My parent-teacher conferences for Lilly took up 45 minutes and involved tears (mostly tears of joy, some motherly concern). My p/t conferences for R went something like this:
Teacher: Robin is doing great!
Me: Wonderful. What are you up to this weekend? (end of Robin discussion)
Funny how I have such confidence in my second and with Lilly everything is uncharted territory. This birth order stuff is no joke!!
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The past few weeks Lilly has been asking many questions about her transition to elementary school. She is worried about leaving her friends from preschool (1 friend will be attending Mesa with her while others are headed to various schools) and making new friends in Kindergarten (“Mommy, no one is going to want to be friends with me” 🙁 ). We find ourselves singing, “make new friends but keep the old” every day now and have been working to reassure Lilly that this is an exciting and positive change that she is READY for.
Even Robin is concerned about Lilly leaving Sunflower in the Fall. Tonight at bedtime when the lights were off she started talking about it and said, “But mommy we’re sisters forever and I don’t want Lilly to go to a different school! I want to go to elementary school with my sister (pouty voice)!” Robin wants to be ‘all grown up’ like her big sister while Lilly is nervous about the change.
Oh, my sweet girls, I wish I could hold you and protect you forever, and I will for as long as I can, but I am amazed by what competent and beautiful people you have become.
Kindergarten orientation is on Saturday so we hope she comes out of it feeling better about things!
Well, Lilly’s first ski season has just about come to an end and needless to say we have been SHOCKED with how far she has come since December. Bill has taken her up to Eldora many times and we also had her to 5 private lessons and 2 full day lessons, not to mention a trip to Breck, so she has had some practice. Now she is just about doing parallel turns on each side, has real confidence, can ski down any green or blue hill with skill, and most importantly, she LOVES it!! I just bought my first pair of ski boots and jacket since middle school and cannot wait to start skiing again next season…and with Robin!
What a FUN mountain getaway we had up in Nederland the first weekend of Spring Break! Nederland is one of our favorite getaways and even though it’s only a 30 minute drive it feels a million miles away. We headed up to Eldora on Sunday for Lilly’s private ski lesson (that girl is getting GOOD) and then had lunch at the Sundance Cafe, where the girls had fun watching the giant goldfish, lol. Next we visited the carousel and candy shop before driving around Peak to Peak Hwy to take in the views and did a hike down to Mud Lake. We rented a house for the evening and will most certainly be back – wonderful house with incredible views and a two story deck with complete with multiple hammocks, a custom hot tub, and built in trampoline! We had dinner at Wild Mountain Brewery (yum) and a pretty rough night getting the girls to sleep in the same room (AGAIN!? They are slowly crushing our hopes of them ever sharing a bedroom) but jumping in the hot tub and watching the stars after they were finally asleep made it all worth it. The next morning the girls were understandably exhausted so we watched a movie, made a final trip to the carousel, lunch at Kathmandou (yum yum), then home after a quick emergency stop to look for a stuffed penguin for L…
The rest of Spring break fortunately we had great weather, which meant every second spent inside the girls were driving each other (and myself) crazy but when we were outside it was wonderful. Lots of hiking, visits with friends, lunches out, biking, trips to museums, etc. Everything Spring Break should be :).
When we first moved here we were amazed that Boulder always seemed to be at the top of everyone’s ‘BEST’ lists. Having been here for two years now, this does not come as a surprise any more. Our move to Boulder has truly changed our lives for the better and I wake up every single day so thankful that things aligned in a way for us to move to this place and raise our kids here. In the past year we have consistently been voted the happiest, healthiest, smartest, most fit, and worst dressed (hmmm…wonder if there is a correlation) place in the US. I hope that everyone feels a certain joy for where they live like we do!
Here are two lists that we topped this past week:
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/08/the-happiest-cities-states-countries-all-in-one-map-infographic/
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-13110/the-10-best-and-worst-u-s-cities-for-overall-well-being.html
http://www.today.com/health/fittest-city-boulder-colo-once-again-tops-list-2D79486823
It was only a day trip but we had such a great time with Tim & Jen and the kids at Breckenridge over the weekend. We drove up early and Bill and Lilly skied in the morning while Robin and I went to the Grand Lodge pool with Jen and Rylen. We loved their place and have been considering our options of spending more time up there ever since, even bought a Spring Break vacation there for next year :). That evening we ate dinner in Frisco with our friends and the girls fell asleep the moment they got in their car seats on our way home. Thanks to Tim & Jen for being great hosts!
