T-Ball. The End.

I apologize for the 1980's 110mm-quality pics.... The lighting is so weird in this place, plus zoom - it's hard to get a nice, crisp shot.

Daddy-O encouraging B-Bee to participate at T-Ball, retelling him the instructions in a very specific manner. Okay, maybe not. I hope it wasn't just a "you can do this" pep talk. Yes, he usually has this deer-in-the-headlights look for most of practice. You know he just stood there when all the other kids ran. It was a good experience for him though. Best of all, that he got one-on-one daddy time every week. We'll try another sport next time.

Little Miss Nellie, however, we couldn't keep her off the field. She SO wants to do whatever the big kids are doing. She kept going for the balls and throwing them. This MAY be her thing. She is already showing athletic tendancies desires.

Playing the shark game. That was more fun!

Goofing off with his friends in line was the most fun. Btw, you never see so many blondes together in our neighborhood. ...and as you can see, there's Nellie again.

She took it upon herself to put the balls on the T for everyone. B-Bee's like "Okay, I'm standing here. Now what?" Just don't tell him to "keep your eye on the ball", because he will literally.

But he did bat and he did hit it and he did run the bases!   Baseball's not my thing either.

So now I'm debating what to put him in this fall: gymnastics, soccer, swimming, ice skating.... He says ice skating. He did well in swimming so I'm kind of leaning towards that - plus there's no gear to buy. We'll see.

Swimming & Baseball, Done.

Picked up a hat to adorn with a beautiful flower. In my opinion, this is a yellow peonie - what else would be so huge? - but it could just as easily be a fully open rose. Either way, it and it's vintage pink sister are my favorites. Both are available as hair clips or on headbands. I'm not sewing my own hats yet, but can pick another one up if wanted. Anyways, was so excited about this hat that I took pictures of Nellie wearing it until she started getting into trouble. So I took pictures for about a minute. I may have been especially lucky that day and gotten 2 minutes of trouble-free Nellie.

Yes, I know swimming has been mentioned a time or two here. B-Bee's 2-week session finally came to an end, just as he was beginning to like swim lessons. The instructors brought cookies for the kids' last lesson and they got to take their animals (rubber duckies) with all the stickers home. He will have to do this level again, but he's more comfortable in the water now - will attempt a backfloat with assistance, will go underwater, and now hangs on the side of the pool....and we know he can get in and out by himself. It was a good experience for him and he got a few more lessons at summer camp later on in the month.

The T-Ball session came to a thankful end. Daddy-O enjoyed taking B-Bee, but it just wasn't his thing. It seemed to bring out all his "spectrum tendancies". We would like to put him in something this fall, but are having trouble deciding what: gymnastics, soccer, ice skating, or more swimming lessons? B-Bee's most consistent inconsistent answer has been "skating". He likes to rollerskate - but rollerskating lessons are at the same time preschool is.

Is there such thing as a "puzzle team"? Like the chess team, which I was on for 1 year. It was a middleschool "boy thing"; I can barely play chess. He's loves puzzles and is pretty good at them too. He even helped me put Nellie's birthday present together. I told him it was a puzzle.

Know we will be busy with preschool this fall and I don't want to over-schedule my kids. Now that he's old enough I would like him to be able to try one thing at a time. Perhaps find an activity that he really likes and can be passionate about. Opinions? Ideas?

Pictures to Cob

We started our week out with Nellie's 1 Year photoshoot. Our friend, Greg does the kids' pictures every year and it's great to see how his work has progressed over the years. Every year he worries that they don't have enough work scheduled, but by the time it comes to schedule a photoshoot with him..... Let's just say that he's as busy as we are - maybe even busier, if that's possible.

We met at my alma mater, University of Colorado Denver for pictures. This is also where I met Greg's wife, Meka. Ah.... Organic Chemistry II, the class for those that REALLY like memorization of rules and puzzles (sometimes referred to the weed-out pre-med course, well O-Chem I). Anyways, we went to campus for pictures. I made Nellie a pink, purple, & white glitter tutu to wear and found a matching onesie and we can't forget the headbands! I just hope my serious one (Nellie) and one who can't focus (B-Bee) let Greg get a few good shots.

Gotta love the baby tutu butt! She's getting markedly better at walking everyday. Here We were getting pictures of her walking with Daddy. This must be when we were trying to occupy B-Bee by letting him snap pictures - since you can see me in the background getting her to go that way.

For family pictures we did a 4th of July theme. Thank you Old Navy! This is my favorite tutu so far! We hit up Kohl's for the rest of her outfit (minus headband, courtesy of yours truly) and found a rock guitar red & blue shirt for B-Bee. Daddy-O & I wore Old Navy shirts. At the end of the the photoshoot we went inside to get some pics playing on the blocks inside. We were pleasantly surprised to find these pretty white curved benches, tables and rocking chairs! I'm expecting we'll have some great shots here!

Busy morning....got home changed B-Bee into his swim trunks and we were off to his first swim lesson. We actually got there early, so I had a chance to sit on the edge with him for awhile and acclimatize to the pool by dangling our feet. He did great! Much better than I had anticipated.



Baby butt! (sans tutu)



He spent much of the time getting out of the pool. This is one of the moments he wasn't obviously nervous. They were playing Red Light, Green Light. Him and the little girl don't like to be in the water. In all fairness, it's 3'6" deep and he's only 41" tall.

To finish a great summer day, we had B-Bee's favorite: cheeseburgers (sans french fries) and corn on the cob. Nellie got to try corn for the first time and is definitely a fan.

YoYos & Pupus

Our morning started off with some headband modeling, since I had finished some new ones the night before. Here you can see the giant pink peonie / gardenia. I love this one, but it must come with the warning label of "massive". It's lightweight and looks oh so darling, but it is 6" in diameter and that is a lot when you're talking about a head circumference of only 14" or so. Definitely a special occassions headband and it photographs really well.

Our morning agenda was to go see yoyo tricks at the Perl Mack. It was cool to see, but I think my kids were a little bit young to fully appreciate it. Nellie was squirmy and just wanted to beeline to the exit, the emergency exit. And B-Bee was right there with her crawling on the floor encouraging her and being Wild Man....and he would have opened that door for her. That girl just loves to be outside and loves to go. Overall, B-Bee behaved fairly well. I just had my hands kind of full with Nellie.

Found something a little more age-appropriate....the playground outside! There were a couple older kids playing and a summer camp group came over to eat lunch, and all the kids were well behaved. (After the YMCA kids incident on a playground last year, it's nice to see a big kids summer camp group behaving.) Nellie stood around the bottom of the slide, watching and laughing at the big kids. B-Bee was intent on learning how to do the monkey bars. He was good at swinging on them, but hasn't the strength yet to actually go across them. I can relate to his frustrations.

We need to go grocery shopping in a major, major way.... so to avoid the McD's we found ourselves a pupu platter for lunch. B-Bee enjoyed attempting to blow out our little fire. The harder we blowed, the more it burned. Don't know what crystals were in there as fuel, but we had to just let them burn out. The waitress was amused when I pulled out my little baggie of crayons and colored the animals on the placemat with B-Bee.



Nellie woke up from carseat-nap in time for dessert. Usually this chinese restaurant brings out these delicious cut oranges, cold & juicy. Today they had watermelon slices, which the kids happily ate up.