It was a pretty mellow week so this will be a relatively short blog. We need weeks like this!

On Monday, our new afternoon nanny started. And tonight she sent me a text saying she needs to quit. I’m pretty unhappy about starting a search again but we’ll make it work.

I spied the kids chilling with Penni on Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday morning, Sammy and I went to the doctor for a check on his infected cut. He was very brave as she poked and prodded. It’s healing nicely and Sammy’s been a great patient all week with his antibiotics and 3x daily ointment. In fact, if I couldn’t do his midday ointment due to meetings, Sammy was able to take care of it on his own. If I didn’t want to check on how it’s healing each day, I think he could be entirely self sufficient. Big kid.

April 21, 2021 in Michigan. This is a big NOPE from me. Thanks to the weather, the boys’ first baseball practice was canceled on Tuesday night and Amaya’s practice was canceled on Wednesday night. Even right now it’s only 38 degrees out (but will be 84 on Tuesday)!

Steven loves jokes. Last weekend I printed him out a sheet of jokes that he’s been reading to friends and family. Penni sent me this picture of Steven on Wednesday and shared that he started a joke contest in gym class. 🙂

The kids and I had plans to wake up at 5:45am on Thursday morning to watch the Dragon Crew-2 launch. After the kids were in bed I realized the launch was scrubbed and rescheduled for Friday so I very quickly made 8 of these signs and put them all over the kids’ room and on my bedroom door. I was worried they’d wake up, see the time, worry they’d missed the launch and wake me. Fortunately they saw the signs, and even more fortunately, they could read them.

Amaya, posing in her new PJs. I know someday I’ll think seven was young but, right now, it’s hard for me to believe how big these kids are getting.

Pre-bedtime cuddles and story time. We’re reading “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” – a book I loved and read many, many times as a kid. It’s really cool reading this book to SSA.

I tried to read “Ramona and Beezus” to the kids but it felt very, very dated. Much more so than when I read it myself in the early 80’s. I checked the published date and was surprised to learn that it was written in the early 50’s! No wonder parts of it felt so outdated. And I can see how it would feel more relatable to a kid in the early 80s’ compared to 2021. I think I’ll give one of the later Ramona books a try and see how it feels.

Friday morning – 5:45am – we were up and ready to see Crew 2 launch! It was really cool. I love this stuff and was glad to be up for it – something I wouldn’t have done if I wasn’t sharing it with Steven, Sammy and Amaya.

It really blew our minds to think that one of the astronauts has a 7 year old child, just like I do. Steven was pretty clear that he doesn’t want me to go to space.

On Friday it was back to softball. Gabby’s background check wasn’t back yet so I joined her and the kids and worked in the car while she hung out with the boys. (But it’s back now so we’re good to go!)

Here’s Amaya at 3rd base.

We had a really nice lazy day at home on Saturday. I stayed in bed until 10am and Jason a bit longer. It is surreal to be able to stay in bed that long with kids who are self sufficient enough to get breakfast for themselves and entertain themselves while we relax. I keep thinking about to their baby years when I could see this in the distance but it felt so out of reach.

Jason and the kids – with extra effort from Steven – spent time organizing ball cards. Steven set up a ball card shop and was a very persuasive salesman.

He has a set of numbered 1992 rookies and there is no #6 in the set. “There is no 6. I don’t know why.”

Labeled, priced, and ready to sell!

Jason treated me to a box of the new Star Trek: Picard trading cards and, after opening and shorting them, I wanted a binder to store the unique cards. Steven quickly ran and grabbed me a binder he has that he isn’t using. It’s perfect.

It was a table game day, too! All 5 of us played a 2+ hour game of Ticket to Ride. Daddy was the overall winner, Amaya was the kid winner.

Contemplating her next move.

Steven came up with an intricate coding system connected to his squishies. For example, if he pressed the hamburger it meant he was making a move. The pumpkin meant he wanted a card from the pile.

Sammy requested a game of Carcassonne and he was our winner!

