It’s back to school season!
I’m not going to lie, this back to school period was hard. The calendar was very full, even without the fun celebrations for a birthday and vacation. We had three children starting school on three different days, and each had an orientation day and back to school night on top of that. Two of the children were starting completely new schools, which only added to the stress.
You have been counting down to this day for MONTHS. Constantly asking when your day would come. When would you get your blue cake and have everyone sing Happy Birthday to F. And somehow it’s finally here. I’ve been calling you a two year old every day leading up to this, savoring these last bits when you’re still so little. Because in many ways you are so big.
When a once in a lifetime event happens, and it’s going to take place in your hometown, you go right? There was some talk about how to do it, especially since it was during the school week, and there were no hotels, airbnbs, etc available and sleeping all 5 of us at my parents house isn’t the easiest.
Tom’s low on vacation days, and and eclipse might be a lot for the younger ones, so it was decided I would take the first grader to VT. Even better, we decided to car pool with my bff and her first grader. We figured it was educational enough to pull them from school and make an event out of it.
It’s raining, it’s pouring, the dinosaurs were roaring?
Close enough.
We had a Saturday morning where all our plans were unexpectedly cancelled, but there was a dinosaur event in town… so obviously we checked it out. We walked into a room with some animatronic dinosaurs bouncing up and down and making noises. The kids spent a while trying to pet them and pretended to feed them, but much like trips to zoos with actual animals, they eventually got bored. Tom’s favorite exhibit was a little toddler that walked around roaring at everyone, but even that got old after a while.
Our town puts on a carnival every 4th of July called fun on the 4th, although this year oddly enough it happened the last week of June. Besides being confusing, it meant we missed it while we were on vacation. So we went looking for our own fun during our long weekend. E told me that they didn’t mind, though, because vacation was way better.
We hung out with friends on the actual 4th and went to a parade in search of candy. The candy was a little stingy this year, but enough to keep the kids happy. What did not keep the kids happy were all the guns they shoot off in the parade - some right in front of us. Are those really necessary? I could definitely do without them.
After 5 long years, we made our return to Maine!
It hadn’t felt like we’d been away that long, but the last time we were there G was just learning how to crawl. I guess the past few years disappeared somehow. (Okay I may have a few ideas how)
We rented a house in our favorite area and spent the whole week walking everywhere. E told us it was so much fun, and think about how much money we were saving on gas! Our kids even found a love of the beach this year and so we went every single day of our vacation. They dug in the sand, they splashed in the waves, and I think all 3 of them went under (either willingly or not).
It’s funny how much can change in a year. Last year I said I wasn’t a fan of class parties, and this year they’re my favorite haha. Partly because they seem to be slipping away - I thought we’d have them through third or fourth grade. And maybe our class was an abnormally this year, but the parties were already splitting boys and girls, which obviously doesn’t work for us. We only had 2 invites to parties this year, and watching how sad it made E, and also seeing other parents stress about kids not showing up has moved my opinion towards one of, the more parties the better!
One more December post.
We really had so much fun this month. Both Tom and I were off for the entire week of Christmas and we were able to do so many fun things. Even the rest of the month was filled with activies ever weekend. Some I’ve already written about, but there were enough other things I just wanted to get down in a post.
First up, for the first time ever we attended our town’s tree lighting! I’m always a little confused as to what you’re supposed to do leading up to the event. I think the real answer is have more friends and spend your time chatting with them, but we just stood around and waited. It was worth it though, because when the trees lit up, it was one of the coolest things we’ve ever seen. All the towns around here light up every tree on the common, not just one tree, so it’s super pretty and dramatic.
We did a thing!
I’m not sure if it was more for us or more for the kids (okay it was definitely more for us), but we decided to try out Disney on Ice. Hands down my favorite part of Christmas.
Disney magic is always wonderful and immediately made me tear up, but maybe part of it was also the privilege to bring my children such joy at a time when our world seems to falling apart - it was a nice break for sure. I’ve also learned that anytime you can show a child something completely new is pretty amazing. Watching them take in something they didn’t know existed is honestly one of my favorite parts of being a parent. It’s a little sad knowing that if we do this again, it might not be as amazing, but this time was worth it.
Somehow we managed to pull off a small celebration for G again, just days before Christmas. It’s such a hard thing - in the middle of getting ready for Christmas and wrapping presents and figuring all that out, we suddenly have to double decorate and make a cake and have him feel special.
For months he’d been asking for another train birthday cake, like he had for his birthday last year, but then suddenly with a month to go he asked if he could have a baa baa birthday again. I told him that surprisingly he’d actually never had a baa baa birthday before, at which point he demanded it.
