June kicked off with the last day of school for the girls. Olivia learned how to write in cursive, and her printing is getting better and better. She said her favorite subject this year was science. There’s just such a strange part of my life right now that says I have a first-grader. And one that just finished first grade.
She really had a good year. She adores her teacher and has a group of like 6 girls who all like to play together. Next year, she’ll be in her same classroom, with her same teacher and most of the kids, since it’s 1st through 3rd grades together.
Emelia finished three-year-old preschool and has blossomed so much. She loves school and loves her teacher. I was worried about her being so little coming into Children’s House as a just-turned three-year-old in a class of 3 to 6-year-olds. But she’s thriving.
And now we have the summer ahead of us. I’m so glad Chris has the entire summer off from work. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without him with these three kids and no childcare. Austin doesn’t know what the summer is going to bring either.
Right around when school got out for the summer, Chris and I scoured the community programs/children’s concerts/outings — you name it. We put a ton of activities in our shared calendar so when we woke up each day, if that outing that was scheduled sounded fun, we tried to pack up everyone and go do it.
One of our first places was a free kids’ performance with Frozen at an outdoor amphitheater. The last time I had been here was with my friend when we used to take our kids to all these outings. Each step down the amphitheater has a comfortable amount of grassy area, so we scoped out a spot, spread out a picnic blanket, and Olivia said see ya, and went down to the stage to dance with the other kids.
Emelia, ever the more reserved one, stayed up by us. Austin just looked confused but enjoyed lying on the blanket with me. It was gorgeous out — sometimes early summer in Minnesota still gets hot and muggy, but not so right now. And they got to take a picture with Elsa, which was the highlight of their week.
Chris started working Fridays only this month from home, to extend his paternity leave into the start of October, so the first Friday he worked, I sucked it up and took all three kids to the nearby nature center. It actually went really well in that the baby slept almost the whole time. They have a nature playground where the girls found other kids to play with and I nursed the baby. Then he fell back asleep while we walked and went into the activity center where they have a bunch of reptiles and amphibians on display along with binoculars and a little puppet theater.
I met my girlfriend at a splash pad later in the month, and it was so nice to get together again. We used to see each other several times a week when I was a stay-at-home mom, and then with the kids starting school, we hadn’t gotten together with the kids since last summer.
I left Austin home with Chris since I wasn’t enthusiastic about bringing a two-month-old to the water park while needing to wrangle two other kids. The kids had so much fun playing together.
