An Unofficial End to Summer
Today is Labor Day, the unofficial 'last day' of summer.
What a weekend! We celebrated by spending a good portion of today at Lake Ripley again, this time with Mana and Papa. It was so much fun! Ayla official swam for the first time. She finished off summer with some swimming lessons and today was dog paddling all over the place! After the lake we stopped for ice cream and ended the day cooking out at Mana and Papa's.
Yesterday was the 3rd annual Martin Family cook out and bike parade-always such a fun time-even though Grandpa Joe suffered two flat tires. :(
He wasn't the only one. On Saturday me, Jake and the kids went out for a family bike ride and Ayla got her first flat. With a little help from Jake and a patch-kit from Grandpa Joe, I was able to repair it. I gotta say I felt pretty awesome about that! Saturday afternoon Jake put up the tent in the back yard and the four of us had a camp fire and made smores and then Ayla and Jake camped out overnight. Ayla even got to see 'the Dipper' -which she was pretty excited about.
It's like we saved all of our summer-ing for the very last weekend of summer! :)
Two weeks ago Ayla started Kindergarten! She's doing so well. I think she really likes her teacher, Mrs. Riley, and is just overall enjoying it. We thought Ayla would be so exhausted from school that she would sleep like a rock, but instead we are seeing her have a hard time shutting her brain off at the end of the day. All the anxieties she may not have taken the time to process during the day seem to be making themselves known at night. Poor kid. :(
She is our headstand queen. If she is home, she is doing headstands. Headstands while she watches tv. Headstands while you try and ask her about her day at school. She does a headstand to turn out the light. Headstand on the stairs (yes, on the stairs...) on the couch, on the bed, in the grass... And she is really, really good at them! She'll just stand there balancing, do some different leg positions, balance some more. We need to get her into gymnastics!
Zeke continues to be his goofy self. He is currently obsessed with the ball popper, a toy he used to be terrified of but now plays with constantly (in a line of toys he was terrified of and then came to love- the beepbeep, blender, tahtee, and now this) It's a blower that shoots balls out and then they slide back through and pop out again. And as if one wasn't enough, he discovered that Aunt Beth had one that was no longer being used, so we now have two ball poppers!! Zeke carries them all over the house. He even takes them apart and takes the parts that are plastic in the bath tub with him. He talks about the ball poppers constantly. "Ball poppa goes wooooPOP!" he says (accompanied by this funny little hand motion)
Zeke does this really cute thing where he sniffs things (just any old thing. I'm not talking like freshly baked cookies or something aromatic. I'm talking like a lamp or a chair) and then says,"Meth guuud." (he's saying 'smells good') Today he was smelling the sand castle I made. *tiny sniff* *sniffsniff* "Meth guuud." Man is it cute! Another thing he says that I like is "what doin'"You'll just be sitting there, and then, "what doin' Mommy?"
He also has this funny way of pronouncing certain things. He adds the letter L in places it isn't. Some examples:
Turn it off- "turloff"
Daddy- "Dally"
Tomato-"Tomaylo"
Speaking of 'Tomaylos,' Zeke is very much into the show Veggies Tales. Well, not really the show, but the theme song and the two main characters, Larry the cucumber and Bob the tomato. The theme song gets sung at least a thousand times a day in our house, complete with Mommy or Daddy 'doing booboo' (the tuba sound effect) and Zeke doing an opera-like hand gesture for the last big, long high note. It's very dramatic. Sometimes in the middle of it he even closes his eyes and really gets into the song. We even sing it every night at bedtime.
One really awesome thing that we've seen just in the last month is that Ayla and Zeke have bonded in a way we've never seen before. I think a lot of it has to do with Zeke being a bit older, with the personality more of a kid and less of a baby, and able to hold his own. They will chase each other and just wrestle and giggle and shriek and chase some more. They also take car of each other. Ayla of course has always been a helpful and caring big sister, and continues to be so. When Zeke is upset she tries to calm him down or distract him, But now Zeke is doing that more too. If Ayla is crying he'll say, "you ok Ayla?" or "it's ok Ayla." He just loves her so much and sometimes just kind of nuzzles his fuzzy head into her as an act of affection. They are sweet.
They are also both asleep, so I should be too. :)
Ayla's first day of Kindergarten
Ayla helping build the fire
And then there was fire!!
"fire is scawy."
but graham crackers are good!
how close should I hold them mom? I don't want my marshmallows to burn!