Amaya had some change she wanted to transfer over the Mommy Bank so we sorted and counted it together. She had $47.62 in coins! Some haul!

Today was another relatively lazy day. The kids had Hebrew school, outside in the cold, from 9:30- 10:30am but that was about it for the Clines.

Amaya wore a big bow that she made with Grandma Betsy.

Showing me some chalk art they made at Hebrew school.

Post Hebrew school hot chocolate! (Amaya left her jacket at softball practice so she’s wearing one of mine.)

Amaya’s store! It was a creative afternoon. Steven opened a science lab and hired Amaya to work in it. Both Amaya and Steven opened up shop again.

Amaya and Daddy, shopping together so Amaya could spend some of her Mommy Bank $s.

Finally, I can always count on Sammy to help when there’s raw meat to cook!

Have a great week!

It was a busy, busy week around the Land of Cheltenham.

Monday was pretty quiet with school and lots of play time. Sammy helped Amaya build a house for her little ball of biscuit dough, affectionally named Doughy. (And who has since said goodbye to the family and moved on to the land of discarded food items.)

Steven earned a staying-in-bed prize on Tuesday and picked a backpack water gun. It holds a really nice amount of water and has great range! He can nearly hit the woods behind our house from our deck!

Penni was off on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday and we still didn’t have an afternoon nanny this week so I did what many parents around the country have been doing over the past year and attempted to work from home while the kids had school from home. It’s not ideal but, even with my days full of meetings, anything is possible for a day and a half. It’s definitely a benefit of still working from home. As incentive, I created a reward chart. The kids earned 1 point for being at class on time and 1 point for showing up with all the materials they needed. They did great!

Amaya’s Go Noodle movement break.

These faces are so Amaya. It’s how she looks when she’s saying something like, “Yeah, they think that’s how it works but they’re actually wrong.”

Wednesday was a long day. I browned a roast and put it in the crock pot before my 8:30am meeting and was so proud of the kids who were ready and rolling for their 9am class without much of my help. Amaya even set up everyone’s laptops.

Their morning meeting was a science assembly. Mrs. O’Neil sent home the kits to use which included plastic tubs, dirt, twigs, leaves, fake moss and a small plastic insect. Through the assembly, the kids learned about and made habitats. They were all so careful and thoughtful about what they made.

Shortly after I took this, thinking about how smoothly everything was going, Steven accidentally knocked his habitat into Sammy’s school supply bucket. I was so proud of both Steven and Sammy. Steven was really upset at first, lamenting how hard he’d worked on his habitat, but we gathered up his contents and he got to it again. Sammy, for his part, took it in stride that there was a big pile of dirt covering his stuff.

Visitor for me, mid-meeting, between classes.

On Wednesday afternoon, I wrapped up work a little early so the kids could eat dinner and we could all head over to Amaya’s first softball practice!

Her team is the Green Aliens and her teammates are other 1st – 3rd graders from the district. At least half of the team is from Thornton Creek and there’s one other 1st grader – Alexa, who’s in Amaya’s class. Alexa’s mom is the team’s coach and coach SSA’s team last year so it’s nice to have that familiarity.

Amaya is in the blue and pink sweatshirt, practicing throwing.

I helped out with some drills. Here, Amaya was hitting off a tee using just her inside arm.

Steven and Sammy were able to pass the time running around and hanging out with some other brothers. They said the time went by so fast!

Steven still loves looking at his map from the San Diego Zoo – a trip he and I took in Feb 2019. He spent some time on Friday showing Penni all the places he visited and how the zoo is laid out.

Friday was practice #2 and I could already see Amaya getting more comfortable. The coach suggested fielding masks which turned out to be a great idea to help get comfortable with learning fielding and catching skills.

The league uses a catapult machine for pitching and Amaya was able to get a great hit at practice.

While the boys were at Amaya’s practice, Steven (with Sammy’s help) built a bridge that was strong enough to support his weight. He was so excited that it worked!

Steven’s reaction is the best.

