Larkin's first day of Pre-K

 I started Larkin in a pre-k program three days a week this year. She is loving every minute of it! Here's a pic of her on the first day. I let her bring her "Lucy" lovey for the first few days since I knew there would be tears at drop-off (and there were!). But after the third day Lucy wasn't needed anymore and and Larkin was tear-free. Now when we go she can't get there fast enough and stresses out if she thinks we're running late--she doesn't want to miss anything. She's made a few friends and loves chasing boys on the playground!

 Her teacher teaches the class table manners and students have to bring two cloth napkins to school each day (one to use as a napkin, and one as a placemat). I had Larkin pick out some fabric and sew her own napkins. She chose some fabric that she says "looks like peacock feathers" and was very excited to use the sewing machine.  She was able to push the foot pedal and guide the fabric through the machine all by herself!

 Willa helped make a napkin too!

As soon as she got home from school on the first day, she talked non-stop about everything they did and then rearranged the playroom to have centers like her classroom. Here's a pic of Larkin reading to Willa in the "library center".

Willa is enjoying her time alone with me (at least for now!). Here she is in Costco pushing her baby in a stroller while Larkin is at school. I never noticed how much Willa loves to talk to strangers until this day--she didn't have Larkin there to talk to so she went up to over 15 people (I am not exaggerating here) and told them all about her baby doll, her new sister that is coming, the pumpkin bread she just sampled, etc. Just like her dad--she can talk to anyone about anything!

hog wild

Joel joined a hunting lease this year and the girls were so excited when they heard that he had shot a hog the night before. He asked them if they wanted to come to the ranch with him to "take care of the hog" (I will omit the details here) and they immediately ran to get dressed. I skipped out on my prenatal yoga class, Joel skipped out on work, and we all drove to the "Daddy's big ranch" to find the dead hog. Classy!

In the past Joel has told the girls that they can come hunting with him whenever they want to, but Larkin said she won't go until she gets a "hunting dress" and that she only wants to shoot things with her pop gun, not a real gun. Willa gets very bossy (no surprise there) about what Joel can and cannot shoot and always tells him before he leaves--"Daddy, do NOT shoot a baby deer or a mommy deer, just a big buck! You can shoot a hog though!"

When we arrived at the ranch we spotted two bunnies and both girls had fun walking around "hunting" with their pop guns. The were not grossed out or upset by the hog at all, and I'd be willing to bet that they will become hunting partners with Joel someday. Well, if we can find some hunting dresses!

Must teach Larkin to shoot with her eyes open!

Hamilton Pool

A few weekends ago we took the girls to Hamilton Pool. It's a natural pool that is inside of a collapsed grotto, so most of it is very shaded. So shaded in fact that the girls said they were "cold"--and it was 100 degrees outside!!
Their favorite part was climbing on all the boulders--they would have done this all day long if we had let them!

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

South Padre Island

Joel's parents came down for a visit in June and we took them to South Padre Island for a few days. Larkin was super excited because she's been asking to go to the ocean ever since the BP oil spill. When the spill first happened she asked for daily updates (for months) on what was happening, how they were fixing it, and how all the animals were doing, etc.

When we arrived on the beach (after 6 long hours in the minivan!), she ran out to the water and stood mesmerized looking at the horizon. She looked completely amazed and turned to me and said, "Wow. I didn't think the ocean would look like this. Did you? It's sooo big!"

Our condo was right on the beach and had an ocean view. It also had an indoor (and outdoor) pool that we used when it rained! I think it rained every day that we were there, but no one seemed to mind. Really it was a blessing--the cloud cover kept us cool and the rain was always short-lived. Plus we were in our bathing suits 95% of the time anyway!

On our first day on the beach we had a professional sandcastle lesson. Here's our work, and you can see our condo building in the background-



One of my favorite places we went was to the birding center. They have these long boardwalks that weave though marshy areas and it's a mecca for all kinds of birds and wildlife. We went at dusk and had a great time walking off our seafood dinner and doing some birdwatching. There's even an alligator that lives around there somewhere, but we didn't find him. Maybe next time!
We also went on a dolphin tour and got to see the bay. The dolphins would come close to the boat and jump out of the water a little, and each time the girls would count out loud excitedly. Really there were never more than three dolphins at one time, but the girls thought there were 12 or so. Each time a dolphin surfaced they'd count it and yell, "There's another one!" and think it was a new one. Here's a pic of Willa on the boat with the "dolphin dog"--he would bark anytime he saw a dolphin. It got a tad windy on the boat. :)


Our favorite part of the beach is going to the beach access points on the north side of the island that are far away from all the development. There is a section where the paved road ends and you are allowed to drive your 4x4 vehicle on the beach. Joel and I came here before the girls were born and drove up the island for miles and miles--you really feel like you're in the middle of nowhere and hardly see any other people. Unfortunately the "off road" section was closed while we were there, but I'm not sure that the minivan could have handled it anyway! We settled on going to the furthest most beach access point,and that was good enough! There were tons of shells (very few people walking on the beach to grab them all!) and it still felt pretty remote. The girls said this was their favorite part of the trip. Larkin spent well over an hour collecting shells, and Willa "kept the shells warm" by piling sand into the shell buckets.



