Gabby got a puppy and, on Monday, the kids went to meet her. As expected, the boys were smitten. To our surprise, Amaya loved the the puppy, too. She even pet her! Amaya has started saying that maybe she doesn’t mind small dogs. The idea of getting a dog is occasionally appealing but neither Jason or I are excited about the work involved – for me, MI winters are an added disincentive.

On Tuesday, Penni took the kids to Maybury Park. They read up on the history and spent a lot of time catching bugs. In fact, Steven came home with a daddy long legs in an iced tea bottle. He was very attached to that poor little spider and it took a number of conversations before he was comfortable letting it free to live it’s life.

Steven, on his invisible lap top. Sammy: “You know there’s nothing there, right?”

Did I mention that we increased patching to 4 hours/day. Steven has been a total champ. I really hope we see meaningful progress when we go back to the ophthalmologist.

All three of us, in our “offices”.

After Star The Clone Wars Wars, we started Star Wars Rebels. I knew nothing about this animated series and I’m enjoying it as much as the kids. It takes place 14 years after Revenge of the Sith, 5 years before A New Hope, and follows some Rebels on their adventures and attempts to take down the empire. Steven’s favorite character is Sabine. This is is drawing of her, from memory. He got down significantly more details than I would have.

Beach day on Wednesday!

This is truly the life.

Jason and I have had a nice amount of kid-free together time this week. It started on Wednesday evening. Jason came home from work early and I was able to stop working early enough for us to have dinner out together. It turns out we live right by this restaurant on Walled Lake. I will definitely be back. We also had a nice day-date on Friday while Penni was with the kids. Breakfast, coffee & books, drinks and appetizers… it’s been a long time since we had that kind of day together here in MI. Honestly, it’s probably been 6+ years.

The men watching Star Wars Rebels.

Steven’s other two glasses came in so we ran to the shop on Thursday afternoon. With the mask and his eye patch you can barely see the guy! He’s excited because we had the lenses replaced in his favorite frames and we let him pick out two new pair. So now he has blue & orange, black & red, and black & green transitions. Hopefully his prescription lasts a while!

Jason got Amaya started on a two-wheeler. I don’t think we’d realize we need to bend so much to get them going. Our old bodies poop out fast!

A Jedi princess and her homemade lightsaber.

Friday was a scorcher. Penni took the kids to a new park to try geocaching but it was a bust so they ended up going out for ice cream instead. Nice trade off.

Amaya invented a game where you write numbers on small pieces of paper and cut out small yellow circles. You shuffle the deck and draw a card. You take the # of yellow circles corresponding with the # on your card. When all the dots are gone, the person with the most wins. She was pretty proud of herself.

My girl. <3

The JCC pool is open!! Reservations are required and there is a limit to the number of people that can attend at once. We reserved the 12- 3:30pm time slot on the 4th and were all so happy to be back!

Steven and Sammy spent most of the time in their life jackets even though they can stand easily in the shallow section of the pool. I think they liked the freedom and fearlessness it gave them. Amaya only wore her life jacket in the deep end (10.5 feet) and even then she took time to take it off and practice treading water. She needs to be able to tread for 30 seconds and swim a consistent stroke (any stroke) before she can jump off the diving board. (Which we learned when she jumped off the diving board in her life jacket.) It was quiet enough, with enough space per family, that I felt very comfortable the entire time we were there.

Steven’s made such leaps in the pool. Two years ago he’d barely go in and, when he did, he literally just hugged the wall. Last year he went in with his puddle jumper and always wanted a pool noodle, too. This year he has his life jacket but he did walk from one end of the pool to the other without it so, maybe before summer’s end, he’ll get more comfortable.

Amaya wants to swim so badly. She is pushing herself to learn to swim across the shallow end so she can do it across the deep end. I’ve always known her to persevere but I’ve never seen her push herself quite like this. It’s really cool to watch. I think she’ll probably need some lessons, though, to get her strokes down. She wastes a lot of energy without knowing how to use her body as effectively as she can.

Sammy wants to jump in the pool but he’s still building up the nerve. Maybe this summer. <3

Saturday evening the kids got to experience sparklers for the first time. They loved it. (I loved it.)

We had a very lazy morning in The Land of Cheltenham after a family sleepover in the living room last night.

Amaya and Steven played chess. I love the online game because it requires them to move pieces in the ways they’re intended so they can learn without adult supervision. It was cute to hear them talking about their moves with each other.

This month’s Raddish Kids kit is “Taste of Japan”. We made a Japanese noodle dish with carrots and cabbage and chicken teriyaki skewers. I’m starting to realize that I need to let the kids read the measurements themselves and find the right measuring cup/measuring spoon. They’re definitely ready and capable of more.

We ate a very early dinner and then the kids and I headed back to the pool for a late afternoon/early evening swim. By the time we were wrapping up, we practically had the place to ourselves.

SSA would have stayed in the pool for another hour if they could have.

That’s it for us. Have a great week!