May 2019

Social & School Stuff
Spring is always a busy busy time, and this one was more so than most. One weekend, Annika had two birthday parties (Friday night sleepover at Alana’s, while we stayed home and watched Rogue One with Lukas, and a Saturday afternoon movie trip for Raina). There was the Art Vista show, where each kid had two pieces in the gallery; the K-1st Open House, where proud tour guide Lukas showed us his work (and also the butterflies that were days from being ready to fly away!); the fifth grade musical performance on a baking-hot morning on the blacktop (where I got a little verklempt, ok, shut up); Lukas’s class field trip to Happy Hollow (I was a chaperone … never again …); the fifth grade had Colonial Day (in which Annika wore another gorgeous dress from Etsy after a month of absolute AGONY over it being too much, standing out too much, attracting too much attention, yada yada yada oh em Geeeee and of course no one noticed or said anything, but anyway it was fun and I helped in the candle-making station for three hours); Lukas had his first after-school play date with Reid; the game of two-square absolutely took over in terms of obsession in the social arena; we all developed a thing for the Netflix anti-cooking-competition show Nailed It! and watched hours upon hours of it together (e.g. during the rainy, 59-degree days of Memorial Day weekend …); and we had our first taste of online friend drama, in which one of Annika’s friends, given the Roblox password of another one, used that password to do a whole bunch of things in the game that were, ahhh … not authorized by the original user. It was a teachable moment — this is WHY we don’t share our login info, even with friends — but caused a lot of heartache for awhile, and is certainly the first of many such flareups .. … yaaaay. 

Awards Season
Both of these kids did some good stuff this month: Lukas got Principal’s Pride (an honor where kids are nominated by their teacher, because they have exemplified one or more of the PRIDE values), and Annika’s drawing of Maryland was chosen as the image used for one of the Colonial Day placards (which the kids wore on lanyards to mark down which stations they’d visited). 

Mother's Day
Another highlight of spring …  the kids and R. surprised me with breakfast in bed (waffles!!!) and the New York Times, which I thoroughly enjoyed before I had to get up and start hustling; this year I volunteered to host a brunch for us, the grandparents, and Amy & family, which would also serve as the family celebration of Amy’s 50th birthday. I commissioned a cake for her, and the rest of the day was just all of us hanging out on the deck in absolutely perfect weather, eating all the stuff I made and having not as many mimosas as you would expect. Grandma later said it was her best MD ever, so I guess we did something right! 

Birthday roundup
Amy's birthday weekend — because it was her 50th — was the headliner this May. We were but four of several dozen of her far-flung guests in attendance at the weekend-long soiree at a retreat camp in Sonoma. The accommodations were pretty basic, but the kids managed without strong wifi and we did get to hang out with some of our faves of her friends … but the drive up was on R’s actual birthday, and there was not a whole lot of opportunity to make a fuss over him, considering the logistics  — so we had a dinner and cake and presents the following weekend.  

Quotable
—On seeing a limo: “Is there candy in there?” (Lukas, inspired by Descendants)
—“I eat eight thousand calometers a day!” (Lukas, inspired by … uh, who knows)
—“Because they married each other, DUHHH!” (his response to some kid asking another kid how come the second kid has two moms)