Adorable tiny ballerinas & Louis is hilarious, brave, and obsessed with moving stuff

Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have come! We had playgroup at our house the other day. The hilarious part is how much Louis (the youngest) LOVES to tease the older girls. Below he is putting a chair in the pool (he loves moving furniture more than just about anything) but he also tried tipping the pool, spraying them with the hose, anything he could think of to make them squeal. This kid is funny. Literally he says three words -- mom, dog (referring to birds and squirrels), and "bye bye"(oh he also beats on his chest pretending to be a gorilla, and makes a tongue-clicking noise -- isn't there a language that involves clicking?)-- but he is so naughty and clever!
Two girls and a bunny from the Heifer International living gift fair at church... what could be cuter? Rosemary of course wouldn't get near any of the other, larger animals.
While Louis WAS one of the other animals... and had no trouble petting the miniature horses and goats.

From a field trip to the Natural History museum at UT with Louis's friend Wilder. Unfortunately we didn't get too far as Rosemary freaked out inside the museum (like hysterical sobbing crying). She was provoked by the noise in the hallways (there was a field trip and the hallways echoed; she seems very sensitive to noises these days) and the taxidermy -- she wanted to know EXACTLY what it meant to be alive vs. dead. That was tough to answer. This has been heavy on her mind since I made the mistake of telling her (because she asked!) that Grandma Mary's dad was dead.

Rosemary's first year of school is out! It's kind of amazing -- the first of many to come. I felt very sad to see it end, it was a very cute, sweet class. She loved her school (see here for her first day), and I think it was a great introduction to school for her, which is exactly what we wanted. She is certainly independent now, in many ways. She told me the other day, when Louis and I were hanging out in the class after drop off, "I think you and Louis would have more fun outside" (and I was surprised at how much it actually hurt my feelings)





Rosemary's end-of-the-year ballet recital. The absolute cutest part of this was that her friend Stella came to watch, along with her lovely mom Liz. Rosemary was literally beside herself with excitement to have Stella there -- she couldn't contain herself when Ms. Margaret the teacher was introducing the dance, she kept talking across the room to Stella. And she shouted across the stage to me to trade seats with Stella so Stella could see better! In any case, Rosemary was the youngest in her class and she clearly just loved it (as all the girls did) and was so proud to perform; it was really, really cute.







Every morning this is more-or-less what I wake up to: the kids doing "tricks" on the end of my bed. There is no small amount of frustration on Louis's part because he needs me -- at this point (though I'm sure it's soon-in-coming) -- to help fling him over the bar to do a somersault on the bed, but he still deals with it pretty well. He generally goes and moves about 3 or 4 various step-stools from his room to help him get up on the bed. He likes to wrestle right now -- and kiss. His kisses are extremely gross and scary -- he comes up to you with a wide open mouth and sticks his tongue out to lick you, often finishing up with a sharp bite. But they are real kisses (not showing anger, showing affection) and he giggles so much when giving them that you are forced to bear it.

Pretty clever

I don't have any new pictures (not very good about taking them any more -- with two kids, the Kodak moments go by much more quickly) but I did have two interesting kid stories. First, about Louis. Louis can't really say any words yet. He communicates his desires by ear-piercing shrieks, and it is usually fairly easy to know what it is that he wants. Often, whatever Rosemary has. Or, it may be something more subtle that only those who spend a lot of time with him would discern. For example, if you turn on the radio in the car, he SHREIKS until you put on the "Music Together" CD that we've heard a million times (this is a slight improvement over Rosemary who would protest unless you played the same SONG over and over again). But I'm not really worried because he knows how to do a lot of things and what everything is for -- he can turn on the fan with the remote control, climb on the counter, turn on and off the laundry machine, brush his teeth, use a spoon, brush his hair, carry a step stool across the house to climb on top of the cabinet, etc. Today, he really impressed me. He had a boxed milk with a straw. The straw broke in half and so was no longer long enough to reach the milk on the bottom of the long box. Rosemary had another boxed drink. He saw her longer straw. So he took the longer straw, stuck in in half of his broken straw to make one long straw, and then used it to get the milk at the bottom of his drink. Pretty clever! Or at least as clever as those crows who dig for ants with straws.

As for Rosemary -- she is currently relishing her sterling image at school. She is really pretty difficult at home sometimes -- she is INCREDIBLY stubborn, even for a three and a half year old, I'm pretty sure. And she isn't great at telling us her feelings so she is a fairly unpredictable and cries a lot. There is a lot of head butting in the mornings as James, Rosemary and I are all NOT morning people. But none of this happens at school -- at school Rosemary's teacher calls her the "teachers assistant" and she spends a lot of time bossing around the other kids, making sure they follow the rules, etc. James took her to school this morning after we had about -- say NINE arguments about really very reasonable things like putting on her shoes, not breaking out in sobs about not getting orange juice, etc. Before he dropped her off he said, "I hope you are more cooperative with your teachers at school today than you were at home," and she said, "Ms. Melissa and Ms. Jennifer don't need to know about that." Indeed.