Swim Across America

Do you think it's amazing that an 8yr old can swim a mile in under an hour? Me too.

What I think is even more amazing, is that she is voluntarily doing it on a Saturday morning (early) to raise money for cancer research.

Emily wanted to raise $250 with her swim - AND SHE HAS!
Thanks to all our sweet friends & relatives who have sponsored her.

If you want to help her exceed her goal - go here. It's super easy, you can donate online in a minute or two.

Thanks!

Crib

Jane has been sleeping in a toddler bed for about 4 months - well "sleeping" may be an exaggeration - she starts off there every night, but comes into our bed at some point and in our sleep deprived comas, we just move over to make room for her.

This means we no longer need a crib.

I was surprised how sad this made me. I know we aren't having any more babies. I'm OK with that. I had to beg Rick for the last two (he says I lied to get Jane.) I really do feel like our family is complete. Maybe if Rick didn't work so much, maybe if Bek wasn't so old, maybe if we had family around, maybe if I was younger ... there's a lot of maybes - but what it comes down to is that our hands are full. I'm exhausted all the time. Also, I am SUPER sick when I am pregnant and just don't want to remove myself from my other kids lives for that long again.

We are finished.

But I didn't really have to face the reality of that until I had to get rid of the crib.

(all ready and waiting for baby Jacob)

As sick as I am when I am pregnant, I love the feeling of a baby moving and kicking inside of me. I love the intimate connection I develop with them before they are even born by getting to know their movements. I feel like I begin to understand their personality, and feel so privileged to host their growing bodies, to protect and nourish them from the start.

I love babies. I love how everything slows down when a new baby is born, and you retreat into your little world of just your own family and don't know or care about anything else that is happening "out there." I love the smell of their sweet little heads, and the feel of their silky soft skin and hair, I love the small puppy sounds they make. I love feeling them asleep on me and watching the rise and fall of their rapid breath. I love nursing, and holding them close. I love watching my older kids fall in love with them, and want to hold them and touch them. I love how our family feels when we have a new baby.
All of that was hard to let go of.

Anyway, I took the crib apart and put it up against the wall in Rebekah's room. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I really wanted to give it to my sister Tara, but she lives in Australia and it would be totally impractical to try and ship it there, not to mention that they plan on moving back here in a few years and then they'd have to haul it back.

I thought of trying to store it for grandchildren. I'd love that - but we don't have any room and it will be many years before we have grand kids. Again, practicality won out - paying years of storage fees could pay for 10 cribs! Maybe I could send it to my parents & keep it there? Mum has spent the last few trips packing me home with the last of my belongings from her house every time I visited, so I'm sure they wouldn't be excited about the idea of keeping a crib there indefinitely.

My parents bought me a nice crib when Rebekah was born, and I used it for Emily. After many years of storage and moving a few times the screws in the side became stripped. I tried to get replacements, but we couldn't. We thought Jacob might be our last baby, and it seemed silly to buy a new crib for just one child, but what could we do - we needed one.

I picked this one out, and loved it from the start. We had a house, and for the first time I (1) knew what the baby's gender was and (2) had a room to decorate in advance. I loved making up that little room, and picking out boyish colors and his nautical theme. I even finished painting the red dresser while in labor with him. (note to self - take a picture of the red dresser.)

I was delighted when I found out I was having Jane - among the happy reasons; I could use the crib again. Of course Jacob was only 10 months old, so he used it for a while after she was born and she started in the hammock, where all my babies start.
(Tara, the hammock is at Mum & Dad's, saved for you.)

This is a picture I took to sell it, and doesn't show how it was "girlied" up for Jane.
I'll have to look through my photo files and see if I can find one....

I couldn't just list it on Craigslist. I needed it to go to someone I knew, somewhere I could imagine it being used, and occasionally see the babe who would sleep in it. One of our favorite swimming teachers is expecting, so I e-mailed her with some pictures and asked if she'd be interested (I'd even trade for extra swimming lessons.) She already had one, but told me one of the owners from the swim school, who is also expecting, was interested. They have 18 month old twin girls and already own TWO cribs. They couldn't stand the thought of paying full price for a 3rd crib. I sold it to them CHEAP (seriously a deal.) Last week they came and picked it up.


It' gone and I'm OK with it. Pondering how quickly those babies moved through my life, has helped me savor all the other moments a little more - like three year old arms around my neck at night.

And the other day Jane told me she's going to have nine babies.
I hope she does, because being a Grandma is going to be FANTASTIC!

Harry Potter (6)

We are so excited to go to this tonight!

I had stopped after book 3 with Emily, because I think they get pretty scary after that.
I wanted to wait until she got a little older to read them.

Then we got invited to the pre-screening.

We have been lucky enough to go to a pre-screening for all of the Harry Potter movies. They are always tons of fun & we feel totally spoiled. The series is almost over, and Emily will not have an opportunity to go to many. Rebekah has been to all of them (and Star Wars.) I wanted Emily to share this experience with us.

