Clair's first week is in the books!

Clair's first week of school has been less eventful than I thought, but not as smooth as I'd hoped.

Like most families, I suppose, we've been on a roller coaster of emotions.

Day 2 was Lester's early day at work, so he had to take Clair to school, since I had to wait for Michelle to arrive.


During summer camp, when I asked Lester how Clair did at drop-off, he lied spared my feelings by saying she did "OK," or "just fine." But on Clair's second day of preK -- the first time we left her there alone -- he couldn't even sugar coat it: "Oh, she was so hurt," he said, sadly. "She cried and cried. It was terrible."

Day 2 was a half-day, so I left work to pick her up and bring her home. When I got to her, she was all smiles, and her teacher said she only cried at drop-off and not a tear after that. "She did great today," she said. And on the car ride home, Clair even told me what she did at school! "My teacher reed a book. I see my friends [not that she actually has any.] I eat some snaaaack."
It was great! I don't think Cary and Dean have ever re-capped their day for me. Ever.

On Clair's day 3, Lester dropped her off again because I had to be in Annapolis at 9 a.m. with the boys (long story). His report: "No tears. Minimal clinging. I was pleasantly surprised."

But I was still worried because Day 3 was the first ever "nap in the class" day, which seemed to me to be a potentially high-octane event, just ripe for meltdowns and nervousness. So after I dropped the boys off at home, I went to her school and peeked in on her in the class. Imagine my surprise - and happiness -- when I walked in on this:

That's her teacher, Miss Michelle. I can't tell you how good it felt for me to walk in unannounced and see her teacher sitting there with her hand on my baby girl, comforting her as she slept. Or pretended to sleep.

The closer I got to Clair, the more I could see her eyes flitting about under her eyelids. So I don't think she was actually asleep here. But she was trying! They said it was naptime, so my girl was doing her best to take a nap! Brava, Clair!

I was soooo relieved. I still got weepy seeing her in there trying so hard to do what the teachers wanted her to do. What a good girl! And also, what a poor baby, having to sleep in class and not in her own little bed in her own little room. Ugh. My little baby girl! But I felt like maybe we were on the right path. The pre-school director hugged me on the way out the door. I'm such a sap!

Then this morning, I dropped her off again and guess what? TEARS galore. Ugh!

So I suppose the roller coaster is still in full force, and likely will be for awhile, as next week is another crazy week, getting the boys acclimated to school. She'll even have to get picked up by Miss Arlene -- the new babysitter -- who she has met twice (and thrown her shade both times) and I know that is going to freak her out!

Bottom line: I will be really glad when we are in a solid, predictable routine again. For her sake, and for mine.

Two cute/funny things from this week to note:

In Clair's classroom, the teachers put labels in the cubbies so they'll know who's full-time, who's half-day, who's three days a week, etc. Except for some reason, instead of writing "full-time" on Clair's label, they accidentally wrote "fun time." This tickled me to no end. Clair Davis: Fun times, man. Fun. Times. Hahahaha!

And Cary and Dean - who are so confused as to why Clair's in school and they're not -- got handwritten cards from their new teacher in the mail! They were SO excited!

Isn't that cute? I'm looking forward to them starting school next week. And dreading the craziness that next week is sure to be.

Hello, roller coaster. Please go away soon.

Clair's (sorta) first day of school!

Today was Clair's first day in the 2s class!

It's so nice only having to convince one child to look at the camera!

I call it her sorta first day, because it was only an hour and a half long, and we were there with her the whole time. *Tomorrow* is the real first day, when she has to stay from 8 to 11:30 -- alone. And then Thursday, she has to stay the FULL day -- until 2:30 p.m., which means she even has to nap there. Yikes.

Poor baby girl. Next week, when the boys start school, her world will be rocked even more, because she will not only have to stay for the full day, but she will also be picked up by a new caregiver, because this is Michelle's last week with us. I'm too sad to talk about that right now - really, it's too much.

So let's focus on Clair's (sorta) first day!

First of all, for one small child, we sure had to bring a lot of stuff.

The class did a gradual entry today, so only nine of the 16 kids in the class were there this morning. Guess how many of the nine Clair played with? If you guessed "not a one," you are correct!

She stuck close to us, not even venturing off to explore all the exciting toys unless one of us was near.

Making breakfast for Daddy.

Mommy's big going-to-school girl!

 She enjoyed decorating her name-tag and putting stickers all over it.

She didn't cry at all, thank goodness, though there was some whininess. But for the most part, I would say she was generally unimpressed with the whole thing.

Unimpressed is better than freaked the funk out, so I'll take it.

Because tomorrow, my friends, is another day altogether.
Pray for us.

