First Sleepover

We hosted our first sleepover last weekend. We had two of Charlie's friends come over and all four of them (including Diego) slept in the upstairs room.  Arts and crafts didn't last too long, but we had bought a trunk full of nerf guns on craigslist and that was more their speed.  Of course we had pizza, movie and popcorn as well. It was interesting hearing them work out what movie to watch.  "Star Wars!" "too scary!" "Home!" "too baby!"...."I know: Princess Bride!" "YESSSSSS!!!!"  I loved it! I didn't love how late the stayed up.  We put the mattress on the floor next to another air mattress so they could all sleep next to each other.  Around 9:30 I turned off the lights, around 10 I went back up to check on them and tell them to be quiet, around 10:30 I really told them to be quiet, by 11 I was sure everyone was asleep and at 11:30 I went back to check on them before going to bed only to hear 2 little voices! It turns out Kaivon and Charlie were pretend sleeping when I had come up at 11 and were happily whispering the night away.  I sat there until they fell asleep (which took about 30 seconds once they shut up).  At 6:30am I started hearing jumping upstairs. They were up!!!! How is that possible? I brought pancakes AND waffles upstairs and they were happy....

Fall Season

Sofia and I already seem to have a complex relationship so I can't imagine how it will be as she gets older. I adore her and admire her so much and yet she can make me frustrated beyond belief. She is refusing her nap so by late afternoon she is a total wreck. I mean epic. The other day at Charlie's baseball practice she was battling another little sister for the girl's toy stroller. When I tried to intercede (which btw always makes things worse) she dropped to the dirt screaming and started rolling around - dirt going everywhere, covering her hair and her whole body.  For awhile I let her be, but it soon became clear she had no intention of stopping the charade. By the time she quieted down I had a literal dirt ball on my hands with 30 minutes left in practice and no where to hide.  Sofia is a tough girl and a tired Sofia is nearly impossible.  On the other hand she is so charming and sweet and way more self sufficient than the boys - even at age 2.  She picks out her clothes, dresses herself, uses the bathroom (and half the toilet paper roll) by herself and now she takes a shower and washes her hair by herself (granted she sometimes uses soap instead of shampoo on her hair).

Diego likes kindergarten, but misses Ms Sadowsky and Ms Marandin a lot. Almost every day he goes by their room to say hello. One day he left me on the blacktop to go back into school to find them and when he came back out he told me that he had invited them to come over the following Monday for sushi. Sure enough they both came over for sushi. Diego couldn't have been happier, but Sofia was the one to latch on so tightly to Ms Sadowsky.  Kindergarten is a big transition from Pre-k 4 so I'm happy that Diego is taking it in stride, but he certainly isn't as quick to take up reading as Charlie did so I think it'll be a tough year.  Charlie seems to be enjoying Ms Farkas' class which is a relief. He still only has 2-3 friends in his class but that's better than last year.  After school I usually only get a few grunts about the day, but at bedtime I get more detail.  Charlie has no front teeth...it is a funny look:

Fall weekends have been full of fun activities including soccer and baseball games (little league and Nats game), tennis class, bike rides, rock (more like sculpture) climbing....

Reunion with the yoga babies!

Labor Day Olympics 2015

For Labor Day we made the annual trek to Cleveland this weekend for the Labor Day Olympics. We always make the logistics of getting there harder than they should be, but this year was especially tough. I had a work trip to Mexico the week before so I spent 4.5 hours in a plane, 1.5 hours getting through immigration, got home at 5:30pm, packed up our stuff and we set out for a 6 hour drive at 8pm.  Carlos was on the tennis courts at 9:30am the next day. Despite the rough start the whole weekend ended up a lot of fun and I think it was the first year the kids were really into the competition.
Charlie was sizing up his competition in swimming and running. Unfortunately for him he was in the age group of the son of legendary Rip Esselstyn so he placed 2nd in both sports - but that was good enough for a ribbon so no tears!  Charlie's most impressive performance was in the three-legged race with cousin Eli. They were an amazing duo. He and big Charlie also did a stellar job at the egg toss.   

Diego won his ribbons in a variety of ways....not all of them related to his own victories, but avoiding tears is priority #1.  One blue ribbon was well earned in a collaborative cousin vegetable sculpture competition entry which depicted the Pepper Ridge Community and which took up half the table.  I loved that early on in the weekend they went foraging for items and ideas for a joint sculpture.  It didn't even seem to cross their minds to do individual sculptures.

Another well earned ribbon came from Diego's fishing performance.  Somehow he always catches a fish - whether we are off the dock by Nats park or at this (well-stocked) pond.  He also had a sweet softball performance as third baseman.


