To be honest, I feel like we have done Phineas and Ferb proud. If you count summer as starting Memorial Day weekend, here's the list:
2 vacations - Michigan and Florida
1 soccer class - once a week for three weeks
1 swim lesson class - four times a week for two weeks
2 trips to Santa's Village
3 weddings
2 berry-picking trips
3 birthday parties
2 trips to the zoo
Too many trips to the pool to count
At least 5 trips to the library
And countless miscellaneous meetups/playdates with lots of our friends and family!
This list doesn't include the 3 science experiments we did thanks to the emails from the Museum of Science and Industry, or the number of forts we built in the basement. It's hard to keep track of it all!
It's a little bit of a bummer that we are ending our summer with illness. Last week, Jack had some 24-hour stomach bug, and then on Friday/Saturday, Reid developed the Hand-Foot-Mouth virus. So we are spending our last week quarantining ourselves so we don't pass anything on to anyone else. In the grand scheme of things, 1 bummer week out of the 11 and a half we had of summer seems pretty excellent to me!
Jack starts back to school on Wednesday. I think he's pretty excited, although he doesn't talk about it too much. He enjoyed our back-to-school shopping trip last Friday. His favorite part was the shoe store. He is now the proud owner of Captain America gym shoes. We also had fun picking out folders and markers and other odds and ends to fulfill the school supply list. He actually had a nightmare the other night that we returned all of his school supplies. Poor guy! Don't worry, we still have them!
I couldn't abandon my annual organizational rehab completely. This end-of-summer, I'm focusing on activities for the boys. Our summer was easy. There was always a playdate or the pool. But now that the pool is closing and many of our friends are going back to school, I'd like to get some enrichment activities going on at home.
Plan number one: teach Reid sign language. Jack learned to sign a few things at this age at Bright Horizons. It definitely made things easier when we could communicate at least a little, and I'm hoping the same for Reid.
Plan number two: Since Reid and I will have weekday mornings just us, I'm going to look up developmental activities appropriate for his age. I already have a bunch of books, so this just means breaking them out and having a few new activities ready to go every couple of weeks.
Plan number three: I'm going to run. A bunch of us from the Moms and Tots Who Rock group have signed up for the Hot Chocolate 5K in November. After dropping Jack off at school, Reid and I are going to hit the path for a little 5K training.
Plan number four: Get Jack ready for kindergarten. I'm still missing the Little Wildcats program and the amazing things they do for kids. Steve and I agree, Jack was learning a ton there. Since our preschool here is only 2 and a half hours a day, I'd like to supplement to make sure he is challenged and ready to go for kindergarten next year. I've picked up a workbook to help with letters and numbers and writing. I also have a ton of materials and books to reference for ideas. And then there's my board on Pinterest and those awesome pins I find there. I plan to have a couple of activities for Jack to work on each week in the afternoons. We really need to work on his ability to be by himself, and I figure this might be a good way to work that in too.
And just to bask in the glory of summer once more in this post, here are some pictures. (They are in reverse chronological order, except for the last one, which I took today).
And this last one is a nice commentary on life at the Barrett house
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