The experience according to Ayla
(her Baby Clara in the tent, ready for camping!)
What a weekend! We celebrated by spending a good portion of today at Lake Ripley again, this time with Mana and Papa. It was so much fun! Ayla official swam for the first time. She finished off summer with some swimming lessons and today was dog paddling all over the place! After the lake we stopped for ice cream and ended the day cooking out at Mana and Papa's.
Yesterday was the 3rd annual Martin Family cook out and bike parade-always such a fun time-even though Grandpa Joe suffered two flat tires. :(
He wasn't the only one. On Saturday me, Jake and the kids went out for a family bike ride and Ayla got her first flat. With a little help from Jake and a patch-kit from Grandpa Joe, I was able to repair it. I gotta say I felt pretty awesome about that! Saturday afternoon Jake put up the tent in the back yard and the four of us had a camp fire and made smores and then Ayla and Jake camped out overnight. Ayla even got to see 'the Dipper' -which she was pretty excited about.
It's like we saved all of our summer-ing for the very last weekend of summer! :)
Two weeks ago Ayla started Kindergarten! She's doing so well. I think she really likes her teacher, Mrs. Riley, and is just overall enjoying it. We thought Ayla would be so exhausted from school that she would sleep like a rock, but instead we are seeing her have a hard time shutting her brain off at the end of the day. All the anxieties she may not have taken the time to process during the day seem to be making themselves known at night. Poor kid. :(
She is our headstand queen. If she is home, she is doing headstands. Headstands while she watches tv. Headstands while you try and ask her about her day at school. She does a headstand to turn out the light. Headstand on the stairs (yes, on the stairs...) on the couch, on the bed, in the grass... And she is really, really good at them! She'll just stand there balancing, do some different leg positions, balance some more. We need to get her into gymnastics!
Zeke continues to be his goofy self. He is currently obsessed with the ball popper, a toy he used to be terrified of but now plays with constantly (in a line of toys he was terrified of and then came to love- the beepbeep, blender, tahtee, and now this) It's a blower that shoots balls out and then they slide back through and pop out again. And as if one wasn't enough, he discovered that Aunt Beth had one that was no longer being used, so we now have two ball poppers!! Zeke carries them all over the house. He even takes them apart and takes the parts that are plastic in the bath tub with him. He talks about the ball poppers constantly. "Ball poppa goes wooooPOP!" he says (accompanied by this funny little hand motion)
Zeke does this really cute thing where he sniffs things (just any old thing. I'm not talking like freshly baked cookies or something aromatic. I'm talking like a lamp or a chair) and then says,"Meth guuud." (he's saying 'smells good') Today he was smelling the sand castle I made. *tiny sniff* *sniffsniff* "Meth guuud." Man is it cute! Another thing he says that I like is "what doin'"You'll just be sitting there, and then, "what doin' Mommy?"
He also has this funny way of pronouncing certain things. He adds the letter L in places it isn't. Some examples:
Turn it off- "turloff"
Daddy- "Dally"
Tomato-"Tomaylo"
Speaking of 'Tomaylos,' Zeke is very much into the show Veggies Tales. Well, not really the show, but the theme song and the two main characters, Larry the cucumber and Bob the tomato. The theme song gets sung at least a thousand times a day in our house, complete with Mommy or Daddy 'doing booboo' (the tuba sound effect) and Zeke doing an opera-like hand gesture for the last big, long high note. It's very dramatic. Sometimes in the middle of it he even closes his eyes and really gets into the song. We even sing it every night at bedtime.
One really awesome thing that we've seen just in the last month is that Ayla and Zeke have bonded in a way we've never seen before. I think a lot of it has to do with Zeke being a bit older, with the personality more of a kid and less of a baby, and able to hold his own. They will chase each other and just wrestle and giggle and shriek and chase some more. They also take car of each other. Ayla of course has always been a helpful and caring big sister, and continues to be so. When Zeke is upset she tries to calm him down or distract him, But now Zeke is doing that more too. If Ayla is crying he'll say, "you ok Ayla?" or "it's ok Ayla." He just loves her so much and sometimes just kind of nuzzles his fuzzy head into her as an act of affection. They are sweet.
They are also both asleep, so I should be too. :)
Ayla's first day of Kindergarten
Ayla helping build the fire
And then there was fire!!
"fire is scawy."
but graham crackers are good!
how close should I hold them mom? I don't want my marshmallows to burn!
The experience according to Ayla
(her Baby Clara in the tent, ready for camping!)
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