Sofia wouldn't do any races, but she made her presence felt in other ways. She insisted on taking off her bathing suit and swimming naked constantly, lying to everyone about her age ("I Fofia; I five") and following nice females around calling them 'mom' (I'm mommy - I think she sees other women as some one else's mom so that's their title).

Despite a grueling ride home in which they didn't sleep for the first 5 (of 6) hours, they woke up happy and were still enthusiastic after school.  I used to say we need a Pepper Ridge West Coast, but now I'm thinking Pepper Ridge East Coast 2nd home version....

2 months late!

2 months without an entry is a new record! This summer fly by and was quite hectic. School just started and two days in we were already having a hard time getting out the door in the morning!  This summer we went to the Bahamas and Cuba for our family adventure.  The kids loved the Bahamas and Cuba was...well... HOT! I love Cuba, but it was a poor choice for a family trip in the summer.  Basically the entire trip was a comedy of errors.  Our Airbnb host failed to pick us up at the airport and I - naive me - didn't have a back up plan other than some phone numbers to call.  It turns out that people often don't answer the phone because it costs them money, the phone system doesn't work, phones just stop working or people just really don't care enough to answer the phone.  So there we were stuck at the airport with no where to go so we hired some random people with a jeep to drive us around town looking for the house. 2 hours  and 2 buckets of sweat later we stopped at a hotel and paid $10 to access the internet so I could send the host an email. Anyone who knows Carlos knows he doesn't forgive easily so there was no forgiving the Airbnb host and we had to find a new place to stay.  It turns out that is really hard to do!  I was probably the only one who actually enjoyed the trip, but there were a few favorite activities for all of us like hiring old convertible cars in the evenings to take us around town once it cooled down a bit. Charlie took percussion classes and loved them and the small part of old town Havana that is renovated is gorgeous.  But it was only on our very last day that Carlos decided he liked it and might entertain the idea of going back this winter.

Going to the store was one of the most frustrating. Whole aisles would be empty or filled with random things. One time we went there was an entire aisle full of olives! olives! Diego was so excited!  Here was the frozen food section:


We stayed at Atlantis in the Bahamas.  I thought it was going to be soul crushing, but it was actually way less bad than I anticipated. We got upgraded to a 1 bedroom apartment in one of the newer towers so we could cook meals and enjoyed an ocean view and full rainbow.  Nevertheless it is pretty weird  - totally out of place and outside the resort there is a lot of poverty.

 

We also spent a lot of time this summer in Philadelphia as my mom is packing up her house. The boys went to camp at GA and they loved it. And we even fit in a trip up to Pine Orchard....

Memorial Day and more

I seem to be playing catch up in many areas and the blog is no exception.  For Memorial Day I took the kids up to Pine Orchard, CT where they had a lot of fun playing with their cousins.  Despite staying in a 7 bedroom house, my kids decided we should all sleep in one bed.  Charlie slept on one side, Diego and Sofia in the middle and I slept on the other to keep Sofia from falling.  Carlos stayed home.  Surprisingly we all slept decently.  As usual, the kids enjoyed relocating the rocks and searching for shells.  They filled up bags of shells, sorted and priced them for their store.  Unfortunately their store stayed open about 20 minutes before they got bored with the low foot traffic and poor response. We had a good discussion about business models and they agreed that popsicles by the tennis courts might sell better than seashells by the beach.  We had nice walks on the beach, trips to the pool and tennis lessons.  Pretty nice!    

 The end of school means the end of soccer and little league.  Carlos was pretty happy to finish his coaching duties for Diego's team, but we were sad to see the end of Charlie's season.  Instead of having a parent coach his soccer on the hill team, his normal soccer instructor (during the week) was the coach and most of the kids were friends from Brent.  It was a fun group and Charlie really enjoyed himself.  Coach David is always so positive and encouraging and all the kids adore him.  I noticed that Charlie isn't very aggressive during practice. He usually does much better during games, but he doesn't have the tenacity that some of the other kids have nor does he have the fine ball skills. I'm really amazed by some of the 6-7 year olds playing soccer - their ball handling skills are really impressive.

 In baseball Charlie is one of the best fielders on his team, but not great at hitting the ball.  I find it a bit of mystery given how much baseball he plays.  When the weather is nice Carlos takes the boys to X park before school to hit balls and it is the highlight of their day.   Charlie has been disappointed in his hitting during games and it makes me so sad.  I don't care that he doesn't hit the ball, but I do care that he is disappointed!  Diego smacks the ball no problem during his games though he needs a bit more strength to turn the hits into home runs.  I lost his mitt so he played his last game with out one, but the rockstar that he is, he was playing first base and caught the ball bare-handed for a nice out.