Berkeley-ites in Progress

Adeline celebrated her fourth birthday this past week. She was overjoyed to get this:
<a href="https://tandcstinson.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/20140320-145954.jpg"&gt;

Addie has learned how to ride her scoot bike without fear- favorite thing to do is ride down a hill. She’s also can write her name and loves to make elaborate cards and drawings for friends.
She has a wonderfully compassionate spirit and she is a great cuddler.

We celebrated her bday with a tea party for 7 of her friends. So fun to see all these girls drinking fruit tea and eating little sandwiches.

We are so grateful for our little surprise – can’t imagine life without her.

I’ve been postponing this post because I don’t even know where to begin. We celebrated 3 birthdays and many holiday parties in the last 2 months. We are doing well although exhausted seems to be the new norm. So in simple terms:
Charlie is waking, climbing and jumping – 15 months tomorrow. He loves his books, dogs , cars and balls. His favorite activities are being chased by his sisters and dancing to music with abuelita.

He isn’t sleeping so great these days so although he has a smile on his face we have dark circles under our eyes.

Addie is 3 3/4 as she likes to say- she is swimming proficiently and teaching other preschoolers at the YMCA how to make the biggest jumps into the pool. She is attending our parent led co-op and is working on writing all the letters and numbers. Her favorite things to do are build with blocks or play house with her sister or dolls.

Elisa is in transitional kindergarten and is loving writing stories and drawing pictures. Her most used story line is something about her and her sister walking to a rainbow or a park or their house. She’s another monkey in our house- hanging or flipping from anything she’s allowed to try. She’s reading at a 1st grade level and often corrects my sentences if skip words.

Tommy and I feel incredibly blessed by our community and our friends. We celebrated his 40h birthday with a lovely catered meal at out house for 15 friends. It was a sweet sweet evening of remembering good times and celebrating how amazing Tommy is. We are also struggling with news about Tommy’s job that might mean a temporary move to New York City or elsewhere- hoping to have better direction after January. In the mean time we are glad to have a couple weeks off to celebrate with family back in Nashville. Wishing anyone who is reading this much joy and hope in your life. See you next year!

These past days have been filled with moments of butterflies in the stomach, tears welling up in the eyes and deep deep sighs. Elisa will be going to her first day of transitional kindergarten tomorrow. She misses the actual kindergarten cut off by 2 months but thankfully California Law is paying for her to have an entire year of “Pre-K”. It’s at John Muir Elementary- same hours and programs as the kindergarteners- but with less pressure. Yet, despite the “no tests, no homework”- we’re still anxious. 

I remember what the first days of school felt like- having been to 8 different elementary schools I was always the “new girl”. It never got easier. And if there is a way that I can spare Elisa the angst of having to put yourself “out there”- I would. BUT I also know that school is a whole new world of opportunities, of learning about people and places and yourself, of challenging what you thought you knew and deepening what is already known. It’s wonderful and something that is not to be missed.

Elisa’s backpack showed up tonight at 6pm- our Mail lady dropped it off AFTER her round was done because she was concerned about just leaving it on the porch earlier. We were all thrilled that it showed up just in time!

SO we hold out our heart and watch it put on a brand new backpack, and cheer her on as she introduces herself and makes new friends…

I guess this is now a once a month thing- I’m okay with that. I’ve been working more days each week and Tommy has had many long days himself- so despite that we’re doing really well. 

We went blackberry picking at Swanton Berry Farms-

Charlie was a big fan…

Elisa was our best picker this year

Adeline declined to be photographed that day…

We’ve spent alot of time at parks and the Train as it’s been unusually cold

Charlie is cruising all over the place, standing on his own for a couple seconds at a time. Addie is starting to write letters and identify words. Elisa is reading books on her own and writing short notes to friends/ family. Somehow everybody grew up in the last month.  We’re looking forward to Aunt Kat’s wedding at the end of August!

