The Summer Break Blog

Apparently this is now a quarterly blog. It was bound to happen really. I kind of don’t have an excuse. We’re busy? We’re having fun? We have 3 little boys and 2 jobs, and a house and cat and things to do that I don’t sit down to write about. I play too many games on my phone in my downtime. I’ve noticed it is a little harder to get a blog written consistently now that my job is literally to type. Doesn’t make sitting at my computer and typing look like as much of an escape as blog-writing once was.

Really this is a summer break blog, but right after my last blog and right before summer break started Christopher graduated preschool! They put on a little show and even danced with their little partners. Christopher was partnered with his BEST BEST BEST preschool friend Penelope. They were front and center and ADORABLE. Seriously if they were 14 we’d have to worry but 5 year olds hugging and holding hands is so stinking cute. I made sure to get her mom’s contact information and we managed a total of 1 play date all summer. *sigh*

Christopher has matured a lot this summer and I’m super excited for him to start Kindergarten. I requested that he gets the same teachers as William since I know them well already and really like

both of them. We’re going to have to discuss his sensitive stomach so they know what to expect. My only concern is that they send him home every time he says he doesn’t feel well (usually because he has to burp! lol). I’m going to work on a plan with the teachers and office staff for that. In other Christopher news, he had some hip pain at the beginning of the summer which resulted in a trip to the pediatrician followed by an x-ray. The good news is his hips looked fine on the x-ray and the pain resolved so we didn’t need to follow up with a pediatric orthopedic specialist. I think it was probably attributed to a significant growth spurt, but after him limping around on and off for a month or two we had him checked out. He was so good for his appointments. I made sure he got to look at the X-ray on the screen before we left. He was thinking it would be more like the cartoons where you walk behind a screen and all the bones show up. All in all not a bad day spent with my buddy.

The only other notable medical update from the summer is that Kiki started to show her age a bit (she’s around 12) and suddenly had a protruding lower canine! Holy Fang Batman! It promptly earned her a trip to the vet for a cleaning and extraction. Poor old girl. She’s much happier having that tooth out. I could certainly commiserate with her dental issues. Thankfully my summer was dental issue free (knock on wood).

William (and his brothers) spent a lot of his summer playing with friends at daycare. I don’t know what we’d do without daycare. Debbie and her daughters are a godsend. The boys spent more days at Debbie’s house than I had intended this summer, but it’s hard to compete when at home you have brothers to fight with and a mom who wants to you pick up after yourself and at Debbie’s you have friends, do fun projects, learn all kinds of stuff, play games all day, and generally have oodles of fun. He really misses Debbie’s house during the school year. I think we will try to make it work for him to go on his days off and some Friday afternoons.

I don’t share nearly enough pictures from Debbie’s house.

The older 2 boys had another round of swimming lessons and William really made some great progress. The kid who would do ANYTHING to avoid getting his face wet is now practicing holding his breathe under water and learning some basic swimming strokes. Swimming lessons, a few visits to a hotel pool, and setting up our backyard pool for the summer have really helped his skills along. I really want to do lessons with Andrew, but he’s my most water-resistant one right now. I only got him in the pool a couple of times this summer but we might give lessons a try this winter.

Andrew is Andrew. Gosh I love this little one. Part of me wants him to stay 3, just freeze time. This summer he learned how to buckle his own car seat. Do you know what a big day this was in our house! Holy crap it’s like a whole new world. We’re also finally potty training. We were stalling until after our epic summer road trip, but now it’s time and he seems pretty excited. Either I’ve just waited longer than with the first two, or my expectations are lower because potty training doesn’t seem like as much of a frustrating fight as the last two times around. Andrew has also officially won the prize for best sleeper of the bunch. He still naps you guys. Real NAPS, like 2 hours if we let him. The only downside is then he takes a long long (noisy) time to fall asleep at night. We tried to forgo the nap one day last weekend and found him passed out in the recliner at about 5:00pm. Nap on buddy, nap on.

It’s pretty amazing that we’re finally getting sleep. Somewhere this year everyone transitioned to sleeping through the night more often than not. Except for the occasional bad dream, nosebleed, or bathroom trip everyone sleeps pretty soundly. It’s amazing how great it feels to go to bed at night expecting to sleep through the night instead of expecting to be woke up. The downside is I’ve reverted to my night owl, lazy morning ways. I think Christopher and I are wired this way. That puts a lot of the morning burden on Jason, who naturally wakes a bit earlier and is on a better schedule routine punching an actual clock for work. The downside is I tend to keep him up later than he’d probably like at night. This is something I need to work on.

Now let’s talk about Solomon. Solomon is a cute little bow-tie wearing dog who lives in a fenced yard at the end of the block. The problem is Solomon doesn’t think he needs to stay in said yard and has decided he more or less owns Olympus Street. This dog is sweet as sweet can be, but he will show up unannounced in your house if you leave the door open–scared the crap out of my kids once, who are already pretty scared of dogs. Solomon also has a sense of comedic timing as he showed up uninvited to our block party picnic this year and happily accepted back scratches until one of the neighbors carried him back home and placed him back on the correct side of his fence. I got his owner’s number so I can let them know when he’s out and keep them updated on his exploits. They were amused by him being at the block party while they were at work, but a little flabbergasted when he let himself into my house. I don’t mind Solomon, he’s sort of a cute little block mascot.

The older 2 boys got to go on a couple fun outings with Jason. The first was an overnight camping trip out to Topaz Mountain in Utah’s west desert area. A significant cold front was moving through during their trip, so the boys mostly remember the constant howling wind. After returning from one short hike, they discovered their tent had been blown right over against Jason’s vehicle. Shortly after it was tethered down! Weeks later, they said they would go back and camp and look for rocks again if it was not such a windy day. Last weekend as summer was wrapping up, they made a trip to a small cave in central Utah. A short hike, a few hundred feet of getting totally lost while scrambling around underground, and the excitement of finding the surface right where they left it. According to Jason’s account there was also a generous dose of whining and he’s not sure if they could have hiked the 2/3 mile to/from the cave entrance any slower. Alas the things memories are made of! There will be more trips with all 3 of them in the coming years–we told Andrew he can go once he can use the potty. Tricky now aren’t we?

I’m not sure what the boys would say, but I think we had a pretty great summer. We watched fireworks, played with cousins, saw a parade, had a block party, took an epic road trip , played at the splash pad, celebrated birthdays, played in bouncy houses, went to the chalk art festival, had a water fight, played in the pool, and visited 2 zoos. They had more screen time than I’d like to admit, and went to Debbie’s more days than I’d planned, but I think we all made it through just fine.