Garden update

Remember the garden about a month and a half ago?

Now look:
We have tons of tomatoes, and they are starting to turn!

The artichoke is SLOWLY growing. Slowly. Don't know if this will produce anything.

We harvested a good chunk of onions and garlics, but all too small. But "we" I mean C7 who just wanted to pull them. Eh. But here is what is left: the bigger garlics! They are wilting appropriately.

My beans look fantastic, but no flowers (or beans) yet.

And the squash is so tiny. What to do? Not enough sun? Water? fertilizer? I don't know! I don't think it is water, they aren't drooping and I mulched. I've watered a nice deep watering once a week if it doesn't rain. I fertilized and watered a few days ago; hope that helps. Flowers, but just little tiny plants. Ug. I want my zucchini!

Pool girls

Q6 asked for a swim cap. Got it.

And here is sweet picture of C6 and MH6 saying goodbye at the pool. They'd see each other less than 12 hours later. But parting is still difficult.

First swim meet

c7 really likes the swim team. Yes, she complains when she is hungry and tired, but she loves it. She was kicked out of practice the other day for not paying attention and it made her cry. Luckily it was only about 2 minutes before practice ended.

But today was the first meet.  We joined the team with the understanding that we did not need to

1. Do any stroke she didn't want to;
2. Wear the team swimsuit; and 
3. Wear a swim cap.

So, all the kids were getting together at the end of the pool for warm up and two boys were complaining about swim caps and C7 told them they didn't need to wear one .... and they insisted Yes, You Did! and she insisted No, You Didn't!

Minutes later I saw her crying because Indeed, You Did!

Ug. This was a dealbreaker for C7. We didn't even HAVE a swim cap. A friend lent us a softy one, but C7 rejected it. Then after much talk from an older swim team member (the older kids are VERY good to the younger kids), we found out that she could just put her hair in a ponytail.

Ah. PHEW. Now we needed to find a ponytail holder. Same prepared friend took one off her wrist and handed a wonderful pink ponytail holder over, which I looped into C7's hair, and off she went.

C7's events were the 25M freestyle and the 25M backstroke. First up, event #10, the freestyle.

First the kid wrangler calls the kids and a kid mover brings them to a faraway corner and wait. It was in the shade, so that was good. As their event gets closer they move up in the waiting area. And then two heats or events out they stand behind the chairs at the end of the lane. Then, when they are next, they sit in the chairs.

 

Then they are up on the end. The announcer says on your mark, get set ... then a beep/light and off they go.

And she finished the race.

Happy girl!

Her next race was the backstroke ... HOURS later. S'OK we brought books and crafts which we did in between races. But then she did the backstroke. My video was lame, but other than the random cement and water shots it is acceptable.

Watch for her false start.

Closed

Forgot to post this. C7's door says:

CLOSED! Due to unknown reasons.

hysterical. And in the car the other day she was mad at us and said "Please do as I wish!" Hahahaha. We didn't.

C43 Birthday

C43 had his 43rd birthday today, so we took a lovely little hike in Greenbelt Park on the Azalea trail. It is a 1.2  mile loop, we took it at about 43 minutes per mile. Yeah, it took a long time. But we stopped and looked at every spider, every harvestman/daddylonglegs in town, and every dead tree. So it was OK. Q6 would see something neat and come running up to tell us to take a picture. Unfortunately, we had forgotten to put the disk back in the camera, so we only had internal memory to work with. I deleted a bunch of old photos and had a grand total of about 12 pictures we could take.

 

Q6 tried to climb this stripy tree, but only got about 6 inches off the ground.

And the girls posed beautifully by a fairy hole. I love this picture.

After our walk we just puttered around the house, the girls made and wrapped gifts for C43, I made dinner and dessert (rustic pizza and blueberry pie). The blueberry pie was really good, it was an recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Pie and Pastry Bible that I found on Epicurious.com ... basically 1/4 of the blueberries are cooked with sugar to make the syrup/goo, and the remainder are mixed in and remain uncooked. Wow. Tasted so fresh and great. Doesn't make me dislike regular blueberry pie any less, but this was very summery.