Sammy and I had an adventure on Friday night. Earlier in the week he had a sore on his leg and we sent a photo to a teledoc at the time, but it wasn’t too irritated and they weren’t concerned. He put a band-aid on it so he wouldn’t scratch it. Last night I asked to see under the band-aid, after noticing some red around the area on his thigh. It was pretty clearly infected and I didn’t want to wait until Saturday to get it checked out. The one urgent care we thought was still open wasn’t, so we popped over to the local ER. It wasn’t too crowded but nothing’s fast in an ER. We arrived just before 9pm and were out of there around 11:30pm with a diagnosis of cellulitis and prescriptions for oral and topical antibiotics.

He thought the ER bed was very cozy. After some hemming and hawing, and as it got later and later, Sammy let me cuddle with him. Eventually we both fell asleep during the hour long wait for his meds – though not easily with the bright lights in the room and the noise of an agitated patient somewhere nearby.

A short cuddle with Daddy when we got home, just before midnight.

This weekend all of the kids got in some great catching practice with Daddy. (Steven and Sammy start baseball practice on Tuesday.)

At Steven’s request, the kids and I played Catan Junior on Saturday afternoon. Sammy took his first win.

Aiding Sammy’s win was his strategic risk to encroach on my space. Had I gotten a lair down first it would have backfired but Sammy prevailed. He was thrilled when he realized he got me.

Some beef tacos for dinner. Sammy helped with the beef and Amaya did her usual great job of chopping and separating green onions.

Today I’m 45 (!!!) and it’s been a wonderful day. The kids let me sleep in and brought me breakfast in bed. Then I came downstairs to a wonderful assortment of activities and cards/gifts.

Texts from Steven <3

Steven created a wonderful game that combined scrabble, First Orchard, his 13+4 spy game and jenga blocks into a big game full of traps and pitfalls. Land on a jenga block with a “B” written on it? Get a popsicle stick with instructions like “trade spots” or “go to prison”.

The kids and I went to Starbucks and Sammy suggested I write “Birthday Girl, Mom” on the van window.

Jason grilled hot dogs for lunch and we had our first backyard meal of the season!

A selection of my treasure trove…

From Amaya:

From Sammy:

From Steven:

We had a relaxing afternoon. Steven performed some lung surgery on Jason with magnatiles and plastic cups and set his broken leg with jenga blocks.

Less relaxing, Jason started a project power washing our driveway. I had no idea how much it was needed until he got started. Steven put on his water backpack to help.

We wrapped our my birthday / Sunday with a trip to downtown Northville for dinner.

Making wishes…

Waiting for our table

My little loves <3

Have a great week!

It was a pretty quiet week around here. Gabby, our afternoon nanny, had to leave us unexpectedly so the big activity was working with Penni to cover as many hours as possible. It’s hard, though. We have child care past 6pm for a reason so accommodating a sudden change has it’s challenges. Hopefully we’ll have someone new in place soon, though.

Sammy spent a day as Darth Vader, when he wasn’t in class.

On Tuesday, the kids caught a toad (Toadie) in the yard. They even put a fly inside with the toad to give it some food. Eventually, though, Jason helped them understand that Toadie needed to live their full, free life out of captivity.

Goodbye, Toadie!

Apparently this is one of Sammy’s favorite spots to watch videos on his iPod. Looks cozy!

Thursday was a beautiful day and the kids’ teacher was out after their 9am meeting so Penni packed a lunch and took the kids to a playground for a few hours. Definitely a benefit of virtual school.

SSA are doing work on work tense and nouns, verbs, etc. I peeked in one of their workbooks and thought it was cute to see what the kids chose for proper noun examples. In order, it’s Amaya, Steven and then Sammy’s work.

Pre-bed shows and device time + cuddles.

Amaya wanted me to take a picture of her making this face lol.

Early Saturday morning I took Steven and Amaya to their school playground. Sammy stayed home with Daddy. These two had a good time together but said it’s a lot more boring without Sammy there.

