Emma's Starts Pre-K 3

Emma started in Teacher Sara's class today. The 3 year old class. She is already counting down to next year when she will be in VPK and then the year after she'll be in kindergarten. Except that she won't. Her birthday falls 15 days too late. Emma is going to be like a fifth year preschool senior. Even as the youngest one in her class, she already dominates with her larger than life personality, volume and attitude. I am hoping for some wisdom between now and the next two years in how to guide Miss Emma for success. ( I should say that I foresee this as an ongoing ever renewing hope on my part.) I think we're going to have to send her to a different preschool for her second year of VPK or maybe we could rent her out as a teacher's aide.

Emma was so excited about all of her school supplies, that she had every last crayon, colored pencil and marker out of its box spread across the floor five minutes after I set the bag next to the door to be ready for the this morning. Just too much temptation.

First Day of Kindergarten

Andres and I both went with Lorelei this morning to start her first day of school. She had a school lunch - toast and chocolate milk - and then we walked to her class. She met her teacher, Ms. Rengel and found her seat. And then it was time for us to go. She wasn't at all fazed. When I picked her up in the afternoon she wasn't nearly happy enough to see me. Apparently she will slide gracefully right into through this transition.

In anticipation of Lorelei's first day at a big school, I reminded her how timid she was when she first started in her preschool classes. She barely spoke to the teachers for several days. Tonight she assured me that she was not too shy with the teacher and told her when she needed to use the bathroom. Apparently all the time spent playing school with Emma has emboldened her let her personality show through at school.
(Beware Ms. Rengel! Lorelei will keep you on your toes!)

She came home with a math workbook just for home practice. It is essentially a standardized test prep practice book for us to do in our family time together. Lorelei was very excited about it (come to think of it I do believe that I had a rather unnatural love of workbooks at an early age) so I let her go to town. I did however instigate that she must do the pages in order. That is certainly for my sanity and not hers. In any event, she is on page 29. It is all really basic, basic stuff that is downright easy. Good for self-esteem building (See how I am reaching for the positives? Beware Ms. Rengel! Mrs. Pfefferkorn will keep you on your toes, too.)

More House Photos

Andres reminded me last night that our contractor told him on July 17th that the project would be COMPLETE in 10 days. Now exactly one month later - the contractor told me today that it could be finished on Friday. We're not buying that story either, but there has been some obvious visual changes. The girls room is all pink right now but eventually will have some green accents. Our room is a crisp light blue and a deep aqua. The full bath is a beautiful blue - Tropical Lagoon it is called. The tiling has been so much more complicated and a much longer process than I imagined - and it isn't finished yet, but when it is it will be BEAUTIFUL!! The hallway is a yummy creamy french vanilla kind of color. The half bath (also known as the black and white bathroom) is currently lavender, but it was supposed to be and someday soon will be a light gray. The black vanity pieces and linen closet were just installed today. You can see in the photo how much dust is flying around in the air from the tile cutting. The black and white tile floor is absolutely gorgeous. I'm so happy that Andres agreed to let me have this floor even though he wasn't crazy about it.

Painting Begins

Seventeen days to go until the end of August and the end of our apartment life. That also means that many days for our house to be in a livable condition. Possibly the most exciting part so far for me was that I got to start painting yesterday!!!!!!! We have lived in apartments for the past 5 years and the white on white decor is so boring! So yesterday, with Jenna's help we painting the bathrooms: Tropical Lagoon and Moonlight Gray. The blue is fabulous and the gray went on so late last night that I couldn't really see well by the light of the single 60 watt bulb.

Today tile is being laid in both bathrooms and within days I expect a toilet!!! That will take me a long way toward being able to live in the house. Here are a few more recent photos of the process.

Count Down to Kindergarten

Lorelei has exactly 2 weeks left in her current preschool. On August 23rd she will be moving on and up to the big time - kindergarten! I hope that we are ready for it. I'm not sure I am. She is so big and yet so little compared to third, fourth and fifth graders. Her new school is soooooo much bigger. I am just very anxious about the transition for her (and me) to a large school that I don't really know enough about. I hope that she has an amazing teacher that will nurture her creative and sensitive soul. I am probably most disappointed that she will have to wear a uniform. It is very limited. Navy pants, shorts or skorts and light blue or yellow polo shirts. Yuck! Not that she isn't cute. She is! But it is so limiting and takes away one of my greatest daily joys - wondering what outfit Lorelei will put together. Lately she is very into accessories, so I hope that at least she can express herself through necklaces, bracelets and most of all rings.