Cary and B.O.B. are becoming friends

Some of you mentioned the B.O.B. books for Cary when I mentioned a while back that he was showing some very preliminary early reading signs.

I was doubtful that he was ready, so I didn't get them. But lately, Cary has been poking his bottom lip out, lamenting that "I don't know how to reeeeeeaaad," and "I can't reeeeead!" so I figured it couldn't hurt to at least try the books and see how he does.

We got the first set of books last week, and he is doing so great with them, I can't even tell you!

I don't know why the sound on this video is soooo incredibly low, but if you turn your computer speakers ALL the way up, as far as they'll go, you can hear him sounding out words phonetically, like a big boy! So proud of him! Most of all, he is really proud of himself!

Dean is also doing very well with the books, though he is not as adept just yet as his older, book-loving brother in this area. But what has surprised me about my builder/doer/helper boy Dean is that --  once he saw Cary "reading" --  he immediately took a serious interest in the books, and has been asking me every day to read them to him and help him sound out words. And unlike Cary, who is easily frustrated when he doesn't quickly master something, Dean is undeterred by mistakes and just wants to keep trying and trying and trying. I SO admire that trait in him. (Not sure who he gets that from, but don't look my way...)

It's nice to see them both excited about these books. Generally, Dean has his "thing" and Cary has his, and they both sorta don't care what the other one is into. But with this, both boys are equally psyched about at least trying to figure out what those darn words on those little pages are actually saying!

Looking forward to them learning even more about reading this school year! Maybe by this time next year, they'll be reading bedtime stories to us.

Well-played, Princess Pink, you stealth ninja, you.

I was driving with the kids yesterday to meet a friend and her kids for ice cream when we passed a shopping center.


Clair yells to me from the backseat: "Mommy! (she said "Mommy" like 13 times because she has that hilarious toddler stutter). Mommy! Can-can-can-can-can-can-can-can we go in the pink store?"

I had no idea what she was talking about until I turned quickly and saw the T-Mobile store, which looked something like this.

"Oh no, baby. That's not a store for kids. It's a phone store. It's for adults to buy phones," I said.

Clair responded: "But-but-but-but-but-but-but it's PINK!"

She was not saying adult stores that sell phones shouldn't be pink. She was saying she NEEDED to go in that store because it was pink, regardless of what was actually being sold in it. Pink = need!

At the ice cream shop, Clair didn't want any of the ice creams available because none of them were pink. So she settled for vanilla ice cream with a heap of pink sprinkles. She ate the sprinkles and stirred the ice cream into a pale pink soup. Then she drank it.

Three days ago, when Lester was taking the kids to the park, I packed snacks and water bottles for them. Clair's sippy cup was among the missing (as usual), so I gave her what is supposed to be her "school cup." It used to be Dean's, but it now has her name on it. It's stainless steel with blue and yellow accents (you know the one.)

She recoiled when she saw it and screamed, "Nooooooo! I want my gur-rul cup! (She says "girl" like "squirrel.") I don't want that cup! That's DEAN'S! I want my GUR-RUL CUP!"

I had no idea what she was talking about, until we realized she wanted one that we took to the beach with us, with pink and turquoise polka dots on it.

She flat out refused the stainless steel one and cried until we poured the water into the cheap plastic polka-dotted one.

Oh, she also calls her navy blue Mary Jane shoes her "princess shoes" and asks if every girl she sees on coloring books or TV commercials is a princess. One day I put on my clothes for work and felt especially winning, so I smiled down at my child and said to her, "How does Mommy look?"

She took in my slacks and flat shoes and said disapprovingly, "You-you-you-you-you not a princess."

I PROMISE you, we have never called anything in our house a "girl" anything or a "boy" anything.

Even with my love of little girls in little girly things, we have not pushed pink on her in any way. Her room is green. Her bookbag is Sesame Street's brand of primary colors. I like to think she wears clothes in lots of different colors, pink included, but not exclusively. And the poor girl barely has toys of her own, because we thought it was stupid to buy them when her brothers had a zillion toys she could play with. But the ones she does have are not any more pink than they are green or blue or multi-colored.

And we have NO princess anything in our house, other than the daily 10,000 playings of "Let it Go" on my iPod. Not that I am opposed to princesses - or pink. But we just haven't gotten there yet. Or so I thought.

I say all this to say: Well-played Princess Industrial Complex. Somehow you have pinkafied my daughter and I don't even know how. 

Rain rain, don't go away!

Yesterday, it rained like rain was going out of style.

From 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., it poured - hard and relentlessly. I got soaked going back and forth from my car to meetings, and other, less fortunate, people had their cars swept away in flash flooding. It was crazy. In total, some six inches of rain fell on Baltimore yesterday.

