Will is 6!

We got Will his first big-boy "real" Legos last year for his birthday and he's been playing with them constantly since then.  So his birthday this year was Lego-themed.

Patti spent weeks finding all sorts of fun Lego things online and it was the usual all hands on deck leading up to the party, but Will and his friends had a great time.  There was a "guess how many Legos in the bin" game for adults, Lego-themed decorations,pin-the-head-on-the-Lego man, free building on the playroom floor, yummy Lego-colored fruit and veggie snacks, and more.

Thank goodness for the playroom.  We had every one of Will's other birthday parties outside in our yards but it was in the 40's and raining so we planned ahead and had lots of fun inside.  There was a fun mix of Will's friends from Carson Street, old friends from his nursery school and new friends from his kindergarten.

And what a difference a year makes.  Five- and six-year-olds can listen and play organized games! We played a musical chairs inspired game of pass the many-times-wrapped Lego gift (to the tune of "Everything is Awesome" from the Lego movie)...

 Pin the head on the Lego minifigure (so much fun, and note the his and hers faces)...

And the kids got to use some of their party favors to build race cars to race down Patrick's homemade racetrack.  Unbelievably, they shared this pretty well and no one got hurt.  There wasn't any real racing (no winners/losers) so everyone just let them go over and over and over...and over again.  And the kids got to take their cars with them.

Will threw Patti for a last-minute loop the night before the party by telling her that he didn't want a chocolate cake.  He said he wanted a jello cake so Patti took the Lego molds she had bought to make jello Lego blocks instead of candied ones and she made a yummy 4-layer jello cake with the primary Lego colors.  Very yummy and a surprise hit.

So another party in the books, and a few months to recover until Maggie and Stella's birthday.

Halloween 2014

Now that we have kids, Halloween has become our new favorite holiday.  Watching the kids' enthusiasm and interest in things has piqued our interest in joining their themes.  But whereas last year Stella and Maggie were willing to do whatever we all wanted, this year they knew exactly what they wanted to be.  So that's how we ended up with a Frozen AND Star Wars mash-up.

These were the week before Halloween but too cute not to add.

Our neighborhood association held the annual Halloween parade the weekend before Halloween so it's a fun dry-run of what is in store in a few days.  Patti outdid herself by making Anna and Elsa's mother's dress from scratch.  She also made Maggie and Stella's cloaks and shoulder shrugs using old prom dresses and bridesmaid dresses.

Halloween night was a blur of getting everyone in costume again and rushing everyone safely through a couple of sidestreets near our home.  Will and Dad made a forceful pair (pun intended) and Patti and the girls outshone the other Frozen-inspired kiddies in the neighborhood.

Los pollitos

Will has really surprised us with his progress in his Spanish-immersion Kindergarten.  He still ebbs and flows between insisting that he doesn't speak Spanish to rattling off 1-29 in Spanish.  If you asked him today if he speaks Spanish, he'd probably say yes.

So tonight was Spanish heritage night at his school and his Kindergarten class had to sing "Los Pollitos" in Spanish.  So one download from iTunes and dozens and dozens of mind-sticking plays later, Will and his class sang it tonight in front of a packed gymnasium.

Will was petrified and crying about this just a week ago but he bravely went up there and sang as much of it as he knew (just like everyone else).  Please click here to mostly see and sort of hear his class singing.  We might turn into the rest of the parents in Will's school who stand up and tape everything, but not tonight.

All Will wants for Christmas is...

Two front teeth.

Fast on the heels of losing his third bottom tooth, Will quickly lost his top front left tooth on September 17th and his top front right tooth on September 27th.  He hardly had time to enjoy the one missing tooth - sticking a straw through it for drinking - before the second came out.

One of his two front teeth is already visible so he won't have a gap for long.  Oddly enough, it hasn't impacted his speech much.  If anything, it's made him slow down a little which helps him remember to enunciate better.

The girls think it's absolutely magical how they come out and grow back.  It's hard to imagine that they could start losing teeth in another year or two.

Brick Fest

On September 21st, Will and Daddy got to spend some quality time near Baltimore at Brick Fest.  It's a medium-scale vendor-driven Lego festival with lots of space for free-building, lots of vendors hocking custom-made Lego pieces and accessories, and lots of Lego-inspired fun.

The free-build areas let kids (and parents) make anything and then add that vehicle, building, street, or whatever, to the larger playing field.

Will became a ninja for a moment.

Will REALLY wanted to make a derby car and enter it in a race and he waited so patiently for our turn to build one.  When it was our turn, we rushed over to the building tables with our frame and wheels and used our 4-minutes to whip together a cool race car - complete with the Empire logo.  Once it was complete, he waited patiently again for his turn to race against other kids.  Click here to see if he won.....

There were lots of displays of spectacular creations.  Boats, satellites, buildings, working trains, and more.

Will's "special" purchase were two scoops, and he wasted no time making trucks for them as soon as he got home.  You've got to see him make something to appreciate how creative he is, especially when he's trying to recreate a truck or something that we've seen in the area.  He's got a better attention to detail than he does patience...

The Big Build 2014

On September 20th, Patrick took the kids on the Metro to the National Building Museum in Washington, DC for The Big Build 2014.  The Big Build is an annual event where kids can build just about anything in any medium, using real tools of the trade.  Old hand-powered drills, saws, planes, plus pipe-fitting, home repairs, etc.