The kids also had hours outside in our yard yesterday. Hours. I love this time of year when it’s getting warmer and we have the promise of months of warm weather to come.

Steven took this picture of me resting on their swing. <3 (Sammy reminded me I should always hold on with two hands.)

Daddy and Amaya had a shopping trip on Saturday afternoon to get Amaya all set with her gear for softball! She’s joined a girls softball league for 1st- 3rd graders and the boys are doing baseball again. Amaya’s practices start this week. I’m psyched for the kids to get back to after school activities but a little stressed about the scheduling with our nanny change.

Saturday evening baseball with Daddy

On Sunday morning, while Jason and Sammy were at the grocery story, Steven and Amaya spent ages doing art tutorials of Animal Crossing and PJ Masks characters.

Amaya’s drawing of Isabelle, Cherry, KK, Owlette and Luna Girl.

Steven’s drawing of Cherry, with a “Joy Reaction”.

Steven’s PJ Masks puppets.

Meanwhile, when he got home, Sammy got busy with magnatiles.

It was a big cooking day with a new Raddish Kids kit. We started with Strawberry Cupcakes. They were delicious, hot out of the oven. I didn’t even need frosting on mine.

As a Schitt’s Creek fan I had a great time telling the kids they were going to have to fold in the strawberries. Sammy did not disappoint when he asked, “But what does it mean by ‘fold’?” (Reference)

In the afternoon, we made a delicious dinner of country ham sandwiches complete with homemade biscuits. Amaya was a huge fan of the apricot mustard dressing.

Watching the Masters while dinner cooked.

After dinner, Amaya and Sammy volunteered to model their Raddish Kids aprons, which have many, many patches at this point. Amaya wanted to take “at least 10 pictures”. Sammy wanted me to take a picture “that looks like he’s just walking by.” Mission accomplished.

Book time is the best time! I got the kids some books at their level but they generally still prefer that I read them at bedtime.

On Friday night, though, Amaya did a phenomenal job reading a level J Flat Stanley book to us. They do all of their daily reading time in breaks between zoom meetings, often via online books, so we see the kids’ skills growing in huge leaps. I’m honestly amazed at how much they’ve learned this year, especially in this unusual environment. No reading just for fun, yet, but maybe someday.

This week included a lot of Steven cuddle time. I love this picture that Jason took.

The kids keep notes on their iPods and Steven showed me a note he made, complete with a photo. <3

It’s not just evening cuddles. I got a lot of morning cuddles this week, too.

That it for this week! Have a great one!

*Blog title by Amaya

What a week in NY. This was our third time staying at this AirBnB, affectionally referred to as “907”.

I had a number of meetings throughout the day on Monday so we headed over to the Goldberg’s house for the day where the kids played and I was able to get my work done.

Amaya dressed for the day with her mix & match fashion – all created with one sweatshirt.

Doing word puzzles with Nana.

The kids love to play a game with Charlie where they use a bathrobe tie to pull her around the house on her roller blades. I think I have pictures of this from earlier in the winter, too. The game lives on! (Sometimes Charlie puts on her helmet and knee pads and Uncle Dave pulls her fast through their cul de sac.)

Super Mario Party!

Charlie came back to 907 with us for dinner and some shows before heading home for the night.

Broccoli Boy

This sweet boy loves to keep his mama close by, even when I’m one room over. <3

On Tuesday, the kids, Nana, Aunt Sara, Chase, Charlie and I spent the afternoon at the Bronx Zoo. (Reportedly one of the best zoos in the world!) We spent over 4 hours there and saw a tiger, bears, very active seals (and sea lions?), giraffes (my favorite!) and an incredible Congo exhibit with amazing monkeys and gorillas. The “walk from NY to Africa” was Steven’s favorite part of this trip to New York.

How big are we compared to a tiger?

With my girl…

Nana treated everyone to a Bronx Zoo souvenir. A snake for Amaya (named Sequin), a parrot for Steven (named Fruit Loop) and a polar bear for Sammy (named Polar). Steven wants you to know that Charlie’s monkey is named “Peely”.

