Day care days

Some pictures of A from Tammy's house:

She calls herself "Ama" as she points to her reflection in the mirror

Doing some organizing.  She takes after me in this regard... nothing better than some good cabinet organizing!

She takes after Mark in this regard, stubborn little thing.

Collecting boots.  Amelie loves shoes.

Amelie is a cuddler. She'll often come up and just rest her head on your leg.

Celebration of Life

At Logan's school, birthdays are a "Celebration of Life" that include a rather significant ceremony, for a just-4 year old.  The parents make a timeline to present to the class that tells the story of the child's life.  The parents are seated in the center of the circle, with a candle that signifies the sun, and then narrate the story of the child's life as he walks around the circle carrying the globe, while the rest of the class sings.  He pauses at the beginning of each year so we can describe what he was like at that age, and then makes his trip around the sun, once for each year of his life.  Depending on your perspective, it could be a bunch of hippy dippy baloney (as Logan would quote from the Lego movie), but I confess I kind of love it.  I've thoroughly drinken the Montessori koolaid (or whatever the hippy version of koolaid is... real koolaid probably has trans fats or high fructose corn syrup or one of the other banned substances).

Logan's birthday

Logan is 4!  Here are some pictures from his big day.

I put his presents out on the table the night before, and he dug into them immediately upon waking up, before we were even out there.  Here are his Lincoln Logs from Grandma & Grandpa

Lincoln log cabin

Logan requested to go to "his" climbing gym, which is the kids gym in Boulder.  It has a zip line, tunnels, and slide... Mark's dreaming up a similar set up for our at-home gym. 

Then we came home and got to work on the cake

Auntie Kenny came over to make pizzas for dinner

Helping decorate the cake

Ready for cake!

Logan is 4!

The following weekend we had a joint gymnastics birthday party with the three other kids we've been celebrating with since Logan turned one.  This may be the last year, since they've all started different pre-schools and are making different friends, but its been a good run. Very convenient for the moms to only do 1/4 of the work!  There are several former gymnasts in the group so we decided to revive our gymnastics skills from 25 years ago and try out some moves on the bars.  I was sore for a week afterward...

I asked LoLo who he wanted to invite to his party, and while his answer varied from week to week, the only consistent ones were Mommy and Alayna (fellow birthday boy Jac's older sister, his almost 7 year old crush).  Sometimes he wanted to invite all his teachers, sometimes just Ms. Alyssa. Rarely did any friends his own age come up. I guess it's a good thing it was a joint birthday... it would have been hard for me, LoLo, and Alayna to play the parachute game all by ourselves.

A & Auntie Kenny

This one has the 4 birthday kids (plus some other kids thrown in).  From L to R, Jac, Ayla, Logan, ?, and Quin.

Rope swing into the foam pit.  His pants were falling off.  They always are.

Parachute game!  I still remember this being so fun from childhood.  Probably because they only pulled it out once a year so it was a rare treat.

Daddy & A

Birthday cake time! That kid in the blue shirt in the middle of the picture kept blowing out Quin's candle, and then pulled it out and licked it.  Not cool.

All the kids at the party.  The 3 birthday boys are in the middle.

Happy Birthday LoLo!

Logan- 4 years

At 4, Logan loves legos.  And also Paw Patrol, trains, cars, tools, riding his bike... but mostly just legos.  We recently got out all my old childhood legos, meticulously separated them into bins by color, and started to re-create the lego city that lived under my bed all those years.  Its pretty fun for both of us. 

Logan started school 5 months ago and is in Ms. Kristin's class at Free Horizon Montessori.  He's never very excited to go to school, but then he always complains that I pick him up too early, so I think he likes it.  I ask him about his day every day and he tells me nothing, and I would have no idea what goes on at school except for the fact that he likes to play pretend school when we go to Ginny's.  He is the teacher, and leads Ginny, Amelie, and I through the whole day with his checklist, starting with lining up to walk inside (he leads the line of course), singing the good morning song and saying the peace poem, and then dismissing us each in turn from circle to go choose our works (i.e. activities).  He calls us "friends" and uses "may" as in "you may choose a work".  He seems to be learning to be polite and follow rules and he recently started singing the months of the year and the continents so I guess he's learning something.  The first few months of the year he just came home with macaroni necklaces every day so I wasn't so sure.  His favorite activities are the Wanominos-- which are puzzles where you put wooden blocks into patterns-- and pouring water from pitcher to pitcher in Practical Life.  His buds are Caleb and Oliver, and all the teachers.  When we were trying to figure out who he wanted to invite to his birthday party, he just wanted to invite his teachers.  And Alayna, Jac's older sister who is almost 7 years old.

Logan is a sweet older brother.  When Amelie is crying he sings her songs and tells her "its okay, sweet pea" and gives her hugs. Logan loves to cuddle.  He wants to cuddle every night before bed and its hard to resist since that's the only time he'll tell me anything of substance, and I know it won't be long before he doesn't want to cuddle with mommy any more. He likes to identify families of school buses and its a great day if we time the drive just right and see the lightrail train go by.  His favorite foods are apples, cookies and pizza.  His nickname is LoLo.