First, the kids learned about landscape architecture by drawing their dream parks.  Then they all got to spackle a wall...

Then they all busted out the wrenches and became certified pipe fitters.

Will cut some PVC pipe that later became a bank.

Then it was outside to see the heavy machinery.  Will is gaga about flatbeds right now so we checked that out right away.  He also sat in the driver's seat of this Mack (maybe his favorite thing ever), plus the street-sweeper and garbage truck.  Then he sat with a police officer in the front of his DC police car and got to play with the microphone.  Right before this video starts, Will picked up the microphone and said to the passerby "pull over in the name of the law!"

Let there be sand

So the treefort has been done for about a month and we didn't get around to leveling the sandbox and filling it.  Our neighbors asked a couple of times if we wanted to use their pickup to get sand somewhere so we finally took them up on the offer on Saturday.  Unfortunately it was pouring but Patrick went and retrieved 1,500 pounds of soft white sand, drove it home, and filled the sandbox one miserable wheelbarrow full at a time.

With rain all Saturday and soccer practice all Sunday, the kids didn't get a chance to use the sandbox for the first time until today.  They were such good sharers for about five minutes and then the usual infighting started.

And then the moment we've all been waiting for (at least all summer).  The kids got to slide down into the sandbox.  All three got a couple of cycles in but here's Stella and Will giving it a shot and here's Maggie.  Ahh, to be young again.

Back to soccer practice

We switched the girls from their "premiere" league soccer team to Takoma Park soccer for the Fall season.  It's what Will has participated in for a couple of years and we felt it offered the kids as good of training as the crazy expensive other league.  So now we have busy Sunday afternoons with overlapping soccer practices on the same field, and a WHOLE lot of Takoma Park soccer shirts in the house...

No pictures of Maggie and Stella because Patti had her hands full.  No, literally full - of Stella and Maggie's hands...  Maybe next week.

Will had a blast!  He ran into his best friend Quinley on the way to practice, and then he found out that three of his other nursery school classmates are on his team.  For a kid that always worries about not knowing people, it instantly put him at ease.

Here is Will's first ever corner kick!

And later, he even scored a goal!  Scrimmages for Kindergarteners are still kind of a scrum but he got to the far post and tapped in the ball when it squibbed in front of him and the goal.  Then he sprinted all the way down field to high-five Daddy and Mommy.

He was so excited!  The whole (short) drive home he kept saying that it was the best soccer practice ever,

Stella and Maggie go to the 3's class!

The girls just returned to school last week, and just for a few hours a day.  But that's still a few hours per day for Patti to have time to herself for the first time in five years.  Whew!

There were two 2's classes last year so the school mixed up the kids into two different 3's classes this year.  Luckily the girls weren't separated, but many of their little friends are in the other class.  But they get to play together during recess and see each other in the hall before school.  That made the first day harder, though, and neither girl wanted to go into their class.  We had to push them in, both crying and screaming for us, and walk away quickly.  So three out of three had a rough first day.

Maggie and Stella both asked to wear dresses, have barrettes, and wear necklaces so they'd look "pretty Daddy."

Once they got to school, though, they were pretty comfortable until they saw their friends going into the other class....

Both girls did some drawing and coloring to calm down, which they did pretty quickly.  And both girls promised to walk right in the next class, which only one of them did (you can guess which one).  From the third class on, they've both marched right in and had great days.

Will goes to Kindergarten!!!

Will is in Kindergarten!  We can't believe it.

On a positive, he went to school on his first day.  On the other hand, we had to endure an entire summer of him adamantly stating "I am not going to Kindergarten."  Our home school isn't a great one at all so we entered Will in the lottery to get into a partial Spanish immersion Kindergarten, and then spent the entire summer selling that school to Will.  That resulted in a summer of "How many times do I have to tell you that I do not speak Spanish!"  Long story short, we learned that he got in late in the day on the Friday before school began.

Will doesn't adapt to change very well (like his parents in  many ways) so he was against going to  school the first morning.  He graced us with a happy picture or two...

and then his real feelings came flooding out.  It was good that Patrick and Patti both took him the first day (we had to actually - they got him in so late on Friday that they didn't have all his paperwork yet) so that we could both talk to him on the drive to school.

Once we got to school, he was totally fine and he had a pretty good day.  He admitted to Patti on the afternoon drive home that he cried a little in the afternoon because he missed her.  To celebrate his big day, he asked Patti to make him a wheel-shaped potpie, so voila!

Will cried a little each of his first three days and had a total blow-up the fourth day because he was scared about something.  His teacher talked to him, we talked to him, and we all learned that he'd bottled up all his fears and didn't tell anyone.  Once we talked through what he was worried about, he's been a great little Kindergartner.

Tree fort!

When we first showed the kids our new home last summer, we told them our plans to build a tree fort on the tall pine in the backyard.  Patrick found a good resource in terms of another guy's blog, and Patti brought home a steady stream of tree fort/house books from the library.  And in the course of five days (over four weekends) in July and early August, Patrick built a legitimate tree fort for the kids.

July 19/20:  Free standing with a floor

July 27/28:  We have railings and a slide

August 9:  Other than a level sandbox (and sand), it's DONE!

And the kids love it!  And the tree loves dripping sap on it!  So Patrick and Patti have a love/hate relationship with the fort for now but Patrick is pretty proud of it and the kids are proud to show it off to people and tell them that Daddy made it for them which is worth its weight in gold (or sap).