Jodi were out of commission awaiting the arrival of their new little one and couldn’t travel to Pitt with us).
In any event, after coming back from the show and being on a Dave high, I went to ordering a couple of special items. First up was the best baby shower gift ever (for Nick & Jodi’s little one, of course):
Next up was a couple of shirts for B&K, which I let them pick out from the website themselves. Nothing brings me more joy than when they both ask to wear their special shirts (or when DMB comes on the radio and B asks from the backset “mom, is this Dave Matthews??”. LOVE!). This is why we have kids, right? So we can impose our likes and beliefs on them, right?
Plus I added some new bling to my car (which I figured is cheaper than getting a tattoo. Which I still might do at some point, but probably won’t be DMB related).
Yes you read that right. And NO, I did not go this time! : )
Earlier this year, Nana and Papa approached us and asked if they could take B&K to Disney for their birthday . . . but not on their birthday, rather in late Spring. You may recall from my rant about this “happiest”, most painful place last year, I really have no intentions of returning there anytime soon. We thought they were nuts, but who are we to stop them from spending Tim’s inheritance and spoiling their only grandchildren rotten, right? The plan was for B&K to travel with Tim’s parents to Florida for a quick trip to Disney from Sunday – Wednesday (which in my mind would have been 4 days too long to spend at a place like that. I kid, I kid ... sort of).
Originally Tim & I had grand plans of going on an exotic long weekend vacation ourselves while B&K were on their birthday trip. But the timing didn’t work out as that was right around the time we officially went into contract on our old house and were soon going to become homeless. So we instead used the kid-free time to look at houses, put an offer on our new house and start saving money for our upcoming move (but don’t get me wrong . . . five days living kid-free – even in our own home – was kinda glorious. I’m not gonna lie!).
Every day we received updates from Nana & Papa via pictures and texts. B&K just recently stopped talking about Disney daily (they always referred to doing things “by my big self”, but ever since coming back from the Big D it has changed to “do this by my big MAGIC self”. Cute). I’m sure at some point we’ll be guilted into taking another family vacation there, but in the meantime B&K can remember the super fun time they had with Nana & Papa. And Tim and I can also remember the super fun time they had with Nana & Papa. ;)
When we moved to our town 6 years ago from Chicago we were quickly amazed by the small community feel and the HUGE little parade every 4th of July. (I’ve written about it several times but a good recap can be found here). One of the things that I’ve always loved is that not only do local businesses & schools & churches make elaborate floats, but streets or neighborhoods in our town do as well (they also throw wicked block parties where the city comes in and shuts down the street).
Unfortunately, our old ‘hood was kind of lame (ok, really lame. And if you are one of our former neighbors reading this, I’m sure you would agree). It wasn’t super high on our list, but a “nice to have” item as we conducted our recent house search was to move onto a street that was more fun. More “neighborhood-y”, like our community and especially what the parade exuded to us when we first moved here. You can imagine our giddy excitement when we started receiving notes from the former owners of our new house about the planning that was taking place for the new street’s 4th of July float and block party. JACKPOT!!!
I’m not going to lie, it was quite exhausting to coordinate a move, home improvements (some planned and most not planned) *and* help out with the float, but our new neighbors understood (we closed on our new house the week before Independence day and our moving van arrived on the 3rd). The theme for the parade this year was “Sweet Song of Freedom” and our street when with the “sweet” aspect . . . our float had candy “strippers” (yes, scantily – yet tastefully – dressed ladies dancing on a candy pole), sugar daddies (Tim was selected as one of these), Jolly “Ranchers” (these were the older kids dressed up like cowboys/ranchers), the moms were dressed up and did a dance for two miles straight and little gum drops (the little kids) and some other moms – including yours truly -- rode on a float. When I first talked to the lady coordinating the costumes (because let me tell you – this wasn’t CHEAP to participate in!!) I was given the choice of dancing with the other moms or riding on the float – which meant Tim could be a Sugar Daddy. I chose wisely. : ) All in all, though, it was such a fun time. It was a great way to meet a ton of our new neighbors and everyone was so welcoming. And most importantly – when we asked what time we should be at the starting point for the parade and the guy planning it answered “it depends on how early you want to start drinking”, we knew we had moved to the right ‘hood. (For the record, most people were drinking beers and whiskey slushies at 8:30 am. while we waited for the parade to start and for our float – which was the last in the 2hr long parade – to get to the starting point. It.was.awesome. But in our defense, it was also 92 degrees – SERIOUSLY – at 8:30 in the morning, so it was all sweated out by the time the parade started).
B&K were SO so so excited to participate in the parade. And even though we were all a bunch of hot cranky pants by the time the float made its way to the parade route, it was a super fun time. I’m a little thankful that our ‘hood only enters the parade every-other year, though . . . I think we may need that time to recuperate!!!
