The photos here are just random moments from May-August of this year.

The kids were busy this summer. Two weeks of outdoor swimming lessons for both, ballet for Emily. Cuddles, hikes, fun times with their babysitter, their grandparents, and oh yeah, us, their parents!

Brenden has spent the summer in a constant state worry about things he doesn’t ever want to do (stick his head underwater, get a shot, get eaten by a shark, go in a waterfall, go in a whirlpool, get diabetes, have wires hooked up to him, die). He has this list on a loop and repeats it all several times a day. He is very bright and has an amazing imagination. When channeled properly he uses this imagination to tell us the most amazing stories complete with chapters with titles and usually some sort of heroes journey. However, the opposite extreme leads to 1001 questions about “what happens when” which 99 times out of a 100 the answer to which is death. Which then starts the loop of “I never wanna”. I completely admire his curiosity, his need to know how things work, his imagination. But combine that with his endless energy and this poor introverted momma is left very exhausted at the end of the day! He is also showing big amounts of empathy with his tender little heart. He is so much Patrick in so many ways, but he is also me.

Emily is very chatty. She has officially entered the “why” and “what” stage. She seems to not grasp waiting for others to finish talking before she starts. To be fair, Brenden is almost always talking! She’s full of energy, and spunk, and temper, and sweetness. She gives amazing hugs, and food covered kisses. She likes to be tucked in at night. She loves to laugh. She loves to pretend. She will do anything big brother is doing, so thank goodness he is such a good kid. She will argue with you about absolutely anything. Often, she will gladly do whatever it is she’s just argued with you about immediately afterward.

I had one whole week of vacation between my spring and summer semesters. Maymester—not a good idea! During that week Patrick and I went to NYC to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. We realized it had been way too long since we’d been there, about 5 years. And we had originally promised ourselves we’d go back once a year! So off we went and had a great time too. We got to eat at our favorite places, see friends, visit favorite spots like Central Park, and do some new things too like walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. We also go to go see Wicked in very good seats and we loved it!

Pictures:

The kid’s school makes a pretty big deal out of the end of the school year in general, but an even bigger deal about kindergarten graduation. Brenden really loved his time at his little school and we were so sad to see his time there end. I was pretty sad on the last day that I took both kids to school together for the last time for a few years. We are so glad that we made the choice to keep Brenden in a small school for kindergarten. He continued to struggle a bit with handwriting for the first half of the year. He was very quiet in class but would talk his teachers ear off durning any sort of break. At the half-way point she told us he was hesitant to join group, answer questions in class and would sometimes hide his hand (something we’d never seen him do). By the last few weeks of school he was making 100’s on most of his spelling tests, writing pretty well, reading and being asked to be QUIET during class. Yeah, that’s more like the Brenden we know! He really bonded with his teacher so I thought he’d have a tough time leaving, but he took it very well. When we realized how busy and crazy my summer school schedule was going to be we gave him the chance to go back to his teacher for the summer or have a babysitter and he choose a babysitter, saying that he was done with kindergarten now!

Anyway, back to graduation. The kid’s had to paint self-portraits and make a poster answering questions about themselves which were then put on display the night of graduation. They also had to memorize a short speech about their favorite subject, what they want to be when they grow up, and where they were going to first grade. Brenden was up second for this speech on graduation night and froze up a bit, but was really cute in his shyness.

And, again, these pictures have been around, but here they are again.

Brenden has been six for almost 4 months now. It’s hard to remember the exact feeling we had when this occurred since some time has past and things have once again changed in that way that things constantly change when you have growing kids. What I do remember is this feel that his birthday occurred and a new and improved version of Brenden appeared. Not to say that he wasn’t already amazing, but there was this huge, instant change in him. He started melting down less. He stopped fighting with his sister over toys as much. He started being much more helpful in general and more specifically with his sister. I started hearing him try to keep her out of trouble and try to teach her things.

As is the tradition we began last year we had a family party the weekend before his actual birthday and then his friend party the weekend of. The friend party was at a bounce house again this year at Brenden’s request. I think Brenden had a pretty great time at both parties!

And even though I know I posted some pictures in various places, here they are again.

Ok, I’m going to begin the catching up process. Finally. So look for several entries to come over the next few days. After all, Brenden started first grade today and I can’t very well write about that before writing about him turning six or graduating from kindergarten!