We bought bikes the month after Addie was born. Once she was old enough to sit in a bike seat we started taking Sunday afternoon bike rides. I am not a great bike rider. I don’t have a fantastic sense of balance, I startle easily and I’m easily distracted…so having a child on the back is pretty much terrifying. BUT these bike rides are sweet memories from these past couple years. BUT when we decided to move out of the Carleton house we had to pack up the bikes in the storage unit and we have yet to get back into the habit of riding bikes together. Until today. Elisa actually suggested it this morning- She would ride her own bike and I would carry Charlie and Papi would carry Addie. And so, this afternoon, I went on a bike ride with Addie and Elisa. Charlie decided to take an extra long nap, so hopefully tomorrow we’ll have our first whole family ride.  

For me it was momentous because Elisa was riding her bike (with training wheels) both on the street and on the side walk. She had a couple moments of panic but over all kept her head and laughed the whole time. Addie, on the other hand, got bored (I was going a bit slow) and she almost fell asleep on the back of the bike. Another moment of letting go.

It turned Summer for a week here. Despite our closeness to the coast we very rarely get out to the ocean- too foggy, windy and generally not that great. BUT it’s so much better when friends are involved and it’s guaranteed to be a sunny clear day.

Running in and out of the waves was a favorite activity- for over an hour.

Loving Watermelon- Rind and all…

We also went on a hike on Saturday that ended in a short picnic by the trail head. In a spontaneous moment of kindness (which happen pretty regularly actually) Addie shared her apricot with Elisa.

Glad we took advantage of the sun because today it’s a high of 65 and gonna stay that way all week. We’re counting down the days till Papa’s visit and winding down the last 2 weeks of preschool. Summer- here we come!

It dawned on me this morning that i haven’t posted anything for a month!  So, for posterity’s sake, here’s a recap of April:

Easter:

Matching Easter Dresses and Charlie in Pink…I’ll do it while I can get away with it!

The girls got easter baskets filled with way too much sugar and new coloring books. Our rule is that they get one candy/day during snack time- so we managed to make the chocolate stretch for the whole month. 

The following week we had Charlie baptized at Christ Church. Tommy and I didn’t plan so well and we ended up with Addie on the stairs standing between me and our Pastor, and Tommy holding Charlie to the right of me, I was holding Elisa. Addie decided that it would be the perfect time to start jumping off the stage (as they do every sunday after church)- so needless to say it was a very distracting 10 minutes.  So much so that neither one of us noticed how Charlie had gotten ahold of the paper liturgy and chewed the entire 8×14 paper to little spit wads- all that was left was a slimy shred.  And of course, our camera decided to malfunction so there is no clear picture of the baptism itself…

Notice Elisa burrowing her head in my shoulder. The tradition in our church is that we sing a special song after a child is baptized- it always makes her sad so she was trying to keep from crying in front of every one. There is a video that a friend of ours took- i’ll try to get it posted one of these days!

Easter also brought us true warm weather and we’ve been finally enjoying the fruits of our garden patch. This week we’ve enjoyed sugar snaps, lettuce, beet greens and 4 huge artichokes. 

The girls finally displaying our first artichokes from our garden.

This past weekend Tommy and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. We had two lovely days of sleeping in, eating and wine tasting in Napa. Thank you Abuelita and Grandpa for the wonderful gift of time away! Still processing the fact that it’s been seven years. Seven amazing years…

We took the girls back to Soda Springs yesterday. Tommy took an adult ski lesson and I took the girls back to the little kids snow play area- thankfully they got rental equipment as a part of the package. The day did not start out well- Addie crying, throwing herself in the snow saying, I’m hot, I’m tired, I want to go home.  But by the end of the day we had 3 converts to sliding down hills on man made gear.

Both girls LOVED trying it- even when they fell. The hardest thing was letting them go and not running along side them down the hill. Elisa started telling me at the top of the hill- “Mommy don’t touch me. I can do this, I want to go fast.”

All the way down the hill- on her own

Addie wanted to have a lesson, so Mike helped her learn how to go down the hill AND turn.

It’s hard to let go….