the big 4-5

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.