We didn't sing happy birthday, and didn't overly acknowledge that the day was special. But it was a lovely day nevertheless.

blah blah blah this week

This week in review:

• C7 has been doing swim team every afternoon. I can see improvement in her swimming already. Better than lessons! She hasn't complained at all except for the fact that they have been working on kicking, kicking, kicking! Boring. But clearly needed. C7 loves to swim out the lane dividers. I love to watch this because it isn't actually easy, especially as you get closer to the end. Sometimes C7 will be swimming swimming swimming at the end of the pool, lane divider dragging behind her, getting nowhere nearer to the wall that is only 2 feet in front of her.
• Q6 has been bemoaning track. But Thursday night she had a meet and despite her not wanting to go we went. I am glad we did, as she took Silver in the 100 meter (coming from behind) and Gold in the 400M (from a field of one). The wins and medals totally got her psyched up for track. The 100 meter event was a field of six 5 & 6 year old girls. As usual she did a sloppy job starting, but she pushed it and came from behind for a solid silver medal. That silver medal energized her and she was then totally gung ho for the 400 meter race. The 400 was run by only two 6 & unders, both from our team. One boy, and one girl. Q6 was sure she'd at least get silver, but then -- Wow -- she got gold! -- (because she was the only  6 & under girl running. She hadn't realized that girls ran against girls, boys against boys, even if they are physically running at the same time). She was thrilled again. Two medals? Awesome. They clinked and clanked their way into her classroom the next day where she showed them off to everybody, along with the rest of her (previously tossed) ribbons.
• Thursday C7 had a talent show at school for her classroom. C42 and Q6 went, but I missed it. She did painting, and just brought a painting to school and talked about it. One of the boys in her class had "track" as a talent, and he challenged the audience to a race. Q6 took him up on it. And ... she beat him on the first leg, but he toasted her on the turnaround and beat her in the end.
• I got a haircut on Friday, and asked the hairdresser to enhance the curls by layering. Did she ever! My hair is wet in the below photo but the waves are great.
• Saturday C7 did time trials for swim team. She only came in last in the crawl. She raced her race.
• Saturday Q6 went to the Girl Scouts Rock the Mall. We missed much of the events that were happening, but the best part was the swaps, anyway. Girls make "swaps" or little things to trade. For international day the girls made alligator clips out of clothes pins. For this one we made hair clips. They were cute and useful (I can't tell you how many adults said "just what we need!" and stuck it right in their girl's hair). And doing the swaps was a GREAT way for shy girls to get some courage to interact with girls that they don't know. For that reason alone it was awesome.

C7 talking about her art. It is a small dog house. Of course.

Tail end of the race on stage.

My haircut.

Moving on

Q6's Kindergarten class held a moving on ceremony on Thursday. It was very sweet. One child read a poem, and then all the children sang songs. Lots of songs. The seven songs that we've been hearing over and over. I think they've been practicing for a long time! Well, it was great, actually. They did a fantastic job.

You may not want to watch EVERY song. That's OK. I've put them in the order in which they sang them. Start with the first one -- Q6 was standing next to her friend P6, who apparently had been worrying about remembering the words, and worrying if she might start to cry up on the risers. Self fulfilling prophecy: it happened. And then Q6 works very hard and very sweetly to comforter her. It takes a few songs, and she also enlists H6 to help her. And then First Grade, First Grade is a great song, too.

I Will Sing Hello

Frere Jacques

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah

First Grade, First Grade

Mi Cuerpo, My Body

Going on a Picnic

Mr. Golden Sun

Then we had a little kind of crazy reception in the classroom. And then -- if the parents wanted -- we could take our children home.

Q6 asked me all week if I'd take her. Would she come home with me? Would I take her? My plan was to take her, but I kept saying I didn't know, I'd try, I hope so. So when the time came she was thrilled, and we went to Franklin's for lunch, and P6 (the crying friend) and her parents came with us. It was lovely, and a nice way to celebrate moving onto first grade.