Last Semester

I forgot one very important thing happened on our last full day in Palm Springs:  Lucie lost her first tooth!  In the pool!  And maybe swallowed it!  At one point, Brennan popped up out of the water and very convincingly shouted, "I found Lucie's tooth!"  We were briefly amazed.  Then he handed over a fragment of a foam pool toy, laughed like a loon, and said, "Just kidding!"  We wrote the Tooth Fairy a nice note on the back of the hotel laundry service form, which she generously accepted in lieu of the tooth.  

Here's Lucie back home, showing off her new gap, and JJ the Robot Pug's new aviator costume:

We're glad the Tooth Fairy accepts notes, because when Lucie lost & swallowed her next tooth while eating, she knew exactly what to do.

Spring soccer went into full swing after break.  The Jellyfish practiced Wednesday afternoons again, meaning I got to once again experience how ineffective I am at getting 4-6 children to collect their stuff and follow me 2 blocks.

But the kids have lots of fun, especially when Coach (Daddy) lets them do their favorite drill, Buffalos & Hunters.  The Buffalo line up at the goal and run to the other side, trying to avoid the soccer ball arrows that the Hunters are kicking into the herd as they go by.  If you get hit, then you turn from a Buffalo into a Hunter, until the last Buffalo standing is declared the winner.  

Brennan's practice was on Tuesday after school, while I'm at work, and his coaches, god bless them, deal with getting him there and back, as well as tying his shoes, since I still hadn't managed to successfully impart that lesson yet.  Saturdays are game days, which can more or less take up the whole day, once you account for getting to to the park early for warm up and uniform check, game time, snack time, travel time to the next game which is inevitably in some entirely different neighborhood, and repeat the cycle.  (and for Daddy, add the responsibility of a) coaching one team; b) doing this solo on the weekends I'm at work)

Still, the kids seem to enjoy it, and they both have declared they intend to continue in the fall.  Daddy has been busy trying to snatch up the more promising kindergarten prospects, although he is hamstrung by my conscience, guilting him into taking people who signed up first, and his own, guilting him into making sure the new team(s) have enough players and helpful parents.

Late April and all of May also brings a flurry of year-end activities, when elementary school teachers either realize: we still haven't been to the Arboreteum/Farmer's Market/City Hall/Etc OR to hell with fractions, these kids can't focus.

The first event in this extravaganza is the Fun Run, where the kids run around the school block as many times as they can in 30 minutes to raise money for a partner school in Africa.  Despite my fears that my (pathetic) running peak was going to be smoked by a 7 year old this year, Brennan met last year's 11 laps but didn't push through. 

  It was a pretty hot day, though.

While the preschool doesn't participate in the run, they did bring the little kids out to watch and cheer, and Lucie got to run a lap with her brother since I was there to escort her.  She's already talking about how fast she's going to run when she gets to join in next year.

In addition to the Fun Run, Brennan went on field trips to:
1. Golden Gate Park, where they seem to be deploying 7 & 8 year olds as free English Ivy removal services under the guise of teaching them about invasive plants
2. The symphony, where some kids fall asleep
3. The Ferry Building, which he gave me no report back
4. Kezar Stadium for a Special Olympics Track & Field meet, which annoyed him as "all we got to do was sit there and watch"
5. City Hall, which he was uncharacteristically gushy about, explaining the City Seal and what you can see inside, and proudly showing me his related homework

Three (!) of these trips took place the same week as the FunFest with one the following week, which meant I had the privilege of sitting down one night to complete the five identical permission/in case of emergency forms required for his participation.  I didn't chaperone any of the above, because...

I went on the overnight camping trip in the Presidio.  I helped set up and take down tents, I cut up sacks of apples and made 2 dozen identical turkey and cheese sandwiches, I went begging for the special park-service approved bamboo S'mores Sticks TM, I navigated 20 kids with melted marshmallows, I tried to sleep through the inconsolable sobbing of Sloane in the next tent, and I unloaded a truck full of camping gear in the rain.  After which I felt pretty much absolved of having to participate in anything else for the rest of the school year.

Brennan had a fantastic time, hiking to Baker Beach, catching and releasing bugs, eating hot dogs, taking a flashlight hike at night, and staying up late telling ghost stories with the other boys in his tent.

Lucie has been busy with her favorite spring time activities, which include cajoling Mommy into biking to Golden Gate Park on sunny days, and then cajoling Mommy into buying fancy soft-serve at the Twirl & Dip truck by the Academy of Sciences.  Although Mommy thinks the vanilla with coffee syrup and toasted almonds is pretty tasty, so it's usually not a hard sell.

And she likes to take Roux for walks - anywhere, really, but Tank Hill is a favorite, so we had to get up there one more time before foxtail season sets in.  Because removing grass awns from your own dog's nose/ears/eyes is one of those things you never live down when you work at a veterinary hospital.

She's also learned to scale doorways like a spider, courtesy of her big brother.  She asked me to document her first effort:

She helped Brennan practice for the Egg Drop, since PreK students couldn't participate.  Standing on our back stairs chucking boxes into the courtyard is probably more fun, anyway.  Curiosity got the best of me and I put together my own concoction: egg inside an air-filled ziplock, suspended inside a large ziplock full of water.  Then I let Lucie throw it.  It caught a string of ornamental lights on the way down and ended in an explosion of broken glass and water.  (but the egg survived!)  Brennan more sensibly used old textiles - in keeping with the eco-friendly requirements - and is now 3 for 3 on the egg drop at school.

And just like that, it was May 26th - Last Day of School!  Next stop, 3rd grade.