Reader Rabbit

If ever there was a moment to declare Lorelei a true reader, it is now. At Chipotle yesterday she started reading the menu to us. I don't understand how her 5 year old brain understands so effortlessly to make sense out of the English language. Vowels truly defy logic

Pulled Into Cooking By the Desire for a Pulled Pork Sandwich

Not withstanding the two professionally trained chefs among my three siblings, I have never been too terribly interested in cooking. I prepare food - and usually something that can be completed in 15 minutes or less because when I am hungry, I want to eat! I sometimes go through phases of looking through cookbooks and feeling inspired until I read the list of ingredients. It is sure to include items that I don't have in my kitchen, nor have ever had in the kitchen, an item or two that I don't even know what it is, and then the items that I just can't tolerate due to IBS. Once I eliminate all recipes with either onions or pepper (forget the other more easily skipped items like broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts or cabbage) there isn't much left.

I have tried - so far unsuccessfully - to convince either of my talented chef siblings to write an IBS cookbook. This year was the VERY FIRST TIME that I have ever cooked fish. It went well and now we have fish about once every two weeks. I started pulling recipes off the web and really it is getting kind of fast and easy. (I have got to tell you that the first recipe was a Rachael Ray's 30 minute meal and it took me FOREVER longer than 30 minutes. I must have spent at least 30 minutes just reading and re-reading the recipe a hundred times trying to wrap my mind around it.)

In it would be wonderful recipes mindful of common IBS trigger foods as well as a helpful substitution chart. If you can't have green peppers, what would be a good substitute to maintain the integrity of the recipe? Since I know oh so little about cooking, I have NO idea how to substitute. On several occasions, both high and low profile, I have been accommodated. (If only I had written down what they did or was even present while it was being prepared, I believe I could have the beginning of a book!) My brother's family was recently here visiting and he made pulled pork sandwiches with faux slaw all Amber friendly and so yummy!

So I'm not just inspired to learn to cook, I am intrigued to understand how cooking works. Get it? I want to understand the science behind the cooking. A recipe just doesn't give me enough information. I don't know what the different ingredients do for a recipe, so I don't know how to adapt a recipe. Now I am going to learn - starting with pulled pork sandwiches. And the journey is going to continue until I don't need measuring spoons or recipes anymore! I am going to write the damn IBS book myself! (But I'd really rather co-author with the two experts. You two be the brains and I'll be the tester? What do you say?)

So you can look forward to posts and photos of my cooking journey. Below are photos of last night's dinner, Parmesaen encrusted Mahi-Mahi, and Ratatouille (inspired by watching the movie several times lately) and fresh Cherry Crisp (my fingernails are still stained and my shoulders still tight from the pitting) from Supper Club earlier in the week. And tonight we will dine on pork sandwiches!

Williams' Visit

We were so fortunate to have Arik and his family fly down to spend a week with us. It passed by far too quickly, and while I'm sure Arik and Jenny were very excited to get the kids home to their own beds, we miss them terribly. There were so many things that I wanted to talk with the adults about that we never got around to. We also didn't get around to most of the items on my TO DO list. Here are some photos of what we did get to: Cuban food, Little Havana, South Beach, Lincoln Road, time in the pool, the Everglades and Key Largo.

There will be plenty of things to do (beaches to visit and food to eat) next time. I do look forward to when all the kids are a bit older and we can just lock them off into a section of the house and the adults can focus more on each other and less on the kids!

A Linked Family

I have been struggling to figure out how to blog about life events in two different blogs. I still don't know what the smart way to merge them is, so for the meantime I have at least included a link on each of the two blogs so that viewers can toggle between them. (Look to the right.)

Leading Indicators

Sabrina had her one month check-up this morning. She gained another pound since 2 weeks ago, so her growth is right on schedule. I ran her statistics to find out her percentiles and then I thought to do the same with the height and weight measurements that I took of Emma and Lorelei exactly a month ago. I have to say that the results were surprising.

Sabrina at 1 month: 9 lbs. 8 ozs.  21 1/4 inches in length and a head circumference of 14 inches. She grew but stayed pretty much at the same percentile rankings as at birth and at 2 weeks. 53% for weight, 48% for length and 16% for her head size.

Emma at 2 years 9 months: 35 lbs. and 37 inches tall. I like the symmetry of those numbers. It made me think of her as being "squared". Not surprising that put her at 90% for weight but surprisingly her height is only 64%. She seems so tall to me and so much taller than the other kids in her class at school, but I guess she isn't so tall after all.