Here's a pic of a flock of pelicans overhead. These birds were huge and every 3o minutes or so a new flock would fly over us. It was really impressive!

If you take your bug nets and flashlights out on the beach at night you can catch crabs! Joel caught the biggest one and the girls loved holding the smaller crabs. They were both pretty good at shining their lights and running like crazy all over the beach to find the little guys.


We were lucky enough to see a sea turtle release while we were there. South Padre Island is a nesting spot for the endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtle. The Kemp's Ridleys are the rarest and most endangered of all sea turtles. There is a conservation group that collects eggs from nests and keeps them safe from predators, and then once they hatch they release them back into the ocean. The last morning of our trip happened to be a turtle release day so we were on a remote section of the beach at 7am to witness the little turtles swim out to sea! I've always wanted to go see this, and it was a great way to end our trip!

pregnik

Here's a pic of the girls wearing my "pregnik" shirts as dresses. For some reason Larkin has a hard time saying "pregnant" and always says "pregnik." I must admit that I haven't worked too hard to teach her the correct pronunciation--pregnik sounds way cuter than pregnant.

Here's some funny things the girls have said since they found out that I'm pregnik.

Willa:
-"I really hope it's a girl. If it's a boy, I won't teach it anything!!"
-(terrified) "Mommy, don't go swimming!! You'll get the new baby all wet!!"
-"Slug bug blue! Punch the baby, Mom!"

For the first few weeks after Willa found out about the baby she always referred to it as hers. If anyone said something like, "Oh wow, your mom is having a baby!" then Willa would say, "No, it's my baby."
She then talked constantly about all the things she was going to do with HER baby.
-"I can't wait to sleep with my new baby. She can sleep right here in my bed and I'll hold her tight. Don't worry, she won't fall off my bed."

Eventually she finally grasped that we were not going to let her take this baby to her room and raise it herself. Then she started saying things like,
"Are you sure you don't have two babies in there? One for me? Why not?"
And when talking to adults about the baby, she often says in a disappointed voice, "There's only one baby in there, you know."

Larkin
-"I can't wait to have my own baby. But where do you find a husband?"
-"Where is the baby in there? Do you have a pouch like a kangaroo?"
"I think we should name the baby Pearl. Who cares if Papa thinks that sounds like a waitress?"
and my favorite:
-"How many kids are you going to have, anyway? I think three is plenty."

swimming, biking, and playing

We took the girls to Marble Falls this weekend for some swimming. It's getting close to 100 degrees now almost everyday, so swimming is a must! We swam in the lake and then found this great city pool that has a diving board. The deep end was closed for cleaning when we first arrived, but once it opened Larkin and Willa were one of the first ones in line to use the board. It was their first time (you hardly ever see pools with diving boards anymore!) and they LOVED it! Willa went maybe 5 times and then quit because she kept getting water up her nose. Larkin easily jumped over 20 times and was diving and doing cannonballs in no time.

Willa

Larkin

Larkin has learned how to ride Willa's bike without training wheels! True to her personality (stubborn as all hell), she refused any help from anyone and figured it out on her own. We took the training wheels and pedals off the bike first so that she could learn how to balance. She rode it for a few hours each day in the house. Then after about a week or two she finally agreed to try it with the pedals back on. I told her that we'd probably need to hold the back of her bike to help her balance, but she wouldn't let us and refused to even try if we came anywhere near her. She figured it out though and within a matter of minutes was biking all around our house!

Willa wanted her bike back and Larkin's bike is still a bit big for her to ride safely without training wheels, so we're back to training wheels for now.

Here's a cute pic of them biking around our neighborhood. They're just now big enough to follow directions enough to ride in the neighborhood instead of just in empty parking lots or biking trails. The first time they biked around the 'hood they said, "That was the best bike ride EVER!! Let's do that everyday!" And since then, we pretty much have!
The girls love to bake--here they are making yeast bread and homemade butter. The small glass jar is the butter. They had to shake-shake-shake the cream for close to 20 minutes before it turned into butter. After about 2 minutes ("This takes forever!") they thought for sure they were done! They stuck with it though and were so shocked when suddenly the cream started thickening and then turned into a huge clump of butter!


Bathtime
I've been meaning to take/post a picture about bathtime for quite a while now. Aunt Jaime gave the girls these little Disney dolls last summer, and the girls use them in the bath and play with them EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. There's not many toys you can say that about. It's so funny to just sit back and listen to them play (they usually do not want us to listen at all and tell us to get out while they play dolls-the bathtub they use is connected to our master bedroom, so usually I just sit in bed and watch/listen to them from a distance.)
Everyday there's a new storyline. Sometimes dolls are swimming in the ocean and trying to avoid the sharks, or lining up to dance with the prince, or talking endlessly to each other about little things like birthday parties or balls. They almost always play together and have their dolls interact with each other, and usually play for at least 15 minutes straight. The only thing they disagree on though is who gets the prince! We only have one of him and he is always fought over. He had to be packed away for a few weeks due to all the arguing!