Robin recently had a visit from the ‘pacifier fairy’. We have talked about this on and off for awhile but lately Lilly has been telling her little sister that it’s time for her to give her paci away, and Robin seemed to buy into the idea.
Bill and I were SO nervous about the event (Robin, like her sister, has always been very attached to her ‘cat paci’) that we had a tough time falling asleep the night before. Robin decorated the envelope and we dropped it off at the post office. When we returned home the paci fairy had already brought Robin’s gift (and a small gift for Lilly for being such a supportive sister)! Robin did MUCH better than we expected. She had a hard time falling asleep but the following night was better and each night has been better since. Everything ‘baby’ about Robin is fading away, but we love her more each day for the little girl she has become.
Well, we are officially done with naps in the Gray household. It has been taking me longer and longer to get Robin down for naps and she is now mostly refusing them. Until two weeks ago she was still taking a 2 or 3 hour nap so it has been quite a transition but she is going to bed a bit earlier (and much more quickly) now. Last week in AZ she did take naps because she wasn’t feeling well but this week she has skipped her nap every day.
The good news is that she’s perfectly happy staying in her room for 20 or 30 minutes of quiet time, and I should be able to keep my sanity for as long as this continues 🙂 (I tried for months to get Lilly to have quiet time when she dropped her nap at 3 years old and have only now, a year and a half later, had success with it).
Without a doubt having our girls and watching them care for one another as sisters has been the greatest joy of my life, but I’m pretty certain this dialogue with Robin sums up the past six months and foreshadows the next 30+ years…
(R laying on the couch in deep thought for 5 minutes or so)
Me: Robin, what’s wrong?
R: Mommy I feel sick.
Me: What’s making you feel sick?
R: My sister.
And last week in Arizona my parent’s took us to Red Robin for lunch. Well, Lilly wasn’t too happy about going to a restaurant that shared a name with her sister, so she insisted that we were going to ‘Red Lilly’. Yes, there is certainly a competitive side to being sisters that we are just now beginning to witness. There are times when they play beautifully together and help one another out in ways that make us very proud, and there are times when they can’t be left alone together for one minute. I suspect it will remain this way for a long time – never a dull moment to say the least 🙂
We had a great visit to Arizona to see Todd, Jessica, and Nora! We arrived on Saturday and Bill stayed until Monday evening, the girls and I stayed for the rest of the week. Mark, Pinata, and the kids came in for the weekend as well and it was wonderful to have us all together, even though it was quite brief. Robin was sick with a bit of a cold the first few days but during the week we were able to spend the day at the zoo, go to the children’s museum, play at the pool, go for golf cart rides, and spend lots of time with the new baby and grandma and grandpa. Thanks for hosting, Mom & Dad!
For the complete set of photos, click here.
At 4.5 Lilly is still our sweet, creative, joyous little girl. Some days I see her like she is all grown up, others she is just a baby. This morning when I wished her a happy ‘half birthday’ she was so excited about being able to celebrate by making a crown and picking friends to blow out as ‘candles’ during circle time at school. When I broke the news that this tradition was for actual birthdays she was sooo upset, but when the teacher’s heard they were happy to indulge Lilly and the look on her face when they gave her the crown was as if I had told her we are moving to live in Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World. So precious!
Lilly is clever and smart and sometimes I am stunned by her beauty. She loves to invent new contraptions, do self-led science experiments and mix foods in the kitchen, and make up her own arts and crafts projects. In many ways she relies on me for stimulation but she is slowly gaining independence and thoroughly enjoys the experiments and discoveries she makes. Today she tried powering a box ‘sled’ with a toy jumping frog and decided the best next step would be to tape or glue ice on the bottom to make it move more smoothly. A big part of me wanted to tell her, no, it won’t work, you can’t glue and tape ice to a cardboard box, but I let her give it a try anyways and enjoyed seeing my little scientist at work. 🙂
Lilly is definitely ready for kindergarten and will have an exciting last term of preschool, nature, farm, and music camps, and hopefully lots of swimming before her 5th birthday. We love you, Lilly Bear! xo
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