First Hair Cut

Coco's first haircut was a success. She loved the attention as well as the hair cut cloak.  I took her to my stylist and she stood very still while we essentially cut off a 4 inch ponytail.  She looks so cute but I'll miss the ragged little mane she had growing. She is exponentially better at getting her hair brushed and done than Adrienne.  Sometimes I'm afraid that the neighbors are going to call CPS when I'm brushing Ade's hair.  Let's hope this trend of Coco's coop

eration continues!

First Grade Bliss

First grade seems to be a pretty decent grade.  Kids are still nice to each other for the most part, books can still evoke lots of excitement and the stuff that comes home from school is still cute and not frustrating.  Ade is still into her beanie book key chains, often dangling 5 pounds worth from her backpack that is used to cart single pieces of paper back and forth to school.  She's highly social and always looking for play dates.  She's now into earrings as part of a larger style scheme and I have to say that I love that!  The current toy fad is "putty".  Really expensive putty that seems to keep showing up in packages from Amazon. I'm not sure why that keeps happening.  The putty also seems to keep appearing in hard to clean parts of our house - smeared on the fireplace glass, hanging from heating grates, and my favorite, in our shag rug.

Adrienne will be starting her 2nd season of lacrosse soon and then onto soccer for the summer.  She's also still in gymnastics and taking swimming lessons.  We're thinking her size will preclude her from any serious gymnastics and will come in handy for lacrosse. We shall see...but for now, we'll enjoy the first grade bliss and hope it continues into 2nd grade!

Growing and Speaking

  

Coco keeps telling people she's going to be as big as daddy.  God, I hope not, for her sake. It gives people a good chuckle though.  A previous teacher at the JCC told her the other day that she's getting so big and she responds with "that's because I'm growing up." Duh!  Where I see the most growth with her is her assertiveness and her use of phrases that actually make sense.  She tells people they are annoying her, that they can't talk to her, and "ugggg, that's not what I said!"  Of course she also still speaks broken toddler English.  She likes shows on Neck-flix, doesn't like the car to go through the "wash cloth," and likes to shop at Lemmings (Wegmans).  Things are still "fings" and the yogurt shop, Yotality, is "Nutality" since she likes Nutella.  She has lovingly changed some animal names: raccoon to taccoon and at one time a skunk was a snuck.  And sometimes her phrases are a little off.  She says "You gotta be freakin' me" instead of kidding me.  In the future, when she speaks correctly, I will miss all of her Cocoisms.   And in that not so distant future, she'll climb aboard the yellow school bus with her "packpack" on her back and head off to Kindergarten.

Hair, or not

What they say is true, eerily quiet time in a house full of children is not something to bask in...it's a time to investigate.  Example: Luke had his very first band concert last night.  He was supposed to be up in his room getting his dress clothes on.  He was taking a long time. When he finally came down, he had no dress clothes on.  Queue the confusion bells going off in my head.  He proceeds to tell me that I made a rather large mistake when I was trimming his hair that morning.  Knowing that I had actually done a really fantastic job of it, alarms and adrenaline start racing through my mind. He then shows me a section of his head where a lawn mower must have gone through his hair.  At this stage of the game, we are t-minus 10 minutes from leaving for the inaugural band concert. Of course, after fierce interrogation, he admits he took his dad's clippers in an attempt to give himself a new slick hair style.  Except it wasn't slick.  As the heated conversation continues, Matt arrives home from work.  I'm absolutely positive I saw real steam coming out of his ears and nose.  With very little further conversation beyond explanation, Matt whisks Luke off to SuperCuts. Adrienne and I head to the concert to get seats while Luke is taken to receive his "hair correction."  This is a code name for buzz cut.

I first lay eyes on Luke as the big blue velvet curtains are drawn to expose the 4th grade French Road Elementary band.  And if it weren't for G-ma being there with us and pointing him out, I'm not sure I would have recognized Luke, minus hair.  Let's just say that this is Luke's first and ONLY buzz cut.    We don't really encourage the skinhead look in our family for obvious reasons (actually, in today's political environment, I shouldn't say anything is obvious but you know what I mean).

In conclusion, while Luke thinks his new do feels good to rub his hands on, he asked multiple times if he could wear a hat to school today.  We are going to go with natural consequences on this episode.

Style

Every once in a while the kids get stuck on some fashion or style interest that we either shut down immediately and completely or give in to after ridiculous amounts of begging and pestering.  About two months ago, Luke was interseted in the studded dog collars that you see on the Goth folks.  This one was shut down immediately and completely.  As was the gold patent leather high tops.  And also the mohawk request.  And then came the request for lines to be cut into his hair, circa 1990 hip hop style.  So Luke needed a real hair cut I was about to try the lines out when I decided to see if I could talk him into some other, less obnoxious style.  And thus the "hard part" interest was born.  It's basically making a side part more pronounced and combing over the top to the opposite side. Thank God he took the bait - this time, at least.  Now he's rockin' a cute and stylish cut:

And for her part, Adrienne is normally interested in less outlandish styles than Luke.   Now that I think about it, she has asked to dye her hair purple - again, that was shut down immediately and completely.  She is a girly girl and she likes her some sparkly jewels so I was willing to give into the earring proposition.  I described the process to her and she said she was brave enough to do it so we did it!  And yes, she chose the pair of earrings with the most bling!

Holidays 2016

Christmas morning

I could probably write an entire book about the holidays but ain't nobody got time for that.  Quick recap:

We hosted Thanksgiving this year - it was lots of work, lots of food, and lots of fun.  We only had one melt down and no, it wasn't by me.

