Maya has now made it through her first week of kindergarten. Our routine has gone through a mountain of change in a short time, but I think we’ve managed the transition well. Maya, in particular, is having a really positive experience so far, and I couldn’t be more relieved.

Obligatory first day of school shot.

The first full week in August, she went to “kinder camp” in the mornings at her elementary school. There she got to meet a few of the kindergarten teachers and some of her classmates, check out a couple of the classrooms, and eat snacks and make crafts. It started all of us getting used to an earlier schedule (class starts at 7:45) and let Maya get a feel for what her new school would be like.

Notice the resemblance to the above photo?

The Thursday before school started, Maya had two big events. First, we brought snacks and treats for her to share with her montessori class. She had been sent home with a “s’mores kit” her first day in kinder camp and this spawned two ideas. First, we made homemade marshmallows the next weekend, and second, we made our own s’mores kits to send home with her fellow preschool classmates. For 26 people, she stamped labels with an octopus, wrote her own name, and stuck the labels to baggies. We filled them each with a graham cracker, a little chocolate bar, and a couple homemade marshmallows.

S’mores kits for her preschool class

For snack time, we made mini-muffins and brought them to school along with a store-bought fruit plate. Maya had a lot of fun serving the muffins to her class during snack time. Ian was even able to join us as well.

Then after school, we went to the elementary school for an ice cream social and to meet Maya’s actual kindergarten teacher. The whole school has sort of an “under the sea” theme, but Ms. Krauss’s room in particular is so much fun for Maya. There’s an actual fish tank that features, among other things, Dory and Nemo fish. There’s a big stuffed octopus puppet. In fact, there’s a little puppet theater set up. Maya has pronounced it the coolest classroom ever. And Ms. Krauss has “pretty white hair,” which is a big plus in Maya’s book.

Ms. Krauss had sent each kid home with a really sweet “night before kindergarten” poem and some magic confetti to place under their pillows to help them sleep. Maya was so excited about her confetti. “It’s the first magic thing I ever had!” And it worked!

Maya artwork and writing work

On her first day, Maya insisted on wearing her striped octopus dress. We had ordered her a new backpack and lunchbox (though we were shipped the wrong lunchbox and Maya had to wait a week to get the right one) to celebrate her move to elementary school. She was in a happy fizz about her new school and her new backpack. Oddipuddy doesn’t get to go to kindergarten with her, and she dealt well with that also.

She was tired when I picked her up from school that first day, but told me all about the different things she’d learned. She learned that ducks don’t make good pets, how to identify the word “me,” and where the bathroom is. She colored a first day of school book and was able to bring it home. “Today we did something called PE,” she told me in the car on the way to fetch her brother. She really seemed to enjoy her PE class.

Ian artwork

Tuesday was a little harder and she was hesitant to let Sean go when he dropped her off. We managed to get her to bed a half hour earlier on Tuesday night though, and I think that made a difference. On Wednesday morning, she was ready to go, and when I picked her up she was smiling and happy about all the things they’d done in school that day. The rest of the week went without a hitch. We collectively figured out how cafeteria lunches would work (except I haven’t yet cracked the code on what food they offer each day because the posted menu and what Maya reports having eaten are not even remotely the same), where to pick her up from after school care, and where to go when Maya forgets her lunch box, water bottle, etc.

You could see signs of tiredness and stress earlier in the week. At one point Maya said that she had to behave all day long at school; she didn’t wanna have to do it any more once she got home. By the end of the week though, it just seemed to be part of the routine. She was grumpy on Saturday morning because she didn’t have kindergarten to go to.

I was worried that Maya would be really sad to leave her montessori school, but she has clearly moved on. She’s very proud to be a kindergartner, and while she’s happy to visit her old classroom when we pick Ian up in the afternoon, her new elementary school is where she belongs.

Ian loves his sister.

