Grandparents, Gardens, Target and Trees

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday =Target, Target, Target.  I don't know how it happened it just did.  Shhh - don't tell Tom because I'll get the lecture on what a waste of money in gas it is AND that I shouldn't complain about not having enough time to do something (like cleaning the house.  Although he never says it because he knows it's bad for his health, but it's implied) if I can make 3 trips to Target in 3 days.  But it's not like the kids don't enjoy our Target outings - they actually do!  And I know I'm not alone because there are too many jokes about it on Pinterest and just the other day a friend told me her son saw the flag of Japan and asked her if it was the Target flag.  I, honestly, am still giggling out loud at that one!  I tell you the people in the marketing department at Target have magical qualities.  I can't exactly put my finger on where they put the drug and what it is, but they have managed to make the store addictive. 
But we've done other things the past few days too. Tom's parents came to visit this weekend. It was a relaxing time and it wasn't too crazy hot out, so we could eat dinner outside on the patio and stayed there until well after it turned dark.

Sunday was a low key day and the biggest event was Tom put Casey and Emily in charge of husking the ears of corn before dinner. I love this age where charging them with a task like this makes them feel important and they beg to do it. I have many a childhood memory of myself considering such work to be surely a form of torture imposed on to us by my mom. My parents had a very (very) large garden from which we had to weed, harvest, clean, snap and shuck beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, melons, potatoes, radishes, onions and the other things I can't remember. In addition to the grape vines, raspberry and cranberry bushes and apple trees. As an adult, I look back and am glad to have had the experience and fondly remember these times shared with cousins canning peaches, making homemade applesauce, picking strawberries from fields, and watching grandma pinch the edges of pie dough around a pie pan. And I have a couple of grandma's old aprons that when i put on my girls these memories almost make me want to break out the mason jars and make some homemade jams. Almost. I am a sentimental sucker for sure, but clearly know what me and my patience can handle. Let's not get too far off the reality train here. I'm sure my mom has some cherished memories of milking cows from her childhood, but she was wise enough not to put that on me and my sisters. So my girls will grow up believing that Mr. Smuckers, Mrs. Motts and the Green Giant are the only people capable of producing the fruits and veggies that we don't get in the produce aisle or farmer's market. Off topic again. Where was I?

Oh yeah.  The present.  Friends joined us at the pool on Monday and we finally checked one of Casey's big summer to-do things off the list: we ordered a pizza and had it delivered to the pool and ate between swims.  She was so pleased we did this.  I guess it was the novelty of the experience that she was looking forward to so much and hanging with friends was a bonus. 

I am fully aware that the little things mean so much to the girls at this stage in their lives.  Eating pizza down the street as opposed to at our kitchen table and being given the responsibility to husk the corn for dinner really do help fill up the little buckets of need inside themselves.  I am also fully aware that in a relatively short time they will be requesting sums of money to go shopping with friends.  And one day a cell phone, computer or a car will be the things they beg for.  Good things we're setting expectations low now.  Maybe we'll get to postpone those big things a little longer.  (Not so fully aware now, am I?)

Tuesday we hung out with more friends before which Emily told me, "Mommy, I be nice to Will" as she was telling me which way to turn on our way to their house.   While we were there, I focused on chatting with Mandy and tried less to worry about Emily on the stairs.  I'm telling you, we are getting so close to checking this BIG one off our list of goals.  I tried very hard not to hover and just let her navigate the steps on her own and she did fine.  More than fine.  Emily is so tall and she has such a hard time maintaining balance over her body.  Stairs are a huge obstacle for her.  So my feet start to itch in anticipation of the happy dance we'll be doing soon when this one is checked off our list.

Wednesday a neighbor gave us tickets to see the MadCap Puppets at the library.  Casey loved the show.  Emily hated the show.  Casey sat all by herself in the center of the floor in order to get the best view.  Emily sat curled up on my lap off to the side with her face buried in my chest.  The one performer was quite loud and a couple of the puppets were kind of scary looking so I totally got why Emily didn't care for them, but Casey was wrapped up in stories of the fisherman and his wife. 