We played "Pie Face," which was a hit - quite literally, you get hit in the face by a plastic hand with whipped cream on it.  Lots of laughs with this one.

Christmas somehow gets bigger and bigger every year.  These kids are spoiled.  Ok, Matt and I get spoiled, too.  Santa really likes us.

We had Christmas Eve in Corning and Gma and Gpa came down to have dinner with us.  We opened presents in the morning and then headed off to Canandaigua for a large family dinner.  We then opened presents again the next morning and the kids were starting to like the pattern so we had to nip that in the bud and return to our own home.  Again, lots of fun by all and all the presents left no time for meltdowns - yay!

Shout out to our whole family for all of their amazing and generous gifts!

Christmas in Canandaigua

Light up drum sticks

Too much Christmas Eve excitement

Christmas Eve group bath

Tales from the Fourth Grade

It seems like my life has been revolving around fractions and topic sentences lately -  largely in part to the copious amounts of 4th grade homework I've been doing.  I thought I'd said good riddance to that ghastly grade back in 1990.  Seriously, it's the worst.  Luke and I do so much homework that we've worn grooves into the kitchen table where our elbows touch while we hold our heads in our hands.   Think you're a patient person?  I challenge you to work on equivalent fraction word problems with a 9 year old.  Or better yet, help that same 9 year old write a persuasion paragraph. For the love of God; why do schools do this to parents? And I have to say that at least I can follow the common core (crap) way of teaching these things and many parents can't.  We are holding on tight for a roller coaster year for now.  And I suppose I'll be attending the 4th grade two more times  - aaaaahhhhh!!!!!!

Wild and Three

My baby belle is three - that's wild!  And wild she is.  She is highly opinionated and highly affectionate - a truly passionate being. These days she's into all things girly and glittery, spin dresses, books and just about anything her sister is doing.   She has a penchant for chocolate and gummy bears.  Wait a second, this is sounding awfully and personally familiar...suddenly unsure if I'm describing her or myself.

Three lifetimes with Coco wouldn't be enough for me.  For this birthday, Coco chose Altitude Trampoline Park as her treat of choice - and the choice embodies all that she is. So we did a little family jump sesh and then came home for pizza, Dora cake and presents.  Life with a threenager is sure to be exciting.

Swim meets are exhausting for parents

Well, here we are back into swim season.  Oh wait, it's year round with a random 3 week break so I guess we never really left it to get back into it. Anyway, that 3 week break actually made a huge difference for Luke.  He was able to make it out of the "Lane 1 " practice group which is normally composed of the newbies, the clowns, and the space cadets of the team.  He made it all the way to "Lane 3" which are the kids who pretend to know what they are doing, generally have at least one minute attention spans, and have some degree of future potential beyond drowning.  He seems to be enjoying more of practice than just setting up the lane lines and hanging out in the locker room like he did last season.  He's even been acknowledging his coaches' attempts to correct his form - woohoo!  

The first swim meet of this season was this past weekend.  Luke swam 5 events and managed to only forget his goggles for one of them.  Who does that? It's akin to trying to win the Kentucky Derby without a saddle on your horse.  I mean, I'm sure he was focusing his attention on what to get next from concession stand than when his next event was, but hey, who needs to see where that concrete wall is?

For their part, Adrienne and Coco solely kept the concession stand in business.  They must have made 17 trips each - back and forth and up and down the bleachers of death.  Adrienne was cheering Luke on at one point, too bad he wasn't in the actual heat she was cheering for.  The girls and I had to make a hasty exit to schlep off to our next activity but it was good timing because Coco's meltdowns were just starting.  She was mad that I wouldn't let her use the award podium (that was inside the section of the pool closed off to spectators) for a climbing structure.     

It's hard to see but Luke is the swimmer in the lane where the official is standing:

Back to School

And just like that we are back to school.  Back to the routine of bedtimes, outfit selections, lunch making, and a jammed packed schedule of activities.  This year, I think back to school came at the perfect time - we had such an incredible summer that I think we were all exhausted from having that much fun.  It appears that both big kids got really great teachers this year: Ade with Mrs. Bambury and Luke with Mr. Ranney.  We've been able to cut back one day per week at the JCC's after school program, Gesher so Luke and Ade will just go twice per week.  We did a better job at planning out our schedule this year so it looks like this:

Mondays: Luke and Ade attend Gesher and then have piano lessons
Tuesdays: NOTHING
Wednesdays: Luke has swim team practice
Thursdays: Luke and Adrienne attend Gesher; Ade has swim lessons and Luke has swim team practice
Fridays: NOTHING
Saturdays: Luke and Ade have gymnastics, Luke's lacrosse starts in November
Sunday: Adrienne has lacrosse practice

We'll add in swim meets as the season progresses and at some point, we'll sign Coco back up for gymnastics.

Along with piano, Luke has the opportunity to do music lessons through school this year.  So far he's wanted to play the tuba, trombone, string bass, drums, clarinet and his favorite: saxophone.  I think he'll end up with the saxophone.

Amidst this crazy schedule, we have a whole list of house projects to do and Penn State football games to watch on TV and attend in person.

Pictures from the first days and weeks of school:

Meet and Greet

checking our her new desk

Excited for first grade!

trying to get a picture with all front teeth still in place

First day of school

Coco wants to go to school, too!

Fourth grade, here I come!

a hug for dad before she gets on the bus

walking Luke to his bus stop down the street