Earlier this summer {you’ll find this as a “trend statement” as I try to get caught up with posts}, Nana discovered that The Lorax himself would be at the library right down the street from us. If you've been around Bennett lately, you will quickly find he is OBSESSED with the Lorax. And not the newer movie that was just out (which B&K have seen twice, by the way), but the old school DVD and book. He knows all the words. He can hum & sing all the songs from the old movie. He when he is playing, he pretends to be cutting down the Truffula trees and screaming "I am the Lorax. I SPEAK FOR THE TREEEEESSS!!". Very cute.
So Bennett went into jazz hands overload with excitement over meeting the Lorax at the library. And I heard both he and Kendyll scored mad points with the librarian over their Lorax knowledge (overachievers).
Pretty cool.
Earlier this summer B&K were so excited to take swimming lessons. They have been pretty quick with the floaties (we’ve been using puddle jumpers for the past 2 summers – love them!), but had always been hesitant whenever we tried to get them in the water without the aides. So we weren’t quite sure how this whole swim lesson would go.
As usual {of late} Kendyll was the one who was timid in the water. Maybe it was because she could just barely touch in the shallow end of the pool (Bennett still has a good inch or so on her), but she seemed to be hesitant {or stubborn is probably more like it} whenever her instructors asked her to complete a required swim maneuver.
By the end of the two week class, Bman was an expert at “going under the water” {shhhh, don’t tell him he really only stuck his face in the water!!}, jumping off the side of the pool and even “swimming” in the deep end from the side of the pool a foot or so out to the instructor. He officially passed the class and will be able to move on to “Guppy 2”.
Kendyll on the other hand . . . well, our stubborn special snowflake would not do all of the required things to “pass” this class (even though I’m fairly certain she *could* if she was asked to do them under her own terms). So it looks like B&K have another thing they will be able to do separately sometime soon. Unfortunately the timing for the 2nd session of the classes didn't work out with our move schedule. So we're actually looking at doing private lessons for them over the winter. They have a LOT of catching up to do with our new 'hood kids!
I know . . . don’t fall over!! A timely post from me!!! We survived our move and are slowly getting back into a settled routine. You will be giddy to know that I have several new posts already written and scheduled to publish over the next week or so. My attempt to “catch up”. Let’s see how quickly I fall off of the “timely post bandwagon” this go-around. It is sad that the last post was almost 2 months ago (that I only have 15 posts for the year!) and that I was writing about the end of the school year the last post. Ahhh, here is to fresh starts!
Bennett & Kendyll were excited to start school yesterday. They are going to the same school this year (we love it!), but there are some changes. Previously they were separated and each in a mixed age class of 3 – 5 yrs old. But based on feedback from a yearly parent’s survey, the school decided to implement a true “pre-K” class for 4-5 yrs old. There is only one class of this type, so that meant B&K were going to go back into the same class. While there were several advantages to having them in separate class rooms – they made their own friends and had time/space away from each other -- there were just as many disadvantages, too (for example, we had to limit the number of kids invited to their birthday party because they each had 21 kids in their class. And there was no way we were having a party for 40 kids!! Plus their classrooms didn’t coordinate together, which meant on several occasions one kid was wearing PJs to class because the other kid’s class was having PJ day and they didn’t think it was fair that one got to wear PJs while the other didn’t. Oh the “fun” of being “equal, but different”).
So this year B&K are in Kendyll’s old classroom with Bennett’s teachers from last year. And the good news is that most of their friends from their respected classes are in this class now. Plus one of our BFFs Ava (yes, our beloved Ashley's Ava!!) is going to B&K’s school this year – and is in their class – so they are all sorts of excited about that.
We really loved Bennett’s teachers, so we’re hopeful this ends up being a good thing. Don’t ask me what we plan to do next year (yet) . . . I think part of it will depend on exactly how the elementary school is set up (for example, we wouldn’t have one of them go to a morning session and the other to an afternoon just to separate them, if you know what I mean). I’m sure we’ll have a LONG list of pros / cons for separating them or keeping them together, but I like to think that decision is a several months away.
In other news, the ten thousand pages of paperwork for the school year requests B&K's height and weight. Bennett is now 43 in and 37 lbs. Kendyll is 42 in and ::wait for it, wait for it:: FORTY-FOUR POUNDS! No wonder I had to go out and buy homegirl a *2nd* summer wardrobe for school. Geesh!!
I wish I could picture bomb this post now with tons of adorable “first day of school” photos. But unfortunately, Miss Thang was not feeling it yesterday (our allergies have been in raging fits this week . . . and since Kendyll *still* sucks her thumb, when she can’t breathe at night it leads to restless nights . . . for all of us!). Here are just a couple somewhat decent photos, just to document the day.