Some of the puppets were kind of scary looking

That morning Emily asked for her tree.  It's just a piece of foam core I painted a tree on and attached some velcro so we can work on some speech therapy at home.  I've made and collected flash cards and have found that Emily is so much more engaged when she is an active participant instead of just watching me put cards on a table.  So I made this board and she thinks it's a big game but we're really working on letter and number identification and in prior years we've worked on labeling pictures of things and verbs.  Casey offered to sit down and "do the tree" with her and I thought it was so sweet.  Emily can identify probably 70% of the letters of the alphabet and I'm thrilled.  Casey, however well she understands that Emily has a special syndrome and learns differently, was getting frustrated with her and I caught her telling Emily to pay attention and to use her head.  Ahh, some words come back to bite you don't they?  It was cute and of course we chatted about how we can help her learn and she will in her own time but that was pretty funny.

Yesterday we met up with some friends and swam at their pool and last night while I went and got a pedicure with a couple of friends, Tom took the girls out to dinner.  I was told they had a fun time at dinner with daddy and from the chocolate smeared smiles, I'm guessing ice cream was included.

Today mom and dad come down to watch the girls while Tom and I head to Indianapolis for a couple days sans kids.  I will miss my girls but it's that time in the summer when the girls and I could use a little distance.  The whining, fighting, and attitudes are in full swing, so our weekend away is good timing :)  I am looking forward to hanging out with Tom, taking in a concert, and going to a good old-fashioned bar - not the ones that are in a restaurant and include a section for kids on the menu.

We've got another nail biter

Who's Counting Anyway?

There are 34 days left of summer vacation.  Yikes!  This summer is flying by way too fast!!  I have loved hanging out with my girls so far this summer and the thought of not having them here each day makes me panic a bit.  But not enough, to like, not send them to school :)

Casey and I are similar in many ways (as scary as that is for me to admit) and one of those similarities is that we are both breakfast people.  Casey wakes up and is ready to eat within minutes.  I can wait for a little while, but my day always begins with breakfast.  Tom seems to drink his breakfast from a coffee mug most days and Emily, well, Emily is pretty finicky when it comes to breakfast.  I guess maybe she's like Tom in that she would drink her breakfast as well (milk, though) if I left her alone, but I just really believe in eating a good breakfast to start the day off right.  So for the past 4 years, I've struggled through breakfast time with Emily.  We've tried just about everything to appeal to her taste - oatmeal, yogurt, cereal, eggs, bacon, english muffins, pancakes, fruit bars, granola bars - she wants none of it for very long.  We've enjoyed some short runs of cereal and bars, but I'm sure she's really just trying to make me happy.  We've recently discovered the yummy goodness of Nutella on toast as a side to her cup of milk and that seems to have caught her attention.  It's a bit of a mess, though.  I took some pictures as proof of what I will endure to clean up in order to assure she gets a good breakfast :) 

Today I cut the toast into 4 pieces, hoping to minimize the mess.  But before she dug in I asked her how many pieces of toast she had.  I was testing her to see if the counting practices we've been doing have clicked.  She very precisely extended her index finger and pointed while she counted 1, 2, 3, 4.  Sister's got some counting skills going on!!!  I immediately praised her and of course she began clapping and saying 'yeah!' to join in my excitement.  Once again, I am overwhelmed with these small successes and so grateful they keep coming.  When I told Tom, he didn't seem all that surprised.  I expect greatness of her like Tom, but I, being the emotional mom, always find myself basking in the journey we took to get here.  Damned, I'm going to jump up and down in the kitchen at 7:30 in the morning over some counting, because she couldn't do it before.  And now she can.  And we're on our way to checking some more off our list.  Time to bring out the big guns - the M&M's.  We're going to be counting to 10 and beyond before summer is over.  We've got 34 days to get busy.

We've not done much this week because I've been busy doing some consulting work, but that doesn't mean we haven't had some fun in small ways here.  Playing Barbies, dressing up, coloring, and reading have been pretty routine.  I've tried to take some pictures of the the girls doing random things and I am amazed that so many pictures (too many to count or share here) are of the girls looking anywhere but at the camera. It's not like I have a fantastic camera (yet - I really am hoping to get a SLR camera this year) but pictures are taken for memory's sake and I treasure these snapshots in time.  I look at our little photos and then look at those kids in The Gap ads and realize neither of my kids could do the model gig.  They just cannot look at the camera.

And if they, do I get a real charmer like this one.

Did you see the sticker on her shirt?  It was only after I saw this picture, I noticed the irony of the sticker :)

No worries, though, on our boring week this week.  We'll be sure to hit some parks, pools and ice cream joints next week.  Casey and I decided we want to sample as many different ice cream shops and stands as we can the rest of the summer.  We'll be keeping count and declaring a winner among us.  And we've saved our family vacation to Hilton Head for the end of summer this year and I've most definitely begun counting down the days until we go.