It is summer break so we are riding bikes. Is there anything more appropriate? We are making a conscious decision to ride bikes a lot this summer. It is not that Meg and Clare haven't had bicycles and tricycles in the past. But when we lived in a high rise and I had two small children, it was too difficult to safely haul two bikes and two children to street level. We rode bikes sometimes but not a lot. Last year I was pregnant and it was super hot so biking was not a priority. This year will be different!

Just before Easter I bought the girls new bikes that were the correct size. During Easter break everyone in the extended family worked with Clare to teach her how to pedal (it was not intuitive for her which was a constant source of frustration when she tried riding). She got the hang of it but once we were back to school and our normal schedule, we again had trouble getting on our bikes.

So with the start of summer break we are at a playground near our house that has a small paved bike circle. We'll work on biking skills here for awhile until the girls build up their skills and leg muscles enough to handle the small hills near our house. I am hoping in a short time we'll be able to put Baby Anne in the stroller and let the girls ride their bikes on walks around the neighborhood. How lovely would that be.

This week is the last week of preschool before summer break. Yesterday was Clare's end of the year concert and luncheon. Today was Meg's preschool graduation. So, I guess we officially have a kindergartener on our hands.

In addition to celebrating the end of school, I've been preparing for summer. After all, I will now have all three girls all day, every day of the week. I better have a few things planned. There will be some swim classes and, at their request, I've signed Meg and Clare up for art classes. Meg will also begin piano lessons (she was suppose to begin piano months ago, but her broken finger delayed things a bit).

A major question for me has been how much "school work" do I include in our days. I made a trip to Lakeshore Learning this week to get some workbooks which I thought Meg and Clare would enjoy so we could keep their school skills up. I also found a book of science experiments because they are very intrigued by science right now and Meg wants to form a science club with her friends. Summer is also a great time to consistently practice reading. But I absolutely do not want to go overboard.

There was a time in my life that I would have been a tiger mom of sorts--completely focused on achievement. I would have thought it was wonderful if my child read at two and could do ridiculously complicated math problems by the time they started preschool. Wouldn't it be amazing to have a seven-year-old playing the violin at Lincoln Center. Then it dawned on me that most prodigies aren't particularly happy--in fact, they are usually socially disconnected and miserable. And while I am passionate about giving my girls the love of books, do I care whether they learn to read at two or at four? Yes, I could have pushed harder in the early years and made sure the girls were reading earlier, but I suspect they would have hated the sight of me coming at them with a book. And the only real purpose in doing that would have been so others patted me on the back and told me what a great mom I was for teaching my kids to read at an amazingly early age. Instead we worked on letter sounds in a fun way and when they seemed to get stressed about my expectations, I backed off.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe parents play a huge role in their children's education. I love when my children practice reading with me or work on counting. But I also enjoy being the one providing a supplement to their education. The girls' teachers are very good at teaching them the basics (they have a lot more success with it than I do). I'm pretty good at providing the girls educational experiences that they don't realize are educational experiences. Last year Meg was very interested in marine biology, so we went to the National Aquarium, met a marine biologist on a beach in Rhode Island and watched Jonathan Bird's Blue World. Wow...did I ever learn a lot about marine biology. Meg learned a lot too and she never realized it was "educational." It was all just fun and interesting to her. Both Meg and Clare have always been interested in art, so we go to art museums, read books about artists and constantly paint. During a period of time in which Meg was showing absolutely no interest in practicing reading, I was amused that she could readily identify religious symbols in art and tell you her favorite Van Gogh painting (The Olive Orchard). Some might question the practicality of this, but I absolutely believe she will be a fuller, more interesting person for exploring this interest in depth.

While planning our summer work, I will remind myself of my favorite quote from the old television show Christy: "My job is to give thee a happy childhood." My goal is not that my children earn top grades in each subject and receive great accolades. My goal is that they love reading, science, art and even math. My goal is that they have time and freedom to develop their own imaginations and their own interests. My goal is that they have a happy childhood and they learn to be happy adults.

Yesterday I reported on the birthday party but I didn't talk about the rest of Memorial Day weekend. What a fantastic weekend it was. The weather was sunny but mild. It was a perfect time to be outside.

