Life at home

So Natalie's school life is, indeed, exciting. Or so we think; she's not really able to explain that much, and school does send home a sheet indicating her snack and lunch consumption, we see the art projects they do, and we get brief snippets from her teachers, but, still, much of her school day is a mystery to us.

Not so the home. In fact, at home, Natalie is as busy as ever. First, Bubbe and Grrr and Aunt Jenji gave Natalie a wonderful kitchen for her birthday. Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Neil sent some dishes and pots and pans. And we had some food, and I'd bought / knitted a few other items. So the kitchen is stocked!

(Like all serious chefs, she suffers from a lack of prep space.)

In the other kitchen, Mike's been cooking up German pancake and whole wheat rosemary Parmesan pine nut biscuits (take that, Texas!).

Okay, well, in addition to cooking, there's also . . . tiger taming!

And laundry (hey, someone around here has got to do it, right?).

And, of course, chillaxin'.

And swimming! Actually, the swimming has been a bit of a struggle, despite our fun at swim class last year and t the beach in Hawaii. A few weeks ago, we first started trying to take her to the indoor pool at the Y. She adamantly refused, and would have NOTHING to do with her bathing suit. Well, kid, it's going to be a long, hot childhood with that attitude. Two weeks ago, we persuaded her just to go and look at the pool and see the fun others were having. While there, she took great interest in the float-y foam pool noodles. Last week, we actually made it to the pool, got in, and had a great family swim (with much clutching of the pool noodles!).

Natalie has also really been doing some super-sweet pretend play. Here she is reading to her baby, and giving her Hello Kitty some water.

(Is that not so adorable? So far, two is, to use a simile of the moment, like a hurricane: storm and fury, interspersed with enough beauty and sweetness to make you almost forget the rest of it. We'll take it.)

We also went to an event at the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. This is not, as one of us initially thought, an homage to the Dallas C0wgirls (no linky; you're on your own there, folks!). Rather, it's actually a super-interesting, perfectly sized museum about the relationship between women, horses, the West, and show-womanship. I have an ambiguous relationship with horses (see: creepy and expensive, but also functional and cool), and I found it really interesting. Natalie also appreciate the historical perspective (I kid, but there is a really great kids' area of the museum).

Here are a few other shots of Natalie and daddy horsing around:

This week also marked another first: Natalie's first birthday party invitation. That's right, we attended a party for another child in her class. The theme was pirates, and the kids got to dig for "treasure", play on the pirate ship jungle gym in the backyard, and eat veggie booty. Natalie loved it, but mostly for the shovel she was given for digging, the two golden retrievers that were about, and the veggie "chips" she got to eat! (Although the party started at 10am, it was outside, so these pictures also nicely show off Natalie's amazing flushing abilities. That isn't a sunburn, although we are often fooled....)

 Be good, mateys. We're keepin' an eye on ya!

The first day of school!

So, Natalie started school this week!

We'd actually taken her to visit the school late last week. And that visit was not, shall we say, a success. You know how, like, when you take a dog to vet and they freak out and loose it in the parking lot because they can just sense that they have arrived at A Very Bad Place? Yes. Our visit to school was a bit like that. In essence, Natalie spent the whole time demanding that one of us hold her and also telling us that she would like to go home ("Nani go home? Okay, Nani go home!"). The only part of the visit she had any enthusiasm for whatsoever? The part where she got to say goodbye to her teacher.

Great.

Over the weekend, we totally talked up school, her fun lunchbox, her new backpack, and her waterbottle (also:  her teachers and the other kids).

Still, Monday brought some hesitation. In truth, both Mike and I had been up in the night worrying.

Here are some before school shots (note the Natalie tree and my attempt at rosebushes in the background).

According to Mike, the drop-off went fairly smoothly (a significant improvement over our first visit). And her teacher said she had a "great day"!

Here's the "after" shot:

How sweet is that?

The details: she's there just from 9am - 1pm three days per week. On her first day (she's in the frog class!), she had cheese, grapes, and pita chips for lunch. She also very excitedly told me about a "cheese fish cracker" (goldfish, we think) that she had for snack.

Here's a video of Natalie summing up her first day at school:

The last month!

Hard to believe we've been back in Texas for almost a month.

The gray, rainy skies of Paris and England are but happy memories under the blistering sun of Texas. So, yeah, it's been really hot here. Really, really hot. It rained for all of 2 minutes yesterday, but the clouds kept the temperature at only 97 degrees, breaking the 40-day streak of 100+ temps (two days shy of the record for the longest streak, oh, it burns....).

But I know some of you might be more visual learners. So how hot has it been? Here's a picture of my hard plastic water bottle that got left in the car for a day.

How have we been keeping cool? Well, we just don't really go outside all that much. And sometimes we play winter dress-up.

 Also, I bought myself a little ice cream maker toy. My thinking was that I could then control the ingredients myself, cutting the sugar and fakey oils and make my own more natural ice creams and frozen yogurts. So far I've made peach frozen yogurt, roasted banana stracciatella ice cream, and I have prepped some blueberry - raspberry frozen yogurt that I'll make tonight.

There's also gazpacho, but that's somehow less exciting (not that that will stop me, of course).

Continuing the food portion of this post, August 1st was our 7th wedding anniversary. We opted to stay in, and Mike and Natalie cooked a delicious feast. It was lovely. We had appetizers of bruschetta honey-cheese figs, chilled avocado soup with toasted pine nuts, smoked paprika fish, and chocolate mousse. Everything was SO GOOD.

This concludes the food portion of the blog. Remember, back in the day, when that was, like, the major topic? Yeah, me neither. But I'm told that I used to spend all weekend hiking, picking blackberries, and then making blackberry pie.

In the new and improved life version, here are some recent indoor excursions with Natalie, to the coffeeshop and to Target.

(note that we didn't come home with any cookie leftovers or with the Elmo bubble bath, although the latter may be making an appearance at Chanukah. I'm still working out how I feel about "character toys", though...)

Toys I feel good about? Sporting equipment. Here are Natalie and daddy playing with Natalie's birthday gift from Uncle Eric. She likes the baseball bat, although, oddly, she persists in calling it "quatar" - which we think is "guitar".

Well, what about our girl lately? She's sooo loveable and sweet. Of course, we're seeing some of the typical temper tantrum stuff - she's been known to lay herself flat-out on the floor and cry, usually over such weighty issues as being cut off from dried cherries, washing hands, having to put shoes / sunscreen on, or being told no more crayons for the day (after her artistic expression has migrated from the paper to the table and chairs; I guess you can't constrain genius).

But, yeah, she's great. She's also become such a big talker. She's really getting a hold of short sentences. The other morning, Mike went up to get her and they came back into the bedroom. Mike climbed back into bed, but she turned down our offer of being lifted into our bed. Then, a few minutes later, she came to the side of the bed and said, "Snuggle me, snuggle me" and indicated that we should lift her up. Too sweet!

She's also a great narrator. "Mommy get shoes" , "Mommy put [on] hat" , "Nani drink wa-wa" , "Nani see armadiddo [armadillo]", "Daddy cook pizza", "Mommy goggles [glasses]". Good thing we're not trying to rob a bank....

In addition to the language explosion, she's really started to imitate us.

(the imitation comes in the form of blowing her nose and using a camera, not riding tigers - just to clarify....)

She always asks for a fork with her food (which, I think, really means "utensil"), even if it's neither fork or spoon food.

She's also started announcing that she's "go[ing to] work". So she'll pick up one - or more - of her tote bags and declare "Nani go work." We've been trying to talk to her about her upcoming time at school, and occasionally it'll be "Nani go sool", too.

Hope your school or work is going well!