Where’s poor Ian in all this? There’s been a lot of hubbub around getting Maya ready for school and through her first week, and Ian has been dealing with his own set of big emotions. He’s sad that his sister is no longer going to the same school he is. “I just want Maya,” he’ll tell us. When we all went to drop Maya off for her first day, Ian’s eyes welled up and his lips got quivery when it was time for us to leave without her. We have a weird little Ian ritual after we pick him up from school where we say, “Hi Maya and Ian’s school. Bye Maya and Ian’s school.” This past week we dropped Maya’s name from the chant, and he was not impressed. More tears.

I have to admit that last week was stressful for me as well. I worry a lot about how Maya will adapt to things socially. Also, her sometimes lackadaisical (and often willful) nature makes me worry about her getting fed and to the right place at the right time. At least so far, she seems to be managing just fine. We’ll see how the year progresses, but right now she is loving school and rolling with the changes. I think a lot of parents feel a little sad to see their kids moving on and growing up. At least with this, I haven’t felt an iota of sadness. There’s nothing but pride and relief here over the way she’s transitioned from pre-school to kindergarten, and I’m excited to see what the year brings.

Thanks to Lolli and Pop driving to Texas to visit us this summer, our normal grandparent triangle was just an out and back to Missouri. On Friday, July 20th, we packed up the car right after work, fetched the kids directly from school, and drove to Texarkana. We overnighted there (big fun for the kids since they LOVE hotels), and then drove the rest of the way to Missouri the next day.

Big kids in a big bed

Here’s how it was supposed to work. We’d have dinner later than normal and then have the kids do a bathroom break before we left the restaurant. They would drift off to sleep an hour or so into the drive and then just snooze till we arrived around midnight. But Maya and Ian were really excited to see Grammy and Grandpa, and they were really excited about staying in a hotel, and they were really not interested in sleeping at all. They had barely slept by the time we pulled into the hotel parking lot. And then they were so excited to get to sleep in a big bed together that it took a bit for them to fall asleep once we finally got settled into our room.

The next morning Maya woke up at 7:00. And then she woke Ian. And then they both woke Sean, all before our alarm went off at 8:00. The hotel breakfast was solid and we were on the road by about 9:30. The drive was uneventful, and we made it into Friedheim before 5p, leaving plenty of time for the kids to run off their energy before bedtime.

Getting ready to ride in the mule

Grammy and Grandpa’s house is a kids’ paradise. They had water balloons, water guns, and bubble generating devices. They had play dough and kinetic sand and sun catchers for the kids to paint. There are toys tucked away all over the house. And there are two grandparents willing to spend time with them play, play, playing. And as if all that weren’t enough, their cousins Lily and Nathan were there to play with as well.

Feeding fish (and turtles)

In the evenings, we’d ride the mule (it’s like a little tractor … sort of …the internet calls it a utility vehicle, which seems kind of vague, but whatever) out to feed the fish and turtles in the pond. Maya loves it when Grandpa drives crazy in the mule. Ian was brave and rode along this time too and also seemed to really enjoy it.

Time-optimized water balloon filling

Their water balloon system is really neat. You screw a central ring onto the water spigot and it feeds water down to a number of balloons, filling them with water. When they’re heavy enough, the balloons drop down, already sealed and ready to go. Maya would have plowed through the whole package in one night … Grammy and Grandpa managed to dole them out over three nights.

Maya and Nathan

Sunday afternoon, we went to a park to play for a while. Maya rode on the zipline and loved it. Ian tried it out. He slipped off of it, but did a fantastic job of staying upright. Still, he was finished with it after that and needed some comforting before he was ready to go back to playing. Luckily, there was a sandbox with a sort of waterfall in the middle of it. Ian had all kinds of fun making cakes out of the wet sand. He also got Grammy and I to go down the big slide with him over and over again.

Ian and Lily, singing along to the Frozen soundtrack

After that, we drove over to Grayson’s Bar and Grill, the bar known as “Someplace Else” when I was a kid, and sat out of the deck and ate brats and burgers and chicken fingers and wings and listened to Lily and Ian sing songs from Frozen. The weather was so nice. It wasn’t a hundred degrees! It actually cooled off when the sun went down! Sitting outside was a pleasure instead of something to be endured.