Grammy was in town for the weekend, which made everything extra special. We often go to museums, parks, etc. when grandparents are in town, but this weekend found us just enjoying being in our yard or close by.

Clare spent a great deal of time on the back porch working with her various art supplies she received for her birthday. She concentrated very hard while painting her garden fairy and perfected each detail.

Memorial Day itself was so much fun in one of those "we never planned this" sort of ways. Walking out the door on Monday morning to take a walk, we discovered our neighbors had set up a baby pool with a little slide. Soon all the kids in our row of houses were in the pool--initially jumping in fully clothed, though we changed them into swimsuits quickly. The kids spent the entire day playing. There was an actual swimming pool just a few blocks away and numerous other adventures to be had. But the kids just wanted to splash in the water, slip down the slide, play with bubbles and run around the yard with a little parachute. It was perfect kid fun.

During all of this, the adults sat in lawn chairs and on picnic blankets talking and snacking on chips and guacamole. Being neighborly is taken to a whole new level when you have kids of similar ages. There was a point in my life when I would have only smiled and said the occasional hello to our neighbors. Now we are all instantaneous friends. They come over for birthday parties, they invite our kids to their homes to decorate cookies, we take turns watching the kids as they play while we are trying to get dinner ready. It is such an enjoyable way to live. We'll be saying goodbye to a couple of our neighbors in the next month and we will miss them very much. I do hope we will have just as many happy memories with our new neighbors.

I have yet to recover from Clare's birthday party on Saturday. But what fun we had. As I've mentioned before, our theme for the party was Peter Rabbit. The venue was Green Spring Gardens, which offers a Beatrix Potter birthday (as well as other themes) with their children's education director. The garden was doing a lot of the work for the party, so I concentrated on the food.

On Friday afternoon I began baking. I started with lavender madeleine cookies, which were to be part of the party favors. The recipe was from the website of Susan Wittig Albert, who wrote the Beatrix Potter mysteries. They were appropriate favors because madeleines are our favorite cookies and, of course, Peter Rabbit's mother dealt in lavender. We've been huge fans of lavender as well since our trip to a lavender farm with Nicole last summer.  

The cookies came out rather tasty, though my husband complained it was like eating a flower (kind of the point, dude). We then began working on the cake. Clare helped me mix enough batter (from a box) for four layers.  She then began giving directions for the cake. We had the cake toppers (which were Hallmark ornaments from the late 90s). Clare wanted a fir tree. I attempted to be creative and made a tree from flexible straws covered in icing. Then Clare wanted  a road. "A road?" I asked, imagining black asphalt. "A brown road," she corrected. And then I realized what she wanted. This...

Well, this was as close as I could get...

Other food for the party included gluten-free cupcakes (a must these days), Mrs. Tiggy Winkle's Hummus and Cucumber Sandwiches; Squirrel Nutkins Sunbutter Sandwiches; Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail's Blackberries and Other Fruit; Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny's Carrots, Peas and Other Veggies; and Samuel Whisker's Roly Poly Pudding (aka pigs in a blanket). I was very grateful for some pinterest postings that inspired my menu as well as my signs.

At the party itself, the children began by coloring Peter Rabbit coloring sheets as all the children arrived. I should also say that the classroom opened onto the garden, so the children were free to run around the gardens during this time as well. Since the weather was sunny and the temperature was only 70 degrees, many chose to be outside. When most of the children had arrived, they began decorating terra cotta pots to look like rabbits. The garden then provided beautiful zinnias for each pot.

Next the children walked to the vegetable garden. They were each given clipboards with pictures of things to find in the garden--a scavenger hunt of sorts. They all had a great deal of fun hunting for the various items that included onions as well as a hoe and tool shed (referring to the Peter Rabbit story). They then all gathered in the middle of the vegetable garden and read Peter Rabbit.

After our adventures in the vegetable garden, the children ate and sang happy birthday before cutting into the cake. By that point, the two hour window of our party was up, but many families chose to stay and wander around the wonderful gardens and wooded paths.

Sorry for the blog silence this week. The week has been overwhelmingly busy and small crises keep stealing my bits of writing time. Still it has been a good week and worth reporting.

