hot hot hot

I'm not going to lie. It's ridiculously hot here.

Larkin wishing her mom would have taken her to the pool instead of on an animal farm tour in 100 degree heat.

We've been surviving the summer pretty well though by mainly going out in the early morning and late evening, and by spending a lot of time at the pool. We've hit up all different pools around Austin and the girls are now both expert swimmers. Larkin can swim without any assistance and can take breaths on her own, and Willa can swim about five feet and float on her tummy and back.

Unfortunately though we spent so much time at the pool that Larkin got swimmer's ear, and the doctor said we had to wait five days before getting back in the water. Larkin broke down into tears a few times over this ("Why did the doctor have to say that I can't swim?!! I wish she wouldn't have said that!!").


Luckily the girls are pretty good at entertaining themselves with indoor activities, so the five days went by quickly. Over the past month or two we've started playing some new games, and their favorites are tic-tac-toe and checkers. We started with tic-tac-toe and they both developed a bit of an obsession with it. More than once I overheard Willa talking about tic-tac-toe in her sleep, and every morning for about two weeks they would wake up and immediately ask to play. We had probably 25 sheets of paper that were filled with kid drawn tic-tac-toe boards all around the house!
They both have a lot of trouble saying "diagonal" and it's hilarious to hear--it sounds kind of like di-nag-nal except the vowel sounds are just waaaaay off and it's almost impossible to impersonate. Anytime anyone wins on a diagonal Joel or I say, "How did you beat me on that one?!" just to hear them say it again and again. Too cute.

Willa is actually really good the game now and loves to say, "I'm setting you up, buttercup!" She learned the word buttercup from Auntie Lisa and loves to say it whenever she can make it rhyme in her sentence!

Once they had mastered tic-tac-toe we moved onto checkers. They both caught on quickly but often forget which side they started on/are supposed to go toward, so we solved that problem by placing construction paper on either end. Larkin has taken off at checkers and anticipates her opponents' moves now. Each move often takes her a minute or two because she sits and looks at all her possibilities before committing. Willa is great at spotting places where she can jump but will move herself right into spots where she can easily get captured. Larkin will just kind of roll her eyes and stare at her with a face that says, "Really? You want to move there?!"


Another indoor activity that the girls love is drawing. Larkin especially loves to draw/paint/color and spends at least an hour each day (usually much more) doing it. She gets into these "funks" where she will only do one sort of art--for a while it was painting, and I think she went 6 months without even touching a crayon...but painted all day long. When she was into painting she always painted abstract paintings and filled up the entire paper. Right now she's into oil pastels and crayons, and she loves drawing flowers. I'd say she does at least 5 flower drawings each day, and maybe a 3-5 others that are not flower related. Here is a small sampling of her flower work--I could probably fill three tables worth of flower art! The other day she added a caption on one of them that said, "Bst tlps in Astn" best tulips in Austin--I thought that was funny!

Larkin likes to "teach" Willa how to draw. One day they were both drawing side by side and Larkin coached Willa on how to draw a "mouse with boots and a duck with wings and webbed feet."

Larkin's

Willa's

Here's a picture Willa drew--it's of Willa (upside down), me, and Larkin