Great Grandma!

Monday was a big day. In the morning, we went and saw Great Grandma Schmidt for a while. “We call her ‘great grandma’ because she’s great!” Maya explained. After visiting for a while and doling out hugs, we had a quick lunch at Pizza Hut and a little bit of play time around the house before gearing up for the next adventure: playing at the creek.

Maya, being Maya, was all in. We had barely gotten to the creek before she was waist-deep in water, collecting random leaves and shells and sticks she found. Ian didn’t want to put on his swim clothes, but we brought them along just in case. Sure enough, Maya wasn’t in the water long before Ian decided to change into his trunks and join her. And then, since Maya and Ian had both been so brave, even Lily made her way into the creek, which we hear is kind of a rare thing. Nathan wasn’t feeling well and actually curled up on a lawn chair and went to sleep, poor guy.

Playing at the creek

They saw some tadpoles. Maya and Lily made an Olaf-esque man out of wet sand and then despaired at his “melting.” Ian made a whole big bucketful of “chocolate” using only water and sand. Maya and Ian each collected up a handful of rocks and shells that they referred to as their “creek treasures.” I think playing in and around the creek was probably the highlight of their trip.

I wound up working part of the day on Monday and part of the day on Tuesday, so I didn’t see a whole lot of the goings on. There’s so much to do, I am sure the kids kept busy. Throughout the day on Tuesday, we worked toward gathering up our things and getting the car packed for the return trip. That afternoon, we saw my childhood friend Becky and her daughter Iris. Becky sent us on our way with fresh cucumbers from her garden and some homemade relish that Maya has decided she loves.

During this entire trip, Maya had been playing with a doll that she named Butterfly after the butterfly on its shirt. As we were packing, I heard her saying bye to Butterfly and letting her know that she’d see her again around Christmas time.

The last mule ride

After dinner with Grammy and Grandpa, we finished loading up the car and headed on our way back to Texas. On Tuesday night, our stopover way in Little Rock. This time, Sean’s and my plan worked flawlessly (a rarity for us). By around 8 o’clock, both kids were conked out and they didn’t really wake up till we got to the hotel around midnight. They walked themselves up to the room without complaint and then promptly crawled into bed and went back to sleep.

For reasons I will never understand, I woke up hard at 6:30 the next morning. I read for a while as Sean snored and the kids continued sleeping. After a while, I hear Maya’s quiet morning voice say to Ian, “It’s ok Ian. That noise is just Dad.”

After another respectable hotel breakfast, we loaded up and headed toward Texas. It was an uneventful drive home, and we arrived a little after 6 that evening. Everyone was tired, but we got the car unloaded and saw all the cats and everyone seemed to be doing ok. Nox has evidently learned how to close doors and had shut herself in Ian’s room. She must not have been there for long though because she left no messes and her chief concern on being freed was to make sure we all smelled ok.

I think breaking up the drive was probably better for all of us. Our days of powering through a 12-13 hour drive may be over till the kids are a bit older. One interesting thing about this car trip was how relatively little the kids relied on their ipads. So far, we’ve been making our way through long car trips with a mixture of snacks, activities, and unfettered ipad time. This time though, they really weren’t as interested in their ipads. At one point, Maya even told us she just wanted to look out the window. The drive is long, for sure, but I bet if we asked the kids if they wanted to make the long drive again to go see Grammy and Grandpa, we’d get an unqualified YES.

Our fourth of July celebrating went pretty smoothly this year. Last year, we messed up and missed the big fireworks show at the quarry, but not this time. We were johnny on the spot, securing the date in our memories and on our calendar, packing along things to do, etc. The kids loved it. The fireworks were “amazing” and “so beautiful.” True to form, about five minutes into the show we had waited more than an hour for, Ian asked, “is it time to go home now?”

