By the trains

We visited the Celebration Under the Oaks at City Park last night. This photo is taken at the large model train display. The conductor stopped the two trains so I could get a photo. See the splotch of red on the right side? That's one of the trains.

Happy Birthday, Inwe!

She's 7. 7! Although it doesn't seem like yesterday that she was this baby, the years are passing too quickly.

Tugging with White Dragon: A study in Stills

From Movies

Reading with Larien and Art with Inwe

In all my ups and downs with teaching Inwe to read, I learned that you can't make a kid into a reader. You can teach them to read and give them a love of stories. I'm sure many would disagree with me, but as much as I might try, Inwe only reads the books she gets at school. She never picks up a book at home with the intent of reading it for entertainment.

This is not true of Larien. At bedtime, if she isn't sleepy, we leave the light on for her so she can peruse her stack of books. The ones she likes to read are non fiction books about weather, planets, and animals. She doesn't mind the fictional tales, though. Her default is always the nature books.

Recently, she has wanted to read to us at bedtime. Two nights ago, I picked up The Cat in the Hat. She told me that the foot book was easier. I suggested that she try the first page. She made it through those few sentences and surprised me by having the desire to read all of the story. I had to help her on a few words, but after a while she recognized even those. She read part of it again last night. The reason she didn't finish it was because I fell asleep. My Larien is a reader.

My Inwe is the creator. I bought, at Larien's request, a spin art machine. At $10, the price was right and I remember doing some spin art as a child. Larien, Finwe, and I spent some time making some art. When Inwe came home, she took over and not in a bad way. She took my suggestions and tweaked them to make her own unique style. I could see her working on ideas as she added paint and glitter. Her creations topped ours.

A backlog of stories

I've been lax writing about the children. Please accept my apologies. Also, don't expect it to get better, because I have discovered with three days completely to myself I have lots and lots to do. That gets in the way of writing about the kids.

The picture above portrays all three doing their favorite activity and their newly discovered playplace--the library. I'm not unhappy about the expanded play area as when Finwe is home with just me, he sits beside the desk playing with legos, train tracks, or colors. I can accomplish a few things using the computer while he still gets attention. Nice. Not so nice when we have to pick up the teeny tiny blocks so that I don't step on them with my perpetually bare feet. I'll learn, though.

All of the kids love building with the smaller blocks. We've had a set of the larger Lego blocks since Inwe reached the age of 1. They still use the big ones, too. I suspect one day I'll buy a set of K'nex with an entire rollercoaster ringing the desk.

The beginning of homework

Inwe's Wall

Inwe went through a phase of coloring peace signs and turning every animal I printed from the computer into a peace-nik. At the end of it all, she pasted them onto part of her wall. My favorite is the sign in the upper right hand corner. It's so elaborate and of her making.

Art in Exile

My kids are happy at their aunt's house. Inwe even got a chance to have a sleep over with her 2nd cousin. I love that kids are so resilient. Even so, my Inwe said, "Mom, I enjoy Aunt Maverick's house, but I want to be back in New Orleans."

Call her a Shrimp

Lately I've been big into having dinner family style, with all the offerings in their own serving dishes being passed clockwise around the table. Serving this way is a departure from setting a loaded plate in front of the kids, which is what we used to do as I didn't want to bother with the extra dishes.

We passed around the dishes last night when Inwe decided to take a boiled shrimp. She peeled it herself. She popped the entire spicy morsel into her mouth. She gave it a chew, chew, chew, pronouncing it not that good. "And a bit too spicy." Still, she ate it. Cool.

First Day of School: Inwe

I expected Inwe to run to her friends in the play yard, one of the privileges of being in first grade is playing on the grounds before school. She hid behind me as some of her classmates rushed to greet her.

Play dough dragon

Last week, the kids requested red ("Really red, Mommy. Like, squeeze the entire tube of food coloring in it.") and yellow play dough. We made some.

Inwe and Larien collaborated on this dragon. Inwe constructed the body, complete with horn and breastplates. Larien scultped the tail. they added wings later, but those ruined the sculpture for me. I like the land dragon.

Hands of Time

Oh, those last few weeks of summer vacation have crept ever so slowly. I can tell that the kids are eager for school. Inwe asked to wear her McGehee uniform today, which I refused. She'll wear it all year. The real problem is that she had no clothes that she wanted to wear.

Larien keeps asking to do more reading lessons than her brain can handle. The more complex words require more attention and coaching on my part. By the end of the story, she's excited to discover something new, but she doesn't last long. We stop at one lesson now. She received a letter from her teachers that contained a drawing of a ladybug, the class mascot. She colored it and only needs to write a sentence about a ladybug on the sheet of paper. These will be put in the classroom on the first day.

Finwe knows that he'll start school, too. I asked him what he'll like about school. He replied so quickly that I suspect he's been thinking about it. "Other boys." Methinks he's weary of the overbearing, controlling sisters?

One of the reasons the kids are ready for organized learning is that they've only had one organized summer camp, which was only two hours focused on music appreciation. This is more about how I spent summers than any financial restraints. My summer camps were always only a week at most and only for the mornings. We played at home and on the beach and in the park. Summer camp? Ick! That resembled school way too much. While I liked school immensely, summer meant time for renewal of that excitement, not time away from mom and dad.