Carousels – fun for all ages!

Walking through a big fallen tree.

Steven (who’s sitting with me as I write), wants me to share that he thinks this monkey’s face is very pretty. Honestly, it was wild to make eye contact with the various apes. I felt like they could really see me.

Amaya loved the baby monkeys.

The gorillas were incredible and there we so many of them! Again, it was kind of freaky when they’d look at me. I definitely had a Planet of the Apes vibe.

We wrapped up our zoo day with a sleepover with Charlie.

On Wednesday morning, the kids all went to visit Savta! There’s always so much to see at Savta’s house.

Regular stop at the Halls Pond playground.

We had a big lunch together at Nana and Papa’s house. It’s so, so nice to be back there.

Our Wednesday afternoon activity was ice skating – a first for SSA! It was a lot harder than they expected but they all persevered and made great progress through their time on the ice.

As time went on, the kids got comfortable enough to venture away from the wall.

Can you spy Sammy with Nana and Amaya with Aunt Sara?

Watching the Zamboni before we headed out for the evening.

We made the decision to take a leisurely drive home to MI and start the journey on Thursday evening so, early Thursday morning, the crew headed to the Goldberg’s to say goodbye to Aunt Sara, Uncle Dave, Chase and Charlie and then Savta and Papa came by for goodbyes. Goodbyes really stink.

Our afternoon adventure was a visit to the American Museum of Natural History. The kids visited about 2 years ago but it was definitely time to return. We were so lucky that Nana decided to join us!

We spent over 3 hours walking around and SSA were really interested in all sorts of exhibits from dinosaurs to meteorites to exhibits on peoples of the world. I was very impressed with how engaged they were and the questions they asked.

If you play Animal Crossing you won’t be surprised to hear that the dinosaur exhibit reminded the of the island museum.

This is the largest meteorite on display in any museum in the world. It’s so heavy that the support beams go all the way through the museum basement into the bedrock below.

There was a lot to learn about central and south America.

When the museum closed at 5:30pm, we said goodbye to Nana (SADNESS) and started our journey home. First stop – the Poconos and Bushkill Falls! I booked a villa not far from Bushkill Falls which the kids looooooved. From the entry level, you could go down a small flight of stairs to two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Up a small flight of stairs was the main living area. The highlight, though, was the spiral staircase that led to a sleeping loft with two twin beds.

Due to a Door Dash mishap, we didn’t eat dinner until 9pm – which created its own excitement for the kids.

Our Friday morning adventure was a visit to Bushkill Falls. It was opening day for the season and it was a cold morning! The hiking kept us warm, though, and the views were definitely worth it.

In case you can’t see him, that’s Steven on the bridge.

Between the late night and the morning hike, I had three tired kids when we hit the road after lunch.

To break it up we made a few stops along the way including a quick visit to the Bees Knees Winery where I got some fruit wine (yikes) and the kids got honey sticks.

They liked this little bear.

We stopped for the night just past Cuyahoga National Park. It was a long day but not too long, which was my goal. One last night on our spring break trip!

On our last morning, I fulfilled a promise to the kids – mini golf. We drove about 2 hrs to Toledo before we stopped for two rounds of golf.

All 3 kids managed at least 1 hole on one.

Hole in 1 face!

Hole in 1 face! Steven also got a hole in one while there was a red light on, which meant he got a special price – a discount off our next game and an orange golf ball.

We made it back home a little after 3pm. I was really torn about leaning on Thursday evening but I think having the full day home on Sunday was the right call. It gave all of us some downtime before heading into the week. The kids got to play outside and spend some quality time with Jason. I was able to unpack and catch up on work.

Checking out a new swing addition on our play set.

Today Jason worked hard on some basement shelving, with help from the kids.

I got this text from Steven <3

Amaya’s Sunday fashion

We wrapped the day with dinner out at Bonefish Grill. It was a beautiful night!

Before we left, Amaya took time to style her hair with this side swept look.

Have a great week!