Waiting for the fireworks at the quarry lake near our house

It’s true that Maya and Ian enjoyed the big fireworks show, and it’s also true that they had a fun fourth of July parade at their school, but the big event, the thing they had been waiting all week for happened on Wednesday the 4th: Lolli and Pop came into town. I thought the kids were going to maul them when they arrived that afternoon. Allllll morning they had been asking when they’d get here.

Zero scared of the sparklers.

Afternoon thunderstorms thwarted the plans we had made to hang out with our friends and deploy fireworks with their kids. Instead we hung out on our front porch and threw poppers and played with sparklers. Maya again was nervous about the sparklers and basically had to be helped with them till the very end.

That evening, Sean and Pop went and picked up pizza from Via 313 for dinner. I still haven’t actually been to the restaurant, but I have benefited from Sean’s lunchtime leftovers many times. This is Detroit-style pizza, and it is delicious.

Hanging out with Lolli and Pop

The next day, I didn’t see a whole lot of what went on because I wound up working. From the sound of things, there was a lot of hide-and-seek with Pop and a lot of playing a farming game on the computer with Lolli. They all went out and had Nashville hot chicken at T22 for lunch. I was gifted with lemon meringue pie for dessert.

Pop and Maya playing Nintendo

Sean and Pop went and bought groceries so I could cook dinner that night. Throughout the week, the kids had been running through various desserts they could make for Lolli and Pop. There was discussion of brownie cookies, bundt cake, and who knows what else. They eventually settled on baking them a heart-shaped chocolate cake, to which they applied pink icing and so many sprinkles.

For dinner, I grilled flap steak, which is served with a green onion (also grilled) walnut sauce. It’s a very solid recipe. Last year, Maya decided she wasn’t going to eat anything that “had fire on it,” and her tune has not changed since. She hates the smell of fire; birthday candles, fireworks, and barbecue joints all cause her to complain. She will not eat grilled food. Unbeknownst to me, earlier in the summer, Sean experimented by burying a single piece of grilled chicken amongst Maya’s non-grilled chicken as a test. Sure enough, she leaned into it, gave it a sniff, wrinkled her nose and announced that it smelled like fire and she wasn’t going to eat it.

While most of us were enjoying freshly grilled flap steak, Maya had T22 leftovers instead. We’ll keep working on her. Maybe she’ll eventually come around.

Cavern

On Friday, we had our big outing. We drove out to Natural Bridge Caverns. We weren’t sure how the weather was going to be (hot and sunny, as it turns out), and we could tour the caverns rain or shine, so we went for it. The kids loved it. The length of the tour was about 75 minutes, and I don’t remember ever getting the impression the kids were losing interest. They actually followed directions and kept their hands to themselves while in the cavern. Maya hiked the entire thing by herself, and Ian made it nearly to the end.

They brag about their 70 degree temp in the cave, but with nearly 100% humidity, we still felt a little gunky by the end. And then we walked out into the full sun. Nothing some nice lemonade couldn’t help fix though. Maya and Ian squished some pennies and picked up some interesting rocks for souvenirs. We had passed through Gruene on the way to Natural Bridge Caverns, so on the return trip, we swung into the Gristmill restaurant, a centerpiece of the town, and had a very late lunch / very early dinner that filled us up and kept us happy through the rest of the day.

Well, some of us are looking at the camera

Pop and Sean took Maya to her swim lesson in the morning on Saturday. Probably because Pop was along, Maya was on her best behavior and the lesson went really well! After playing at the house for a while, we took the kids to a friend’s birthday party in the afternoon. More playing with the grandparents while I grilled again – this time jerk chicken and mushrooms.

On Sunday, after some more hide-and-seek and lots of goodbyes, Lolli and Pop started their return trip to Alabama. The kids kind of moped their way through the afternoon, telling us they missed Lolli and Pop, and they’re already looking forward to visiting at Christmas time. I suspect the feeling is mutual.