At the camp the kids did attend, they also did art. Two of the projects I enjoyed so much that I'm displaying them in the front of the house, a watercolor painting of flowers in a vase and these hand prints mounted on canvas frames.

Detailing Life

In recent times Phill has been working more and more at the hospital. Returned are the days of being a fellow when he'd leave before I'd wake and return after I had fallen asleep. There are various reasons for this with just one being that the neonatal intensive care unit is incredibly full and busy. The other reasons are complicated and unnecessary to relate. As this is the kids' blog, which I hope they read one day, I wanted to preserve the time that Daddy couldn't do nearly as much with them as he'd like.

The days and nights are mine to fill with activities. For most of the summer, that has consisted of visiting the pool, eating dinner there, showering there, and then falling into bed with a request to have "Daddy give me a kiss when he gets home". We've not visited half of what there is to do here in NOLA, much of that due to me only having so many hands. With the 90 degree days with smothering humidity, the zoo has been mostly off limits. We seem to have a curse over us regarding City Park's Storyland Amusement Park; rain clouds shed their contents whenever we are near.

Our neighbor's granddaugthers visited this past week, allowing both Inwe and Larien to have two vibrant children as play companions. I'm pretty sure that the doors have been opened and closed more times these past five days than they have in our entire time in New Orleans. The girls like each other so much that a few nights we had to forcibly put them in their separate houses. I should add that taking all of them to the pool certainly made being a mom at the pool easier. My presence wasn't required for entertainment. That didn't mean I kept out of the water, though. I just didn't play with them as I wasn't invited.

Just a few houses away are three children that are the same ages as my kids. The other, older neighbors on the street confess that they like hearing children yelling to each other as they run along the sidewalk to play with their friends. The other mom and I attempt to keep them quiet, but our efforts usually are thwarted by six children being children.

I volunteered to take the eldest child, a girl of 6, to the pool with us. Her mom, Em, asked if Finwe wanted to play with her boys, ages 4 and nearly 3. Before I could answer, Finwe said he would and followed Em to her house. Before he turned into their gate he spun to face me, both index fingers pointed at me. "You be good now."

OK, Finwe. I will. I'll be good about blogging so that your Dad can open up this site at night or at work while he's waiting on a lab result before feeing confident about coming home. He can read my words about how you told me to be good just before I would have told you the same thing. I will make sure that he knows how inviting and polite his daughters have been to others lately, perhaps finally learning that exclusion isn't the best way, that life isn't boring simply because you cannot set the artificial Christmas tree in your sister's room so it can be decorated. Maybe he'll like hearing that his kids don't mind the heat and know when to call it a day at the pool. So while Inwe perfects her artistic skills, and Larien sits happily beside me to complete two reading lessons after begging to read one of the books on our favorite reading website (www.starfall.com), and while Finwe discovers how to calm himself after massive frustration, Phill can know that his kids are growing and doing well this summer.

Packing on the Plush Toys

Inwe and Larien decorated Finwe with plush toys one evening at my mother's house. Finwe smiled and made exclamatory noises when I entered the house after walking the dogs. The girls were quite proud of themselves, too.

Healthy Food

As Phill has embarked on an every other night call schedule, the kids, dog, and I escaped to Florida for a very long weekend. We treated my mother to pizza the first night. Last night, my mother made dinner for us. Good sturdy fare with way too many carbs and fat.

I wish I had been in the kitchen when Inwe loaded her plate and let loose this statement. "Mom Mom, you cook less healthier than Mommy."

Poolside

Sorry for just the photo. My body has decided to dislike some pollen, mold, smog, or what not. I'm full of snot and aching of head. Still, I take the kids to the pool. We have to escape the heat, sinus headache or not. When we arrived yesterday afternoon, not one of the other 50 families who share the pool were there. We had it all to ourselves until a hour later.

Jumping into the Pool

With water wings, Finwe will jump into the pool without me catching him. Here, Inwe is "catching" him, but she doesn't really. He's super happy to have his sisters in the pool with him. Today, Phill and I were able to eat lunch as we watched the kids swim. WooooooHooooo! Of course, the weather is so hot that we eventually took cover into the water. Mmmmmm, water. Mmmmmm.

Like Weeds

Perhaps the second most difficult transition regarding the children has been choosing a pediatrician. Ours in C'ville set the bar high as he understood me and watched the children grow from day old infants. I trusted Phill with the choosing of the pediatrician we'd use as he choose such a wonderful one the first time.

Today, Inwe and Larien had a visit for school physicals. If the school didn't require health forms, we wouldn't be going for visits. The kids are healthy. Nothing lurks threatening their health. However, it is always good to check, right? Right.

Inwe is proportional for height and weight at 75%. She can see and hear fine. She's healthy. Good.

Larien also registers at the 75th percentile for weight, but she's at 90% for height. Everyone that sees her says she is tall. The data backs up those observations. Phill and I always remarked that she was our baby who weighed lots at birth but quickly settled right in the middle of the growth charts. We thought she'd be petite. Maybe not.

Rain on Me

We had the idea of spending some time at City Park today, which would have been a fabulous idea if the rain had not fallen long and hard. It did. We made the best of it, getting in some rides at Storyland Amusement Park before ligthning drove us inside to the carousel. We lunched under the shelter of the train stop. Inwe and Findarato played in the rain. Apparently, wet isn't a problem.

Funny Faces