Finally, a summery month! And a busy one ...
--Swimming! Pretty much every possible day, including the day we had a bunch of friends over for what will probably be the last shindig of any size until after the baby comes (Annika had a great day with our friends I&K's young sons, swimming and playing in the play structure, coloring, what have you). She's getting better and better at doing real swimming, using both her arms and legs, and doesn't mind dunking her head under. Next summer she might not even need the foam suit!
--Another field trip: Her school pulled out all the stops in August, with multiple water play days, a bouncy house one day, all kinds of crafts and outings and movies and make-your-own food deals, and one last field trip: to the Children's Discovery Museum. R took this one, since I'd been there with Mamalah and Annika earlier in the summer, and he was in charge of her and one other kid, which he found almost as wearing as I did at Happy Hollow. But she had a great time, and so now we've done THAT for another year. Heh..
--The castle: We bought a chair for what someday will be my reading nook in the corner of our bedroom, and it came in a HUUUGE cardboard box. The box is now in the projector room -- it is her "castle," and she works on it all the time (stickers, gluing bits of paper to it, pretending to be Mike Holmes, etc.).
--Sauce: We did our traditional end-of-summer Sauce party at M&H's, which was a blast as always. And this time, Annika had a couple of requests once she was put down for the night (she can hear us from the bedroom): "Don't Bring Me Down," and "Octopus's Garden." The former is a Sauce Band Classic; the latter was our first time through, so it was ... a work in progress. Heh. The second night, she got to stay up long enough to actually see us play "Don't Bring Me Down" -- it was hilarious, watching her face -- those huge eyes, the excitement, and of course shyness (hiding behind the couch for half of it). Someday soon she'll get to join the band ...
--Absurdly Grown-up Stuff: Of course at this age, she does more and more things by herself, but a few stick out: 1) She replaced the roll of toilet paper in her bathroom when she saw it needed doing. 2) When I was on a call for work, she was eating yogurt, and spilled some on the kitchen floor. She came to get me to help her clean it up, but when she saw I was on a call, she motioned to me that she would handle whatever it was (I didn't see the spill). She got a footstool to reach the paper towels, pulled one off, wiped up the spill, and threw away the paper towel ... all of which she waited till I was off the call to tell me!
--The Staycation: Her school was closed for a week at the end of the month, and I took off work to stay at home with her. We had SO MUCH FUN!! We took the extremely dirty green car to the carwash, we did a bunch of crafts (after a couple hours in Michael's getting supplies), we baked, we went to the gym (which has a kids' club that she likes so much that she ended up making me go to the gym four times that week), we had a picnic in a new park we hadn't tried yet (there is iPhone video of her playing in the water play area, which she stayed in for about 45 minutes!), we had lunch at a froofy tea room in Campbell, we went to meet Daddy for lunch one day -- and we spent a whole lot of time just mucking around doing nothing much, which was awesome because when both parents work, there's just not much time for that. It was really nice to have that week for a break and some one-on-one downtime.