Whew this year really exhausted me! I swear I need to start prepping and wrapping gifts now to get ready for next year. By the time Christmas morning was here, I could barely keep my eyes open. But we did it - and I think it went well. We numbered the presents again this year, which is working for us. Not only slows down the rush, but keeps them opening presents in the order we want, and if they all got the same thing, they open it at the same time.
We did our usual cinnamon buns for breakfast, chinese food for lunch, candy canes on the trees and so much candy all day long. We watched a few movies, stayed in our PJs, and stayed home. The kids were sad there was no snow, but I think that’s going to be a normal thing here on Christmas.
Five seems like a big number. Five means kindergarten is coming. More and more I look at pictures of him and realize that he has gotten so big. Everything about him looks older and not like the little kid he used to be. He’s calmer than he was, his outbursts (while still epic) are less frequent and easier controlled. It’s hard knowing that the upcoming year is going to be both hard and exciting for him (any mentions of kindergarten leads to an immediate meltdown), and that he’ll grow even more.
He’s been working to pick up new skills - how to get himself dressed every day, and put his dishes away after a meal. His drawing skills are also getting really good and are so impressive. Pictures he draws have gone from cute and funny to almost shockingly good.
Time to dump a bunch of pictures and maybe some memories tied to them. I wasn’t kidding when I said the fall was non stop events, to the point I forgot we even did some of these things until I saw the pictures.
We checked out a new local farm for pumpkins, hay rides, and to E’s excitement - a corn maze! We also later went to our local farm stand to do their corn maze, which is much more my speed - and F’s too. They open at 7am, so we like to go early in the morning and let the kids run through the maze for an hour until they’re tired.
The fall holiday season is moving right along.
As much as I’d love to hit pause, it’s not going to happen, so let’s just jump right in.
As always, I tried to make Thanksgiving as low key as possible. I had bought some pies and a pumpkin roll from a fund raiser at the elementary school, and figured that would be good enough for Thanksgiving, and then was told that we NEEDED a pumpkin pie. Which is fine, I love pumpkin pies too, so the kids made one on the Wednesday they were out of school. Turns out F is really into baking and loved the whole process. And everyone loved the pie.
It happened!
At 6 and a half, we finally have our first lost tooth!
It has been loose for months, and really ramped up the last few weeks. Tom wiggled it at Thanksgiving and declared it lose enough he would have pulled it as a child. However it seems like E takes after his mama a bit, and had no interest in pulling it. He was wiggling it a bunch with his tongue, and when he woke up this morning it was half falling out of his mouth.
It’s currently after Thanksgiving and I still haven’t loaded Halloween pictures on my computer yet, which shows you how behind on everything I am. I have 7 Christmas trees up in my house, at least, so some priorities are in tact.
Like the rest of the year has been, October was super rainy. We missed out on a couple Halloween events because it was raining, which was too bad. We still managed to have fun and dress in costumes a few times, and I’m not sure the kids misses anything since we added a few new events.
There’s something about fall that is non stop crazy every year. More so than summer when we’re dealing with vacations and no school and camps. More so than spring when we’re dealing with non stop birthdays and big holidays. September through December just fly by.
This year is no exception. We’re still getting used to a new elementary school with a new teacher, new administration, new rules and bus routes and everything that goes with it. It’s involving a lot more phone calls and meetings than I expected, but hopefully things will settle down soon.
From ladybugs to kitty cats.
Mostly I’m just picking themes that seem fun based on random things she likes, and since I didn’t feel like throwing a baby doll birthday party, cats it is! So we decorated the whole house with cats with party hats and E helped me by blowing up a lot of balloons. He was home one day with me and bored, so I threw some balloons at him and told him to figure out how to blow them up! It was actually pretty cool watching him figure out what he needed to do.
Our cats didn’t love it, though. Every night you’d find them staring with wide eyes at the stuff hanging from the ceiling. Which to be fair, did look like we’d cut a head off a cat and hung it from a string…
I can’t even make this up.
If you read my end of summer post recently, you know that my kids had one request at the beginning of this summer: get ice cream from an ice cream truck. How hard could that be? I pinky promised.
I don’t even know how many weekends we arranged our plans around finding an ice cream truck. We’d go to a playground we don’t usually go to because we’d heard that the truck goes there. Or we’d take the long way around and drive by a few schools or soccer fields to see if we could find it. We always promised ice cream, so we’d end up at a local place at the end, which kept everyone happy, but no ice cream truck.