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School isn’t yet out, the traditional “official” start to summer is still a week away, and yet it’s definitely already summer. This past weekend was hot. The kind of hot that calls for backyard pools to be blown up and filled with cold water from the garden hose. The kind of hot that calls for sitting under the shade of a tree and watching the big girl keeping cool by splashing for hours in the pool.
Late Saturday afternoon my Mum arrived in town for a visit. We spent the day leading up to her arrival playing in the backyard, keeping cool in the shade. Maya had so much fun playing in her pool. She spent hours and hours splashing away in it, she was a wrinkled prune by the time she was done.
Anna splashed her feet in the pool a few times but preferred playing in the shade of the big oak tree.
We are spending this week showing my Mum around St. Louis. We’ll be enjoying trips to the wineries, the zoo, the park and many of our other favorite little spots. With the exception of today and tomorrow it is going to be HOT so I’m guessing we’ll be finding ourselves splashing in the backyard pool again too.
As I mentioned last week I was very much looking forward to this Mother’s Day as I was going to be receiving my very first handmade creation from Maya. Her teacher helped the kiddos in her preschool class make little gifts for their moms. Maya brought it home from school last Thursday all wrapped and tied up with a bow. She was so excited and could hardly keep it a secret. She had to whisper what it was to Lorne several times so she wouldn’t let it slip to me. Seriously, you could see she was just about to burst if she had to keep it a secret much longer.
On Mother’s Day morning I was laying in bed when I heard “Yay, it’s Mother’s Day….MOM” coming from Maya’s room. It was adorable. She was so excited because it meant she would finally get to give me her present.
I had been waiting for this moment and unwrapped her gift to see what she created for me. This is what I got.
I love it! It is a little flower in a flower pot and the stems of the flower are made up of Maya’s hand print. I know I said it already, but seriously, I love it. This will be kept for a very long time and when I’m old and gray and my baby isn’t to little anymore I’ll pull it out and remember how excited that 4 year old Maya was to give me this gift and I’ll marvel that her hand was ever that little.
This year I get to do something on Mother’s Day that I’ve waited 4 years to do. I seriously can’t wait. I get to open my very first Maya created Mother’s Day gift! This past week at school Maya and her classmates got to make gifts for their moms. The gifts were sent home yesterday wrapped in tissue paper and tied up with a bow. Maya could hardly contain her excitement about having a gift to give me that she had made all by herself. She kept wanting to tell me what was in the wrapping, but I convinced her to just whisper it to her Daddy so that it would still be a surprise for me.
I remember making little crafts, cards and pictures for my own Mom for Mother’s Day at school. I remember being so excited to give her my little creations. It is truly awesome to now be the recipient of those lovingly made little creations.
I hope all you Moms out there have a very wonderful weekend celebrating being a Mom. Happy Mother’s Day. I’ll be spending my day with these two so I already know it will be wonderful.
Turns out life with two kids, especially when one of those kiddos is a 4 year old in all sorts of activities, is pretty busy. Between school, trips to the library, dance class, t-ball and swimming lessons I feel like we are hardly ever home. We always either on our way to or on our home from one activity or another. Maya is loving all her little classes so it makes the business worth it.
Unfortunately, all this craziness has meant I haven’t found a lot of time in my day to update this little old blog. I’m going to return to writing posts at night after the kids go to bed so I can get back into a better, more frequent post, groove.
Anna has been busy too, growing and trying with all her might to figure out this crawling thing 
She can get up on all fours and rock but hasn’t figured out moving her hands and knees once she is up on them. Today she even got herself up on her hands and feet!! Perhaps she’ll just go straight from pushing herself backwards and rolling to get where she wants to go to walking. I really can’t believe how big my little baby is getting.
She enjoys our busy schedule, well at least the opportunity it presents to watch a bunch of 4 year olds running around. I’m guessing she could probably do without the constant nap interruptions, but she handles it well. She watches her sister partaking in all her little activities in style
Living in the midwest strong, violent storms are pretty common place. Spring rolls around and brings with it the thunder, lightning, heavy down pours and sometimes even tornadoes. A late afternoon darkening of the sky with the rumble of thunder off in the distance is a fairly frequent occurrence once the daytime temperatures begin to rise. I’m used to it. My kids are used to it, and aren’t afraid of a little thunderstorm. We take weather warnings seriously, as tornadoes are scary, but we enjoy a good thunderstorm every now and then.
A few weeks ago Maya’s class learned all about weather, specifically spring weather. And, since we live in prime thunderstorm/tornado territory that meant a little discussion on those types of weather activities. They have fire drills and tornado drills at her school from time to time. She knows what the tornado sirens going off means. Up until recently the sounds of the thunder crashing, the trees blowing in the strong winds and the distant sound of the tornado siren didn’t cause any unrest. A few times we’ve found ourselves in the basement as a precaution but it didn’t bother her. Until this past weekend that is.
This past weekend saw some strong storms in our area. There was a lot of property damage and sadly someone lost their life as a result of the storms. We were lucky as the bulk of the violent weather was to our north and we didn’t get much more than some loud thunder and heavy rains. For the first time since Maya learned about tornadoes and has had tornado drills at school we heard the sound of the tornado sirens. She was in the bathtub at the time covered from head to toe in shampoo and soap. As the sounds began to register with her she quickly went from playing calmly in the bathtub to having a full on little panic attack. She was breathing funny, crying and shaking. I spoke calmly to her and quickly rinsed her off. After checking the weather on my phone I decided we’d better head downstairs for a bit. So down the stairs I went carrying a fussy baby who just wanted to go to bed already and holding the hand of a little girl in a panic. Fun times.
By the time we got downstairs the sirens were no longer sounding and after checking the local radar on my laptop I decided we were fine to head back upstairs. Maya had luckily calmed down and the weather outside was much calmer, just a few faint rumbles of thunder and some rain remained. I settled Maya on the couch with her blankie and a movie while I put Anna to bed (Lorne was out of town enjoying a boys weekend). Later we spent some time talking about storms and tornadoes and why we head downstairs when we hear the sirens. She was much calmer and seemed to understand, mostly anyway, she did ask several times if a twister would cause our house to be pulled of the ground and blown all the way to Oz!
Turns out if a child learns just a little about violent stormy weather and that knowledge is coupled with what she learned from watching the Wizard of Oz it can turn her into quite the chaotic, panicky mess when the tornado sirens go off! Who knew :/
Off to the library we go to learn a little bit more about storms and to hopefully calm her nerves a bit.