When I last blogged, Clare was sick. It took her a few days to recover, but she used her time well. She learned how to make Baby Anne laugh. For weeks Meg has been the baby laughing expert. Clare would copy everything Meg did, but it just wouldn't work for her. Finally, she found her own funny voice and her own silly movements and she sent Anne into hysterics. That laughter was the best medicine for Clare.

Saturday was a day of festivities. We met our neighbors at our local park to celebrate their two-year-old's birthday. It was a fun birthday with animal hats, a book exchange and yummy cupcakes. Gradually all the kids worked their way over to our neighborhood festival. Arlington consists of numerous established old neighborhoods and these neighborhoods hold periodic celebrations. Many have Fourth of July parades in which kids dress up and walk the parade route. In the middle of May, the communities often have little festivals. Our festival included giant bounce houses, a petting zoo, pony rides, hot dogs and cotton candy.

Our bounce house fun continued on Saturday afternoon when we went to our parish festival. What fun! Among the many inflatables was a giant slide.

Sunday was a day to recover from our previous day of festivities. After Mass we ate lunch at P. Brennan's. I had the absolute best corned beef hash I've ever eaten and we all enjoyed listening to the Celtic music jam session happening in the middle of the restaurant. Clare was quite taken by the performance of My Lovely Rose of Clare, which she assumed was about her.

On Sunday night I bought a used sewing machine, which on Monday I used to make Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail capes for our upcoming Peter Rabbit birthday party.

Monday also marked the eating of the first fruit from our strawberry plant.

We also celebrated Clare's actual birthday this week, which differed from the party date. We began the day by making cupcakes at 6:30 am. She opened family presents at 7:15 am. She wore a birthday tiara at school and distributed birthday play dough to her classmates. In the afternoon we had a birthday tea party with Nicole and ate those yummy cupcakes.

A busy week...and I haven't even mentioned doctor's appointments, physical therapy appointments, dance classes, extra days of preschool and party preparations. Whew. I'm tired.

Today does not seem promising at this point. We woke up to an emergency alert alarm on my phone announcing flood warnings. Then Clare, who is never sick, became quite sick. We managed to get Meg to school and things have calmed down considerably, but I am so glad we had a fun afternoon yesterday.

We went to River Farm Gardens which is the home to the American Horticultural Society. It has a wonderful children's garden. Right now, the girls seem to have the most fun at places where they can run, play and fully use their imaginations. Parks and playgrounds are fun, but the right children's garden is ideal.

I wanted to go to River Farm Gardens because there is a child-size cabin there inspired by the Little House books, which, as I have mentioned, we are reading now. But the girls had great fun with all the garden's offerings.

There was the joy of sitting on a sofa made from a hill. Meg gets in trouble for sitting on the back of sofas at home, so she very much enjoyed running on the back of this sofa.

Then there was the great excitement of running through tunnels underground.

No day of fun is complete without a boat journey and River Farm Gardens provides a full-size boat on which kids' imagination can take them wherever they want to go.

Lest you think garden play is not physical enough, there was much running and climbing as you can see.

And yes, there was time to sit and ponder what it was like to be Laura Ingalls.

I was only able to convince Meg and Clare to leave with the promise that we would return soon. What a lovely place to spend an afternoon.

Tonight we will read the last chapter of Little House on the Prairie. I am having a lot of fun revisiting the Little House books with the girls. We had a slow start. We began Little House in the Big Woods numerous times before we were reading a chapter or two a day. Meg and Clare enjoyed Pa's stories in that book (the owl in the woods, the pig on the sled, etc.) and they would often ask to go back and read those stories again and again. So we didn't get very far. But at some point the idea of a chapter book clicked with them and we began making forward progress.

Clare (who is three) loved Little House in the Big Woods. She has not been as excited about Little House on the Prairie. About a third of the way through the book, she declared it boring and begged us to stop reading it. Meg quite liked the book so I told Clare she could pick a picture book to read each night, but then we would read our chapter and she could listen or play quietly. There are differences between the two books that might explain Clare's reaction. While Little House in the Big Woods is full of cozy stories, Little House on the Prairie provides details of how Pa built the house, dug the well and plowed the fields. There's also the conflict with the Indians. The chapter Indian War Cries is amazingly well-written and allows the reader to feel the terror of the settlers night after night as they could hear the Indians debating over whether to go to war with the settlers. That being said, I believe those were the parts Clare most enjoyed--even if they were a little scary.

