Yosemite tree

When I took the picture I posted yesterday of the kids on the tree, I was thinking of this picture from three years ago.

Laurel was just beginning to take her first few unsteady steps, and she was leaning pretty heavily on the tree; that's the biggest difference between the two photos. Isaac, on the other hand, is holding a stick in both photos.

May 2010: Isaac age 4 1/2 years, Laurel age 16 months

May 2013: Isaac age 7 1/2 years, Laurel age 4

Yosemite

We went to Yosemite this weekend, once again for Craig's church's annual retreat. I wasn't sure if I wanted to add a weekend of camping (and a day of preparation and another day of cleaning up) to my other duties (including preparing for our upcoming eight-week trip to England) but we went anyway.

The weather was really warm (overnight lows of mid-50s, daytime highs of mid-80s) so with the exception of one "hike" to Mirror Lake, we hung out by the Merced River. The adults sat on the shore in camp chairs, the kids played on the tree and got completely wet!

Climbing on the old familiar tree by the riverside campsite (note Half Dome in background)

Bunk beds in Housekeeping Camp in the morning

- - - - -



Here's a look back at the Yosemite trip of 2012.

"Block City"

So there's a Robert Louis Stevenson poem from 'A Child's Garden of Verses' called "Block City," and we have a picture book version of it (illustrated by Daniel Kirk).

The poem is okay, and the book is okay, but Laurel came up with an idea which is really fun.

Laurel with her "Block City" palace

 
She did it first about six months ago. All on her own, she took the book off the shelf, laid it open on the floor, and proceeded to build block structures based on the ones in the illustrations.

Here is her most recent handiwork, from mid-April. We built the palace in this photo together, but she did well more than half the work.

One month

Isaac gets out of school in exactly one month, on June 7, and then he will be all done with first grade. He has already spent one evening weeping over the fact that he will have a different teacher next year.

I told him that he will have many teachers over the course of his education, some good and some less so, and although he will certainly miss Mrs. T., who has been very special, there will be others. Actually, we ran into Isaac's very first teacher at the library today (teacher Jennifer, who was his teacher back in the preschool Threes class!) and he did not remember her at all. Like, not even a little bit.

It was a bit unnerving. I guess I didn't quite comprehend how much of his childhood will disappear to him, even as it remains clear to me. I found myself wondering if he might lose some connection to me as he loses his memories -- you go to all that effort to provide a nurturing childhood, and then your kid forgets it all?

Ah, I guess it's similar to Isaac being sad about losing his first-grade teacher; there will be new memories just as there will be new teachers.

Anyway, the last month of school always passes very quickly, but this year I found that things started speeding up in April. This might also be because one month from today (actually one month from tomorrow) we depart for England for eight weeks! I've been very busy preparing for that big event, which might explain my lack of blogging.

- - - - -

Here is my post on a similar topic from two years ago, written exactly one month before we departed for Germany for ten weeks.

Sick (resilient) kid

Starting on Saturday Laurel had a scratchy throat (she described it as "itchy") and a rattle in her chest, then later in the day she seemed more tired than usual. On Sunday she began to develop a cough, and we figured she was getting sick.

Today she had a lot of coughing, some sneezing, and a runny nose. We skipped her gymnastics class and just took it easy at home. In the afternoon she began to feel hot to the touch, and I took her temperature as 100.1. By evening it was 101.5, so I gave her some Tylenol right before I put her to bed.

I can hear her coughing in her bed now. It sounds pretty terrible (especially when it triggers her gag reflex), but amazingly it doesn't seem to wake her up!

She is very resilient as a sick person. I've mentioned before how even a slight temperature makes Isaac crumple into miserable lethargy, but Laurel remains cheerful and playful.

But is "resilience" the same as "completely failing to notice there is a problem"? Maybe this also has something to do with her frequent falls and careless accidents.

One day last week Isaac stuffed her shoes with large pieces of bark. She was wearing them at the time. She continued to wear them for the next 30 minutes -- without any socks, on the wrong feet, as she ran around outside.

Naturally she developed blisters and open wounds, but she didn't feel them until I took her shoes off. As I washed and bandaged her feet, she kept repeating in a pitiful voice, "But I didn't notice!"

Laurel says...

Yesterday I got "dressed up" for a meeting at Isaac's school. Laurel came into the bathroom as I was putting on mascara, and she asked me suspiciously, "Why are you pretty?"

I said, "I'm always pretty."

- - - - -

Later that night, after dinner, she kept asking me when I was leaving. I kept saying I wasn't going anywhere, but she persisted. Finally I asked her, "Why do you think I'm going out?"

She pointed at my outfit, and said, "You're wearing a skirt."

- - - - -

We are planning an eight-week trip to England this summer, and I recently emailed a bed-and-breakfast to ask about check-out times. Craig and I are going to be staying there while we attend a music festival, and I was wondering how early we would have to get up in the morning! The owner emailed me back and said that although breakfast was usually served from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m., we could "have a lie in, and plan for a late breakfast say about 11."

I read aloud from this email while I was still in bed this morning, and do you know what phrase thrilled Laurel? Here's a hint: she ran to get our dog's squeaky rubber lion, put it in bed with me, and growled.

Lie-in = lion.

I said, "It's going to be a long summer."

Family portraits

My kids are drawing our family!

First, Isaac drew our entire family. These are surprisingly detailed figures for Isaac, who is usually not interested in drawing people. He ran out of time (or possibly interest) by the time he got to me, which is why I don't have any skin tone or hands. I like how he gave some thought to our relative heights and his own hair length.

Isaac's drawing of our family

Then at school this week Laurel made this drawing of herself (on the left in the red "fancy dress") with her father (on the right in "his favorite plaid shirt"). She has little ears and you can just spot her feet peeking out under her skirts. Craig has little round feet, and you can definitely see his shirt has a pattern.

Laurel's drawing of (L-R) herself and her father

At school the week before, Laurel drew herself holding hands with me, in a boat. (I drew the two yellow circles and the blue asterisk, and she took it from there.) Like many of her drawings, it has added textural features: in this case squares cut from the bottom two edges and a strip of scotch tape carefully applied over lumps of glue stick.

Laurel's drawing of (L-R) herself and her mother

I think it is interesting that the feet and general body structure are so different between her two portraits!

Guess which child, revealed

It hadn't occurred to me that my regular readers would find the question I posed in my last post to be a challenge! The temperament of my children is so different, I was sure it would be an obvious answer.

At any rate, if anyone is jumping down rabbit holes, it would be Laurel.

Isaac is the cautious one and Laurel is the bold one.

You could substitute "anxious" and "reckless" if you wanted, but then that would sound judgmental.

- - - - -

Their responses to the going-down-the-rabbit-hole issue were similar to their responses to the going-to-see-a-volcano issue, as noted in this blog post from last summer:

Isaac said, "I never want to see a volcano!"

Laurel said, "I want to see a volcano every day!"