My children were aching to get out in it. We recently bought them rain boots and raincoats, because the boys' new school stressed to us that there are very few days that they don't take the kids outside to play; a little rain, they said, was not a reason to stay inside. (A philosophy we love, by the way.)

So when the skies opened up yesterday, C, D and C just knew this was their chance to splash in puddles with abandon!

When I got home at 5:30, they immediately started pulling on their boots and jackets. They banged through the screen door and stood on the porch steps, looking at...

Sunshine.

Not a drop of rain anywhere. Seriously, it was like someone just turned off a heavenly faucet one minute after I came in the house.

Poor little vinyl-coated cuties!

In other WTF news, the school sent us some correspondence which lists Cary and Dean this way:

Davis, Cary - '28
Davis, Dean - '28

CLASS OF 2028?!?! Whaaaaaaaat?!

That just completely blew my mind. I need a moment.

Clair and her hair

Remember how when I was pregnant with Clair, my curls just went completely away? That's how I knew I was having a girl, even before the ultrasound confirmed it. I knew she was stealing my curls to populate her own little head.

Apparently our heads of hair are still connected, because as my hair is getting thinner (Seriously, folks. I have like 22 strands of hair left on my head), Clair's hair is getting thicker and thicker.

 

Y'all.

Pray for me as her beautifully thick head of hair just gets longer, curlier and coiler.

And pray for our bank accounts, slowly being depleted to pay for all of the hair products.

Thank you. God bless you. Good night.

Third beach week -- a resounding success!!!

Last week we went to Bethany Beach again for a week, and I finally, finally feel like we did the beach right.

You might remember when we first started going to beach, we were total novices and not really all that fond of the beach, but we wanted our kids to have that experience growing up, so we bit the bullet and did it.

I'm so glad we did, because now we really know why people love it so!

The first time we went, we stayed in a hotel - BAD idea.

The second time we went, we stayed in a 1-bedroom condo. Still not great.

This time, we rented a 3-bedroom house and it was perfection!

We even invited my sister and her husband and their two boys, who came for two days and one night, and my Mom and Dad, who brought my other sister's three youngest and stayed for two nights and three days!

More space plus more family = best beach week ever.

Here's the story in one hundred million photos.

There was lots and lots of cousins, water guns, watering cans and fun:

Kwahli and Dean

Russy

Kwahli

Kwahli is getting Russy pretty good in this shot!

Alahna

Aminah

The gang, including my Mom and Dad, who loved the water and the sand as much as the kids.

The gang again. Except for Matty and Clair, this is all the kids. It's the only shot I got of (just about) everyone.

Matty and Clair didn't get in the water at all. Too scary.

                     

    But this is the first year my boys got in it -- even if it was only at the very edge!

. Check Dean out!

That's Cary crouched in the water! Can you believe it?

Why is Matty doing push-ups on the beach? No one knows.

He's going to go ask one of the big kids to get him some water...

So he can pour it on people.

Reggie and Lester

Tahira and Reggie (and my Dad) are the only ones who ventured out into the water. The rest of us are wusses.

Making toe-prints

 We built really rudimentary sandcastles:

We need to work on our technique

We walked along the beach in the early morning:

My Dad took this picture on a morning that he and my Mom took the kids out so we could sleep in. Yes!

We posed on the beach (a lot, and often only after being bribed by me):

Don't they look thrilled to be taking this photo?

This is as close as Clair would get to the water

My handsome Deanie

My scary sea monster Cary

This is the "if you hug and smile I will give you candy" pose.

Why Cary? Why?

We sat for an on-the-beach picture...

And got surprised by a wave!

 My Dad broke the beach rules (and fell asleep happy):

He thought this was so hilarious.

This was after hours of being beaten up by strong waves. My Dad loves the beach!

At the beach house, we ate (a lot), stayed up way too late, blew bubbles and made sidewalk chart art:

Aminah made a beautiful landscape scene (and used up most of the chalk)

Dean's dinosaur! He's such a good artist!

Clair and Matty bonded:

A little...

We saw things we never see at home, like bunnies just hopping around.

This is the Momma bunny, but we saw her babies too. Just hopping around the town! Bethany is such a sweet little place.

We ate a lot of steamed crabs after the kids went to sleep (and had some delicious spirits)

This is the second night of demolishing a crap ton of crabs. The first night we bought a 1/2 a bushel for Reggie's birthday -- and crushed those too.

Dean asked to pick his own crab, so we experienced that milestone! (He did pretty good!)

Train 'em up early!

And we walked around a ton in the little beachtown and ate (A THOUSAND POUNDS OF) frozen custard. We went to Funland TWICE, and I started and finished a book!

All in all, it was an amazingly fun, relaxing and family-filled vacation.

We can't wait to do it again next year!