I grew up on Little House. My mom read us the books. We watched the television show. One year I was Laura Ingalls for Halloween. My family even visited the Wilder's Rocky Ridge Farm. But I honestly did not remember how well-written the books were. The detail is splendid. I have so enjoyed revisiting these books.

Today On the Banks of Plum Creek is set to arrive from Amazon (this is the only book in the series I didn't already have a copy of). Meg and I will keep reading and I hope Clare will join us. We will keep doing some activities related to the book and I will detail some of these on the blog. Stay tuned.

Yesterday I sought advice about an outdoor seat for Anne. We have our answer: the Go-Pod (pictured above).

I am not big on lots of baby gear. Being in an urban setting, our space is limited. While we have a lot more space in our new home, it is still a rowhouse with narrow rooms and passages easily blocked by chunky baby gear. And let's face it, even if you have a huge house, you don't want it cluttered with baby stuff you don't need. An item must absolutely prove its worth to me to take up space in our home. The Go-Pod has proved its worth. And as an added bonus, it doesn't  take up much space.

The Go-Pod is basically an exersaucer that folds up and fits into a tiny little bag. There's no taking it apart to make it fit. You just push a button and it folds in. You can hook your baby's favorite toys to it and there is even a place for sippy cups and such.

I was very lucky. I found our Go-Pod for half of retail price on craigslist. It had been used once and the seller still had all the original packaging. When Baby Anne tried it out, she loved it. In fact at this point she seems more comfortable in the Go-Pod than she does in the exersaucer.

We will be using the Go-Pod when gardening in the back and playing in the front. We will take it on overnight trips. I may even move the exersaucer to our basement family room and use the Go-Pod in the upstairs living room so we can fold it away when it is not needed. I am sold on this product.

Apparently I took an unintentional Mother's Day break from blogging. The end of last week just got away from me. Nothing huge. I was just dealing with overflowing toilets and related leaks, starting a new dance class in the late afternoon (a first for us--most of our classes are early), and attempts at gardening.

We added a playhouse to our back garden last week (best Craigslist find ever--it was free). The playhouse has a fantastic English cottage look to it. Miss Marple should absolutely be living in this house. To complete the look, Clare and I went flower shopping last Friday and found some marigolds, begonias and lavender to put around the little playhouse. We just haven't gotten everything in their designated pots yet. I am realizing that gardening with a five month old is challenging. We must wait until Baby Anne is sleeping and then work as fast as we can. We must come up with something for her to sit in outside other than her car seat. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Over the weekend, I randomly ran across this picture.

I now desperately want something similar to this for our garden. I am not a woodworker and do not readily have scraps of aged wood sitting around. I truly don't know how I am going to get this sign, but I will figure out something. I will have to scale it down to fit in our garden and I will need to choose the places most appropriate for us (for example, I could do without the Emerald City, but Mr. McGregor's Garden and the Secret Garden are a must). I will report on my progress.

I will try to blog more faithfully this week. My goal is always five times per week. This allows me to stay in the habit, record the best memories and hone my writing craft. However, this goal can be challenging with the demands of motherhood. Still, I think it is worth it.

Today I talked with Green Springs Garden regarding Clare's upcoming birthday. I am now so excited about it.

For most of her birthdays, Clare has had some form of a Peter Rabbit party. But she has not yet had a Peter Rabbit party with all of her friends. Upon seeing some photos from a Peter Rabbit party sent to us by Nicole, Clare was set on making this birthday a Peter Rabbit extravaganza. When I heard Green Springs Garden offered a Beatrix Potter birthday package, I knew we had a plan.

Today I spoke to the children's education coordinator who will oversee the party. There will be a vegetable garden scavenger hunt, Beatrix Potter stories read in the garden and the children will decorate a flower pot like a bunny and then plant a flower or vegetable in it. I just need to provide the food. This promises to be one of the easiest and best parties we've had.

Regarding the food, I found these ornaments that we will use as cake toppers.

And of course there are the standard Beatrix Potter plates and napkins that are a must.

We will have gluten-free cupcakes (a must these days) made to look like radishes. I am also working on a veggie tray display shaped like a bunny.

I am so excited about this party.