The rule in our family is that you have to have read the books before you see the movie. There's no way I could have done it fast enough with her at 1 chapter a night, so we decided she could read them by herself. Emily has worked really hard, and has read books 4 and 5 and most of book 6 in the last three weeks. Tonight she gets to experience a fun night in the city with the big people.

Can't wait.

Summer Swim Meet #1

Emily had her first swim meet of the summer.
I'm not sure who was more nervous and excited - me or her. OK, it was probably me.

Our team, and the team we were swimming against are both really big, so they split the teams into 2 groups - faster kids & others who are not as strong, and had 2 meets. She is on the better team, which made me happy, but also anxious because it meant she'd be swimming against their better kids. PLUS, they put her in the first heat of each event - which is for the fastest swimmers. I wanted to give her a pep talk, or reminders but bit my tongue and said "Have fun, do your best" so I didn't stress her out.

We had to be there at 8:30am for warm ups, the meet started at 9 - but diving goes first, so it was 10am by the time they got started.

After warm ups.

A little nervous.

Pep talk from coach Kevin (in the blue on the left.)

Emy is in the striped towel towards the right.

Listening intently (because she's Em and such a good girl.)
More nerves.

I missed Emily's first race (freestyle, and her best stroke,) because I was timing. What was I thinking when I signed up to be a volunteer at the first meet!! I'm not sure what she got, or her time and either is she! It started to seriously rain as the meet ended, so everyone took off & they said they'll give out the ribbons later. I talked to her coach, who said she placed in each one - he just couldn't remember which. They do write their times on the ribbons, which is good, as she has set herself some time goals for the summer.

I grabbed someone to time for me for the other races, so I could get some pictures.
Breaststroke was next.

Ready ...

GO!

Good kick & glide.

A nice two handed touch.

Well done babe!

Next was butterfly.

Then the relay. Emily swam first.

They won!

This was the only result I saw - the others were all so close, that as I looked up from the camera, everyone was at the end of the pool already!
Our team won the meet too, which was nice, especially for the first meet.

Done! (for the day.)

Whoa, what a swim!

- "Scuttle." (The Little Mermaid)

100 Acts of Kindness

My kids wanted a trampoline and I wanted them to have one.
Trampoline's are fun! I have so many memories of bouncing on the tramp with my siblings as kids, or jumping with the sprinkler under it, lying on it reading / getting sunburned as a teenager ... to me a tramp is part of a great childhood. (And we had a "dangerous" one with no net and uncovered springs!)

However, I didn't want to just give them one. They are expensive, and I wanted them to feel gratitude for it and want to take care of it and have a sense of pride at having earned it - but what to do? It would take forever for them to earn the money for it - that would be discouraging. Maybe I could have them save just $100 towards it? I wanted it to be meaningful. Then it hit me - they could do 100 nice things for each other, or those around them!

So it was declared that they would need to collectively perform 100 random acts of kindness in order to earn the trampoline. I made a chart & went to buy stickers.
Looking at the stickers, I thought about how this would go down. Emily would do 98 kind things, and the others would make a last minute contribution and they'd all get the tramp. Hmmmm, how to get J&J actively involved. A moment of parenting brilliance (I have them so rarely, I need to record them!) One chart, different stickers! I bought stars for bek (who I knew wouldn't care that much about it, but I didn't want her to be excluded from being kind), soccer balls for Emily, Batman for Jacob & ponies for Jane (what else?)

It was wonderful. The younger 3 got so excited about it and putting on "their" stickers. Emily ran out of soccer balls, and made her own little stick person stickers with my Xyron towards the end of the chart. I was delighted with how much Jacob tried to be kind, so he could add more Batman stickers.

It really worked well. I was hard on them. Anything that was a regular job, or that I would routinely expect them to do didn't count, they had to go out of their way to be kind.

It took them almost 6 weeks, but they did it ....

... and the trampoline was delivered today!

If this isn't happy, I don't know what is!

Bless Emy's little heart. She worked hard to earn it, and encouraged the others to be kind too. It was wonderful to see her jumping and flipping and having such fun enjoying her achievement.

I'll have to make a trip to IKEA for one of those big step stools to keep outside and make it easier for them to get on & off. For now they're doing OK just hoisting themselves up - even little Janie can do it.

Does anyone have any trampoline picture taking tips? Anything taken through the net is not really clear, and when I tried standing on it too - it was so bouncy from them jumping that everything was blurry! I'm thinking about rigging some kind of window washer seat from the oak tree to get shots from above ....

P.S. All are welcome to come jump with us - you just have to sign a release form first - it was the only way I could get Rick to go along with the idea!

Sandbox

For some time I have been considering building a sandbox in our backyard. It really came down to Jacob's happiness versus mine. The boy loves to dig, but I couldn't stand the thought of sand strewn hither and yon- including in the house.

Two factors swayed me his way -
(1) I cannot keep him out of my vegetable garden.
(2) One day Rick was out of town and Jacob was recounting his fun day to him over the phone. He told how we had gone to the zoo, and on a play-date and then out to dinner. Then he ended with "But I didn't have a very good day, because I didn't dig today."

