Homework

I'm not one of those parents that feels like my kid really needs homework. I can hardly stand the school schedule itself, let alone a whole other lesson when he gets home. So far, it hasn't been too bad. Brady has a bad attitude about it some days, but is fine once we get started.

Brady has been reading a book every day and he earns a 'prize' every 5 books. Last week, he got to buy breakfast at school on Friday as his prize. He was beyond thrilled. That afternoon, he was wearing his "backup outfit". I was afraid he'd had an accident, but apparently he enjoyed his pancakes and syrup a little too much. He had to change because, "the pancakes made [him] sticky." (I heard from a friend of mine who teaches at the school that he was telling this to just about anyone who would listen!)

Finishing off a worksheet...I love the tongue of concentration :)

Brady didn't have official homework this weekend, but a lot of the papers he brought home on Friday had small mistakes (i.e., numbers written backwards). I guess it doesn't count as homework if you're playing school outside in a playground fort!

Not a superstar today!

Beach weekend

We headed back to the beach to celebrate my dad's birthday last weekend. We got in late Friday, but that still gave us plenty of time to enjoy the beach.

Saturday, we headed to a quiet inlet with no waves. We took my parents' sea kayaks and took the boys out for about an hour on those. (No pictures...what's up with that?) We had a picnic lunch and played in the sand. We could see a storm rolling in, so we packed up and left with perfect timing - the skies opened up right after we had finished putting the kayaks away at home!

Happiness is...cheetos on the beach ?

On Sunday, we wanted to head to the oceanfront to see what kind of waves hurricane Bill had stirred up. We were not disappointed! For the first few hours we were there, we had a constant succession of huge waves thundering. They were breaking pretty far off shore, so the boys got to watch the surfers with little danger of getting run over.
They were a little hesitant at first, and were content to watch the waves and run in and out of the water.

I love these two pictures...they were quite involved in some conversation with each other:

After watching James and I do some bodysurfing, they attempted their own version of surfing.

Waiting for the water...

...here it comes...

...he "caught" the wave (more like the wave caught him!). See his feet?

Even Rudy got into it:

Chicken dance

This kid's got quick feet!

Buddies

Rudy claims to miss Brady when he's at school, and I think he does miss having a full time playmate. At the same time, I think Rudy is thrilled to get me and all of the toys to himself every day!

Last week, when Brady came home from school they headed outside. I still haven't quite figured out what the mission was...

...but it involved them each in their own cardboard boxes:...and moving dust around on this massive dirt pile:

Whatever it was, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves and did NOT want to be bothered with dinner and bath that night. (As you can see, we hadn't yet shared with Brady the lesson that you should probably change out of your school clothes before playing in the dirt!)

Aww...best brothers!

Ben & Ru

Besides Brady, Ben has really become Rudy's best buddy this summer. They're even to the point where they manage to fight very little (hope I haven't jinxed it!). Ben came up to play last week and I pretty much didn't see them the entire time he was here...they played outside for a long time while I was weeding (they were getting the bad guys in the picture below) and then they came inside and disappeared into Rudy's room...where they managed to not even make a huge mess!

Rudy is so lucky to have such a good friend. They'll be in preschool together this fall...it will be interesting to see how much trouble they get into together there ;)

Squeeze your cheeks

...and other Rudy funnies:

Potty talk warning...The day that Brady went back to school, Rudy finally agreed that it was time to stop wearing diapers. We went cold turkey (except naps and bedtime) and he's been doing great. The first day, he had a couple accidents but has pretty much had it figured out since. My mom told him if he had to poop, to squeeze his cheeks. Now, a couple times when he has to poop, he's yelled, "I squeezin' my cheeks!"

I guess that's a story I may have to come back and edit out when he's older :)

While eating a snack recently, "I didn't know my belly could sing."

Inexplicable: "When I think hard, my breath goes into my brain."

Famous!

One of our neighbors was kind enough to drop off a copy of one of the local papers for us because she noticed this familiar face inside:

Post-school wrap up

So, the first day was a success...I think. He was in a good mood when he got off the bus, but slipped into a bit of a funk when we got home. I think he was just exhausted. After about 10 minutes of cuddling on the couch and some chocolate chip cookies, he started to tell us about his day.
Details of the behavior chart:



His not-quite-favorite part of the day: (I still haven't found out what the actual favorite part was!)

First day of kindergarten

Today was the first day of Kindergarten! We rode the bus in n last week and got a chance to meet Brady's teacher. The orientation was a bit disorganized, so I think he was feeling a little nervous about the day today, and what would be happening. He had a lot of friends on the bus, so he was very excited to ride the bus. He told me he was most excited about the playground. It's supposed to be a heat index of 103 today, so I hope they get a chance to play outside!

And, for a bit of a retrospective, go back and look at the 2008 and 2007 preschool pictures.

A perfect weekend...

Our good friends Blake and Heather invited us to their family's river cottage this past weekend. It turned out to be a perfect weekend - good weather, beautiful location, great friends...

The house is located on its own private peninsula, very close to the point where the Potomac empties into the Chesapeake Bay, and the views are straight out into open water. See the house on the cleared spit of land in the middle of the google image below? Amazing!

We took several boat rides over the course of the weekend. It was so smooth the first time that we went straight out into the bay. This is the house, coming back in:
On that first trip, we were lucky enough to come across some dolphins. Blake said that it's only the third time he's ever seen them (in over 30 years!). A couple times, we could see them surfacing within 10 or 15 feet of the boat!

By the way, it's really hard to take pictures of dolphins! You never know where they'll surface. We have a lot of pictures of empty open water and these very few of some fins that look farther away than they really were!

Blake and Heather's dog Jester...so tempted to jump in!

More boating pictures:
Our fearless captain...
Blake was kind enough to give the boys each a chance to "drive"
Charlie loved the water. She still didn't do too much swimming; she was content to wade in up to her belly, but she loved chasing the crabs and splashing around on the sandbars.
On the other hand, I don't think she was all that impressed with the boat. She was OK when we went slow, but started to look a little green when we picked up speed. She was happy to curl up in the least windy corner of the boat and snooze.
Another view of the house, as we came in one afternoon:

Saturday morning consisted of the following very strenuous schedule: breakfast, boating, lunch, swimming off the sandbar, walk around the point, swim/boat (depending on inclination) across cove to beach, walk on beach, boating again, fishing, shower, share a bottle of wine on the gazebo/play football or baseball (depending on inclination), dinner, kids to bed, wine on screen porch. Tough living!

We had grand plans for kayaking or canoeing, but didn't really get around to it. The boys did get to ride in the canoe as part of the closing-up-the boat process:

Playing outside Sunday morning:

Story time Friday night:

Sunset Friday night: