Mabon (Autumnal Equinox)

We have had great weather this week as we balance the nights and days and transition into fall. After we picked Alex up from school on Tuesday we stopped at the Brown Bridge Quiet area on the way home. We had a great time looking for colored leaves and other treasures and playing by the pond. Although it wasn't completely sunny it was very warm and calm.
Talk about having it all in one place....rocks, leaves, a few snail shells, sticks, a pond and a little stream from a spring. The possibilities are endless with those things at a child's disposal!

A few weeks ago we had a rainy saturday and made some salt dough and played making cookie cutter shapes and then baking them. They've been sitting around for a while and last weekend we had some really cold mornings so we took the opportunity to sit in the sun and paint them. Maya took her painting very seriously! I could not get a smile out of her.

We have two weeks under our belt

Alex says he has loved every minute of it. He doesn't ever want me to come INTO school, just drop him off and pick him up in the car line. Seriously, he's in school two weeks and already I am so not cool.

But at least he's happy to see me at the end of the day and sometimes even says he missed me. He is tired at the end of the day, more so towards the end of the week, but otherwise has had no trouble adjusting at all to being gone all day, having structure all day or anything.

Maya and I on the other hand.......well Maya misses her playmate terribly. I have been trying to fill the void but she's not entirely buying it. On top of that she got really out of sorts from whatever bug she had last week and those days seem to have rearranged her internal rhythm a bit and I was missing sleep and hunger cues. Resulting in massive meltdowns. Massive. Recurring. Meltdowns.

Our adjusting has kept us very close to home these past weeks. I feel a little "out of the loop" but it felt right to stay home and just try to find our rhythm. By the end of this week, I am happy to say, we seem to have figured some things out and even managed to have some fun! I am looking forward to expanding on what we've figured out and then venturing out more as well.

The last pan of cookies

You know the one where your brain is already thinking you are done making cookies so you forget about them in the oven?? Well not in this house - I always bake the last pan just to perfection...........because for me it's the second to the last pan of cookies! I don't know why. I get lulled into complacency and stop paying attention, get sucked in doing something else (something useful of course, not reading blogs or facebook), and all of a sudden realize - Oh S@#$, I'm baking cookies. Then I pull myself together and really, really pay attention to the last pan of cookies. Thank goodness the second to the last pan was on the baking stone and not the dark pan or they would have been garbage cookies. Now instead they are just ones that you soak in the milk until they almost fall apart!

Blech

The weather was gorgeous this weekend. We however spent most of our time inside. Maya started a fever Thursday night - between 100-101. She spent most of Friday either on my lap or sleeping on my chest. She had no other symptoms and was drinking a lot and eating a little. It was sad to see her so sleepy and lethargic - it made me think of last summer when she got so sick. Thank goodness she was asking for water all the time and drinking.
The fever continued all day Friday, Friday night and Saturday. Saturday afternoon it spiked higher for a while then she actually perked up a bit and stood on her own two legs and even played a little. By Sunday morning her fever was gone and today she ate a lot more, and played a lot. She was still pretty cranky and crashed hard in the evening though. I'm guessing tomorrow she'll be back to normal.
Meanwhile Alex came down with a cold Friday afternoon. He had no fever, just stuffy head, runny nose and a little bit of cough. He was definitely not himself this weekend either.
So here is to a new week!!

First Day of school!

Alex has his first week of Kindergarten under his belt. He had a half day Tuesday and then full days the rest of the week. He loves it! He was tired, very tired, by the end of the week but it turns out he was fighting a cold that finally manifested Friday afternoon.
He goes to the Woodland School and is in the K-2 classroom. The school has multi-age classrooms so that means his room contains students in Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade. He knew one girl from his preschool class last year, which was nice on that first day to see a familiar face. But it sounds like he found a little pack of boys to play with at recess without any trouble.
The campus at Woodland is gorgeous. There is a fun playground but also a natural wooded area they are allowed to roam and play in at recess as well. Alex says he has been spending a lot of time in the woods! The weather was beautiful this week and Alex said one day they went outside an extra time to go for a hike around the pond, he thought that was very cool.

Wedding

I did not take many pictures at the wedding. The ones I got are not very good. Matt and Amy had a friend of the family as their photographer who takes fabulous pictures so I didn't really make a huge effort! At some point I'm sure I will post a few.

It was a beautiful day, perfect. Beautiful wedding. We had a lot of fun at the reception and got to visit with a wide variety of people we don't see very often. The reception was at a nature area just north of Green Bay in the ski lodge/warming house. The kids had a blast playing outside the whole night.

Big weekend

Maya turned 2 on friday. My brother got married on saturday!

We'll start with Maya's birthday related stuff. She got a couple presents on friday, including a dress up dress and a little pony. She got a couple more presents Sunday morning in New London and then she had a real party on sunday evening after all the wedding stuff calmed down with cake and yes, some more presents.

She got a little bike from my parents - it's a balance bike, which is a tiny 2-wheeler with no pedals and no training wheels. They sit on it and "run" with their feet. The idea being that kids then learn to balance first and then to pedal and then they never need training wheels or tricycles and it's an easier transition. She loves it so far!

These were Alex's

Free Beach Bums game

Sunday night we met some friends at the Beach Bums game. Families with small children could get free tickets that night and there were suppose to be kids activities before the game.
The kid's activities were a little lame and really hard to negotiate with two kids running opposite directions in the crowd but the game was fun and the kids actually lasted the whole game (with the help of course of the concession stand).