Who doesn’t love the zoo? We were kindly invited by our good friends to play at the zoo and we took them up on the invite. The girls just enjoy each other so much and the mama’s enjoy each other company too. It is a win-win.

We converted our double stroller to a sit-and-stand stroller and this was our first outing with it. Emily loved the new sitting arrangement. She could get out easily and she loved being able to face me. We had a lot more conversations because of the sitting arrangement.

We wandered the zoo checking out a bear, feeding camels, watching zebras eat, trying to climb a fence to see the elephant better, watching the chimps get their room cleaned, eating lunch, playing in the sand, riding a carousel, and generally having a lot of fun. Emily tripped and got her first bloody nose which was a non-event. It stopped quickly and she was distracted from it after a short crying spell. Both of my girls were unimpressed with dip-n-dots which I thought odd, but happily ate theirs. The only girl who was interested in looking at the camera to have her photo taken was Maeve, so I don’t have any great posed shots. That is just going to be the case for a while longer I guess.

We discuss monkeys a lot at our house. There is a book the girls like with monkeys and Emily picks out which is Mommy, Daddy, Emily and Julia. The girls like to immitate monkeys with sound and motions. And Emily has dubbed our family as a “monkey family” with a “monkey mommy”, “monkey daddy”, “monkey girl”, and “monkey baby”. So when we got to the monkey area at the zoo, I was excited for the girls to see some monkeys. To my disappointment, while we were able to see them, we did so only through a gated wall where they were waiting for the monkey house to be cleaned. Then I noticed the special sign the zoo keeper had put out and Julia’s interest in hanging out by the sign. If you take the word “in” out of the statement you can truly appreciate the “monkey baby” outside the exhibit.

With summer come the end of all our normal weekly activities. Last week was the end of three of these activities. Our swim class, Thursday school, and Bible Study Fellowship. We have a few more weeks of Little Gym before the spring classes end.

The swim class was only eight weeks long, but it was a fun eight weeks. We splashed, swam, and bobbed our way through them. I was so proud of Emily and her interest in swimming. She enjoyed her teacher, liked to preform for her, and was getting a sense of being in the water under her own steam. Julia still wasn’t “fearful” of the water so it was fun to do things without her clinging to me. She didn’t like to float on her back, but enjoyed most of the other activities. She would “swim” between the teacher and her Mama, practice her crab walk along the pool edge, swim to a ball she would throw out in the water, and sing motion songs with the class. We are planning on both girls to take the fall version of the class again.

Thursday School was both for Emily and Julia. The class gave Emily the opportunity to learn to play with others along with learning life lessons. It also gave Julia some special Mama time. We would go to Mother Goose together, shop, eat breakfast, play, and see our friend Maeve.

Bible Study Fellowship was an opportunity for all of us to have some constructive time of learning. Mama enjoyed her study of scripture, Emily loved spending the morning with her class and striving to be the class leader, and Julia played her morning away with other toddlers and snacks. Out of all our activities this one was the most regimented. I could see such growth in Emily with her group participation and living up to high expectations. What a joy! After class we would walk a special sidewalk out to our car. Emily kept wanting to walk further on the sidewalk, so I started parking at the end of the sidewalk so that she could enjoy walking the whole way.

There are so many fun activities to fill our summer with, but this week will feel a little empty without the activities that have come to define our week. Emily typically asks each day where we are going or what we are doing. We will just have to enjoy each day and what fun activity comes with each one.

We had a lovely afternoon Saturday and went out to play in the backyard pool. Julia was a little unsure of sitting in the water, which was cool. Emily was all business in playing in the water. She hadn’t seen these toys in a while and they had a lot of play in them. My favorite thing they did was to pour water into a toy basket that had more holes than not. They also enjoyed ‘drinking’ the water out of a bucket. Both girls loved their playtime and were sad to get out, but the rumbles of a coming storm ended our playtime for us.

Emily finished her year of Thursday School. She loved going to class each week and if we missed one she talked about going the next week. She loved that Elena was in her class and she could spend time with her friend. She loved taking her shoes off when she was at school. She was sad during the cold months when she couldn’t play outside. She enjoyed being a part of deciding what to wear to school and picking shoes each week. She never came home with a clean shirt, dress, or hands – always a bit of her art work came home on her. She loved having her special lunchbag and backpack.

It sounds like the first few weeks of school were a little rough for her. She would shutdown if she didn’t get her way, which happened each week. When she figured out how class worked and about the rules she then took off in the class. She was active and participated a lot. She also wasn’t shy about offering suggestions to the class about things. She liked her teachers and the activities especially the ones that involved dressing up. It was a joy to drop her off at an activity she enjoyed so much!

For the closing of school they had a special presentation. Each of the classes went up on the stage and sang three songs. There were such cute antics in each of the grades and I could only imagine what Emily was going to do. When it was time for her class to preform she had plenty of funny things to share. Emily proceeded to talk during the presentation to the teacher, announce that she wanted to sing by herself, she found her parents and grandparents in the audience and stood and waved, she announced that the group was singing too quietly and that they should start again, and she did some of the hand motions of the songs. I was glad to see that she had her own individual spirit among the group and enjoyed that she was able to share it with everyone else.
__________________________________________________________________________

Mr. John, one of her teachers, wrote about the class and each child in the class. The following is an excerpt from his essay pertaining to Emily and Elena.

“This year’s class of 2-year-olds at the New York Avenue Church of Christ Thursday School was a surprisingly congenial group. Perhaps it was the absence of redheads and identical twins, or the fact that 5/8’s of the group had names starting with the letter E, but for some reason, this class was altogether easier, more peaceful, less physically contentious, and (dare I say it) more mature. If last year’s class was like a think tank, this year’s was like a weekly group therapy session.

Emily is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met, a complexly cerebral child whose intellectual cup runneth over. Comfortable all alone in the topsy-turvy playroom, sitting at a little table with an inert toy computer, she would appear to be video conferencing with 2 or 3 colleagues in distant locations, playing all the parts herself, a la Gilda Radner. Occasionally cantankerous and often goofy in a way that she personally found very entertaining, she was also quite inseparable from her sorority sister, Elena.

Elena seemed always to be bathed in the soft, diffused natural sunlight that illuminates faces in Vermeer paintings, such was her blending of reflective, diminutive, classical beauty, quiet happiness, and good manners. The word “cute” fits Elena like the word “agile” fits a hummingbird – not as adjective but as essence.

Elena and Emily liked to go down the playground slide side by side, holding hands.”

How do you entertain two girls while you vaccum out the car at the carwash – you let them play in the trunk! This was amazing and I’m a little unsure of why this idea hasn’t occured to me before now. They had toys and pillows back there and with the window to boot they were in heaven. I did watch for any interest in climbing out, but they were very happy just to play away. At one point they played ‘night-night’ and shared the one blanket they had. These are the good moments to remember!

Here is to a great day with my girls!