Lorelei at 5 years 1 month: 43 lbs. and 44 1/2 inches tall. Again, good symmetry but it doesn't work out that way in the percentiles. She is at 65% for her weight and 79% for height. I'm not too surprised about her weight, although I wouldn't have been surprised had it been lower either because she is such a skinny minny. I was surprised that she moved out of the middle of the pack for her height. Maybe we'll get a volleyball player after all.

If I had to predict (and I did) about future statures based on early indicators, I had thought that Emma would end up being taller than average and several inches taller than Lorelei. Maybe that isn't how things will pan out at all. Or maybe I need to take a more nuanced review of the data to determine if the girls' growths spurts start with vertical or weight growth. Hmmm............ I'll get back to you on that one.

House Addition Moving Along

I have been talking for months about this house that we supposedly bought and the addition that we wanted to add before we moved in. Many, many months later it is finally underway. Anyone not locale surely thinks that we have been living in the house for a good long time now, but not quite. So here are a few photos of the changes going on at the house.

Slinky Squeaky the Snail

Meet Slinky Squeaky. This was the snail that Lorelei found in our yard two weekends ago. She made a little home for him in a play frying pan complete with leaves and water. She took him around for walks and let him crawl in the grass while keeping a sharp eye on his progress.

Jump ahead to the following Thursday when Lorelei had slinky at the apartment in a closed ziplock bag. I thought for sure that he was just a shell at that point, but I was wrong. I have no idea exactly where Slinky had been living for the days between Sunday and Thursday, but alive he was. We went to the house for dinner with Grandpa Dave and Slinky came along. He got left in the car on the way home and Lorelei couldn't sleep until Andres went to the car to rescue him. Soon Slinky was crawling out of his tupperware container in the kitchen. I suggested that Slinky live out on the balcony because I wasn't about to put a lid on him and because we were leaving for Tampa the next afternoon. Slinky needed to be free to eat, drink and be merry. Friday morning Lorelei was in true tears to find that we had put Slinky outside and that he had indeed slunk away. I felt bad for hours on Friday. I felt so empathetic with Lorelei's desire to mother something - but I still don't want a pet. I guess she can care for all the little critters in our yard once we get there.

Trip to Tampa

Friday afternoon we headed to Tampa for the weekend. Saturday we went to Busch Gardens primarily sticking to the new Seasame Street section. The girls had a great time. That night Andres had a game. We went for the second half and were treated to fireworks after the game!

Sunday, Mother's Day, we went to Siesta Key for a beautiful interlude to life. The conditions were perfect. And happily there were no jelly fish. (Emma, not to be outdone by her sister, stepped on a jelly fish last weekend at the beach. Fortunately, I was prepared with my bottle of vinegar, but it still cut our stay just a bit short - which all in all wasn't a bad thing considering that everyone but me got sunburned!) We had a lovely time playing in the very shallow, warm water. I didn't want to leave and the girls definitely were thinking mutinous thoughts along the same line.

Lorelei's Birthday

Lorelei turned 5 this past Saturday and to celebrate it was no surprise that she wanted a mermaid cake and a pool party. Juan and Jenna are so amazing to us on a daily basis, and again they opened up their home and pool to us for the party. Here are a few photos.

Under Construction!

After months of waiting to close on the house and then months of not actually living in the house or making much movement toward changing the house to be able to live in it - the construction engines have begun! Our renter moved out the first week of March and we had hoped for work to begin shorter after that, but it didn't happen. We got bogged down by waiting on other people (the City, contractors, bank representatives). Finally a week and a half ago, Grandpa Dave drove down from Iowa with a van filled with magical tools. Since then he has been living in the house and working hard every day on my long To Do List and because he is so versatile, the list is getting longer! The biggest change so far is going to be the kitchen annex, a small 3 x 7 foot area adjacent to the small kitchen. The fridge got moved to make room for the dishwasher - can you imagine living without one?! We are adding a run of upper and lower cabinets for storage and counter space. This week the microwave and dishwasher arrived. The cabinets have had a coat of stain and today await a second coat and a polyurathane coat and then they will move into their respective locations. I need to head up to IKEA to purchase the butcher block counter top pieces to finish it off. So exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then there are a myriad of changes that have less of a visual impact, but are super important too, like moving around electrical outlets, pipes, and soon my washer and dryer will be much less awkwardly placed! Truly Dave is a God send and he may just be here until the baby is born the way things are going. The more he touches then more he or I think of other things!

In Monday I signed the contract with the contractors to begin the addition. Yeah!!!!!!!! It rained hard most of the day on Monday, but I'm expecting to see a dumpster arrive soon - maybe today and for things to start happening.There I am with the General Contractor on the left and the on-site boss on my right.