OK, the digging thing is serious.

One reason I love & appreciate Rick is that he goes along with all my schemes, and is super patient with all my plans and ideas - even when they inevitably go awry.

Since we didn't have plans over Memorial Day, I proposed that building a sandbox in the backyard would be a WONDERFUL Memorial Weekend project. We'd buy all the lumber & dig it out on Saturday, and then build it on Monday. Simple.

I found plans online for a big sized one, and we went & bought all the lumber (3 times the price quoted in the article - but we weren't surprised - we're building it in NY and everything is more expensive here.) Oh, we also bought a pick axe to dig out the space. Since our yard is sloped, we'd have to dig it in on one side, and build it up on the other.

Getting started, aka the official "before" picture.

With Rebekah helping us, we actually made pretty great progress. We gave a bunch of the grass we cut off the top to our neighbors who filled in bare spots. Perfect.

We also had some other stellar helpers.

By the end of the day we had dug it all out -

and sorted the lumber ready for Monday
(we had it all pre-cut to length for a small fee at the lumber yard.)

The work might have gone a little faster if I didn't keep stopping to take pictures of the garden whenever I picked up the camera to record our progress!
I couldn't help it, everything is filling in so nicely, and it's great to see the rewards for my efforts!

We stopped for dinner & got the kids into bed, and then left them with Bek to go and buy the gravel for the drainage in the bottom. If you have to go to Home Depot for 33 heavy bags of gravel, I suggest going at 9pm right before they close - we were the only one's there.

The next morning we read the instructions more carefully, ready to start building & realized that we had dug the hole WAY too big on one side. Bummer. All that wasted effort - not to mention filling it back in was no fun.


That day we got it framed.

(Only because we completely ignored the kids.)

In the evening, I fed the kids & got them into bed while Rick built the cover for the end (to store the other cover pieces) and the toy box lid.

And we started to fill in the side that needed to be built up.
This sure would have been a lot less work on flat ground! Too bad we don't have any.

The end of day two. (Um, yes the end of day 2 was when it was supposed to be finished - but what can I say. There was a lot of digging.)

The following Saturday we started in on day 3 of the sandbox project with measuring the tarp.

We filled it with gravel for drainage, then stapled the tarp in all the way around.
Then poked about 100 small holes in the tarp for more drainage.

Emily was pleased with our progress.

It sat like that for some time. The pattern called for cedar for all but the side benches, and pine for the sides. I wanted to use cedar to make it all match & be nicer - but we had to special order that size and it took two weeks to come in.

The cover keeps out animals, and will double as a stage if the kids want to do little plays or dance performances (which they often do.) They lift off and store in the end closest to the fence. The other end has a hinged lid and is a place to store sand toys.

The big cedar pieces came and we put them on. (When I say we, I mean Rick.)
Finally it was finished and ready for sand. This is where we came to another screeching halt. I started looking online to figure out how much sand I would need, and discovered that play sand is actually dangerous! It has been banned in California because it's carcinogenic.
Great, I just built my kids a giant death box.

I figured out we needed 45 cubic feet of sand. That's 1.67 cubic yards - or 3375 lbs of sand!! I found some that was "Safe" in California & they would ship it to me, but it was about $1 a pound. I could just see me explaining to Rick that I needed over three thousand dollars for sand!

The girl at the safe sand place told me that the "unscientific" way to make sure it doesn't contain silicates (that cause lung cancer) was to stick your hand in the sand, swish it around and pull it out. If there was a powder on your hand, it was dangerous. If I could find riverbed sand, that would be safer, or anything that has had lots of water going over it to wash it. She also said that since it's an outdoor sandbox, rain washing through the sand would be helpful, as long as we have good drainage (making all that gravel seem worth it.)

It took a little effort, but I finally found a place that had sand from the beach in Long Island. I went and checked it out - no powder. I ordered it, and it was only $150 (+ $75 for delivery.) Bargain!

The closest we could dump it was on the driveway. We'd have to bucket it down to the backyard.

Waiting for the sand.

So on the morning of June 27th - over a month after we started our "2 day" project, we filled the sandbox. Jacob & Emily both wanted to do the 1st bucket - so they did it together.

Dad's wheelbarrow loads made the work go faster.

Before you knew it - we were done!

Jane & Stella played happily in the pile on the driveway while we worked - making me wonder why we hadn't just dumped a big pile instead of building a sandbox!

Ready for kids!

The sandbox is 5' x 6' x 2' deep.
As soon as it was finished, my 3 and the two kids from next door got in it, and
I thought "We should have made it bigger!"

It will be fine, I doubt that all 5 of them will ever be in there at once again
- it was just a novelty, since it was new.

Good work Daddy! Thanks for the sandbox.

We still need to slope the ground nicely away all around it, and grow grass - but there's no way I can keep the kids off it long enough to establish seed, so we're going to wait until fall to do that.