School Update

Lillie is in the middle of her fifth week of school and I have wanted to write down some of the things that have been going on.  Lillie has taken to school like a pro.  She has been looking forward to school for the past couple years and it has been every bit as awesome as she hoped it would be.  Her teacher is amazing, which I am really grateful for.  She says Lillie keeps her on her toes! A bold, bossy, literate 5 year old would become slightly annoying, but she is great with her.
I have had a much harder time leaving Lillie at school than I thought.  I know it has to do with the Sandy Hook tragedy and I struggle to have her be away from my protection.  Lillie has decided that she's too cool to have me walk her to her classroom and wait with her until the teacher opens the door.  So, instead, she climbs out of the jogging stroller on the sidewalk and walks the rest of the way herself, and we wait about 30 yards away, outside the fence, until she is safely inside the classroom.  I can't bring myself to leave until she's inside, usually we have to wait about 10 mins.  It has been nice to have her gone for the 6 hours, entertained by someone else, because she was just soo bored when she was home all day with me.  We've talked about getting into some extracurriculars, but I feel like that would cut majorly into the time each day that we get to spend together, school already seems like a lot for a 5 year old to handle, so we are waiting another year.
Lillie completed her 100 word reading list the second week of school, the list that her classmates will be working on for the rest of the year, she already knew them, and got an Eagles pin from the principal.  So, she now spends reading time in a 1st grade class, where she is working on the 500 word list, which she says she already knows most of, just a few tricky ones like "soldier" that she is learning.  She says, you can't even hear the D!  But honestly, she's more advanced than the first graders.  She reads as fast as I do and rarely messes up on words, even big ones.  I know maturity wise she is a 5 year old and so we're just happy with how it's going.  She's going to start reading chapter books at home to hone her skills.
She has been progressing nicely in her kindergarten class in other areas.  I've already seen a big improvement in her handwriting, which is great!  She has also made quite a few little friends with which she plays games like imaginary animals/pets or finding rollie pollies at recess.  She said she had to play by herself the first week of school, so I was a little worried, but things have worked out.  Her favorite thing to do at school is eat lunch in the cafeteria, I think it makes her feel cool to be in there where the older kids are.
So Lillie is doing well, but she isn't the only one who is in school, Henry is a part of Joy School! There are 8 kids and 6 moms and we rotate teaching 2 mornings a week.  So far things have gone pretty well, or at least they did until last week during my first week of teaching.  The back-to-school germs were in full force last week and about half of the group were sick or passed on sickness during my week, despite HOURS of disinfecting in between class days by me and at the end of the week.
Henry got sick on Saturday, he had a fever that day but didn't act completely normal until yesterday and then when I went to pick up Lillie from school yesterday, she was starting to feel feverish and is staying home from school today, because she's not quite right.
Last week made me question whether Joy School was the right answer for us, since I am not going to want extra germs around with a newborn, but I think we'll keep on keeping on and see how it goes. Henry loves it, he gets to play with friends, sing songs (which he loves), read stories and do art projects (which he is not as interested in, so I don't put in the effort with him alone, but it's nice to see him do a little bit with friends).
Henry knows about 7-10 letters of the alphabet consistently, we've been putting in extra time with him since preschool started, but he really is having a hard time picking up anything new.  It's a little frustrating, especially since Lillie basically taught herself everything, but I know it's completely normal and he's just not as interested.  So we're not pushing it too much.  He loves to be read to, so we do that daily and we'll go from there.  I want him to like learning and school and pushing and drilling won't do that.  He's really good at building things with magna-tiles and legos, so he's just got different strengths than his sister.
Wanting to walk Lillie to and from school every day has gotten harder and harder the farther along in this pregnancy I get (almost 33 weeks).  I am starting to get lazy/uncomfortable so I'll usually drive once a day.  Even though its three blocks.  School drop off and pick up are going to get tricky once we introduce a newborn and multiple naps into the mix.

A Day at the Beach

Eric had Friday and Monday off for Labor Day and the weather around here has been quite warm, fall is summer here on the central coast, so we spent Friday at the beach to cool off.  We also spent Saturday and Monday at the pool...  There are only a couple days or weeks in the year in which A/C would be nice, and that weekend was one of them.  Anyway, we went up to Avila Beach, stopping at the Red Barn to feed the animals and pick up some peaches and berry cobbler, before hitting the sand.

 Lillie spent her time running back and forth for water to build sand castles with.

 That day was the longest that Henry had ever spent in the Pacific Ocean.  He does not like the cold water, but he was in above his waist for most of the day.  Next time we'll take the boogie board and give the kids rides.

 We saw probably 15 dolphins that day, swimming by close to shore.  Too cool.

 These kids were covered head to toe in sand by the end of the day.  Baby bump was also there.

 Building a sand volcano.

Henry spent a lot of time chasing sea gulls around.

Natural History Museum

We took a long weekend trip right before Lillie started school, kind of a last hurrah before summer ended. We spent a whole day at the Natural History Museum downtown, passing USC's campus, showing the kids where Daddy went to dental school. The museum is free for military families, which is awesome because it would have been kinda pricey, but totally worth it either way. This place is amazing! We had been a number of times while we lived in the area, but they had been working on the dinosaur wing that we never got to experience before moving away. And it was REALLY cool. We spent so many hours there and it really flew by. We had been planning on going next door to the Science Center, but ran out of time. Guess we'll be needing to make another trip. I'm sure Henry's favorite part was the dinosaurs or the whale bones in the entrance, Lillie's was the butterfly exhibit, she wanted one to land on her sooo badly, and my favorite was the gemstone section, that place is seriously awesome.

Henry sitting on some Jadeite in my favorite wing

The new dinosaur wing was so expansive.  I loved being bathed in natural light.

I love the old parts of the building, such beautiful attention to detail

Proof that I was there

My favorite butterfly in the exhibit

Eric's First Triathlon

Eric competed in his first mini/sprint triathlon. I'm not sure what it would be categorized as, it was longer than the mini one I did two years before. It was a 1/4 mile swim, 12.4 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run. Eric had not trained much at all, only having biked once and swam maybe 3 times, but for some reason he still wanted to do it. His time was 1 hour 25 mins, I think, which was pretty great. He says one of his lifetime goals is to complete an ironman triathlon. Ugh, sounds like torture to me. I told him he'll have to wait until our kids are out of the house to take on training for that.