Animatronic peacock

This week Ellie was at science/innovator camp. They had a few projects that they worked on all week. One was a duct tape messenger bag, complete with Harry Potter decorations, and her other was an animatronic peacock. Using hydraulics, made from syringes, the head and tail move. Its pretty cool. The camp sent home pictures of her working on her projects.

Today was sprouts day for Calvin. He was waiting all week and insisted on wearing his tee ball uniform, sans cleats.

He also spent some time with the moveable alphabet. Apparently he wrote his first sentence, “I love jam.” And then asked his teacher what the question mark was for. She explained. And he wrote a question “how could you climb a building?” All by himself, no help from older friends or teachers. 

Soccer tournament

After her dance recitals on Saturday Ellie dashed off to a soccer tournament with her new soccer team FC Golden State. They had two games on Saturday (won one and lost the other). The game went long and the lights got shut off on them. 

Sunday she had two more games. After winning the first they played for first place for their age group in the tournament. It was a rematch against the team they had lost to the night before. After getting down by three, her team got a penalty kick which they scored on. Ellie was warmed up and started stopping everything that was shot at her. Her team got mini Tim and ties the game. The final score was 5-4 with FC Golden State taking home the championship medals.

She has a friend from her All-Star team on the club team. Her friend was also the daughter of her All-Start asst. coach who helped her hone her goalie skills. He even took time to help her warm up during the tournament. 

Dance recitals

Ellie had her dance recitals on Saturday. Two shoes and two different dances. The first was her jazz/hip hop dance. She had a solo performance which she nailed...including ending the dance in the splits! The second was a junior version of Coppelia where she was a doll. She did really well in the second recital as well. 

Well visits

Yesterday the kids had their well visits (annual physicals). They are growing normally and healthy. Ellie is 50th percentile for weight and 25th for height. Calvin is rocking the 67th for weight and 17th for height. Both kids are growing along the normal curve. 

Calvin is 39.5” tall which means he is almost tall enough for Space Mountain which Ellie observed and noted. Ellie is almost 52 inches tall. 

No word on whether Calvin has asthma, still not enough to diagnose him as asthmatic. But we got a refill for his nebulizer and told to keep an eye on it. Calvin also got vaccines which he was NOT happy about. 

Ellie got a lecture from the doctor about sunscreen...prompted by her sunburn on her neck and obvious tan lines. 

Overall a good visit with the doctor. More fruits and veggies, more sunscreen, and lots of outside playtime were prescribed for both kids. 

Birthday Weekend

I’m still catching my breathe from my birthday weekend. Ellie is a busy kid...

Friday night started with Es theater arts camp performance where the kids showed off what they had been working on for the past three weeks. Each kid has a speaking role and does a group tap dance, group stage fight choreography, and singing in an all-camp chorus. But, a few campers are selected to show off their skills with an actually cheorgraphed fight scene or movement (cirque du soleil like stuff). And E for picked for both! She loves the movement class so it was extra special to be picked to show off her skills with her partner. In her scene she, with a group, acted out a scene from the Avengers. She technically was playing two roles and had to say the words, “thermonuclear astrophysics” which is tough to annunciate and project in a theater when you are a kid. 

This is Thirty Seven

Birthday eve

Someone made me a cake.

Face

A year ago, today, Ellie fell and bruised her face.

She currently has a rug burn on her forehead. And the bruise under her eye from when she tried to lock her brother in a cabinet and put her face by the door and Calvin kicked it open, well that’s looking much better.

But those fake bruises from theater arts camp, those are cool.

Birthday party bonanza

Saturday was crazy. We had two different birthday parties for Calvin’s friends back-to-back. But, we had nothing else going on and Nick was out of town so it kept us busy...and exhausted. 

The first party was at a playground and had a scavenger hunt and vegan cheese pizza with a gluten free crust. Calvin was very happy to be able to have pizza (the special pizza was not for him but for the birthday boys aunt, who also loves olives so that’s what I had as well). Of course Ellie made up an American Ninja Warrior course and tomaught the little kids, including her brother, how to climb a pole. 

The second party was a true SoCal experience. A birthday party for a friend who is the child of celebrities in the music business and a pool party no less. The attendees were school friends and Hollywood peeps. I’m not great at recognizing celebrities, that’s why I have Nick around, but I did recognize a few faces. Turns out celebrity kids are more greedy with the piñata than kids who go to a Montessori preschool. Also, Ellie was the one who broke the piñata...but only after Calvin caused some legit damage and got several oohs and ahhs from the spectators about his batting abilities. One non-preschool parent actually said, “that’s a professional baseball player in the making right there!”...because Calvin needed more confidence in his little swagger. But the dad of the birthday boy had seen Calvinnplay tee-ball and also commented that maybe Calvin shouldn’t have been allowed to have an early turn as one of the younger kids...

Incredibles 2

I loved the Incredibles. So I was super pumped for Incredibles 2. With Nick out of town, a Sunday afternoon movie seemed like a great idea. 

Nick was kind enough to purchase tickets for us with reserved seating and fully reclining seats. The movie was great.

Calvin came to work

Today Calvin didn’t have school. So on his first day of summer, I took him to work with me for the morning. Of course we had to have special breakfast first. At work he played with Legos (with one of my coworkers), read a scaffold and access periodical, played video games on the iPad, drew on the whiteboard, wrote some sentences for me, and reorganized some of my drawers.

Ellie learned how to do bruises with stage makeup at theater arts camp.