After our action-packed May, June, and early July, we purposefully kept the rest of the summer as unscheduled as possible. Chilling out around the house. Working through some of the Kiwi Crates that Santa had brought the kids for Christmas. In general, recuperating.

Ian and his unparalleled sense of style

Sean bequeathed all his boxes of Transformers to the kids over the summer, and they were hooked. To this day, when they remember they have them, they can easily while away a full hour or more playing with those Transformers. Some of them have suffered a bit at the kids’ hands, but so far, I don’t think it’s hurting Dad too much.

We had a couple of fun water outings with the McKee-Starling clan. We met them at Typhoon Texas one afternoon. Ian was pretty content to just putz around in the water, but once Maya got past her initial apprehension about the water slides, we could hardly get her to leave.

Ian and Mom at Typhoon Texas

The very next weekend, we hung out with them at their community pool for an afternoon. In Texas the pool water can sometimes get kinda warm and bath-like. It’s a little gross, but it’s still better than standing out in the unforgiving sun.

Snow cone at the pool

Also, toward the end of summer, Maya put aside her skateboard for a bit and learned to ride her bike. It’s really hilly around our house, and it’s hard for her to ride much there, so she’s largely learned in a nearby park.

As the start of school approached, we attended the ice cream social to meet Maya’s teacher for the first time and find her new classroom. We were stunned to find out that she’d be part of a co-teaching classroom. Two teachers and 37 students are all in a giant room. It’s not the environment I had imagined when I filled out the class-placement survey and explained Maya was very smart and capable, but had trouble sitting still and was easily distracted.

Ian told me it was an alien. I wondered if the alien’s name was Mr. Hanky.

The kids also went early and decorated the sidewalks leading into school with sidewalk chalk. I guess the nebulous octopuses that Maya drew and turd-shaped aliens that Ian created weren’t part of the program because the sidewalks had been washed clean by Maya’s first day of school. I have photographic evidence though :-)

Maya on her first day of first grade

And then school started. Maya was brimming with excitement and maybe a few nervous butterflies. Kindergarten had been such a positive experience for her, as far as we could tell, and she was looking forward to going back to school. The transition to first grade has been a tough one though. There’s a more rigid routine and the expectations are greater. Maya describes her teachers as strict. She is expected to follow instructions. She is expected to sit still in her seat and comply. These aren’t things that come naturally to our girl though, and she’s been struggling. We regularly get notes home about various behavioral issues; it has been stressful for all of us.

Luckily, she still tells us she enjoys going to school and says she likes her teacher. Fingers crossed that we can carry that through to the end of the school year.

Maya has been doing a lot of sewing. It started with a pre-formed, pre-holed animal sewing kit and progressed to a more free-form breakfast foods kit. I still cut the felt out for her, but she largely does the sewing herself these days. Nearly all of her creations go to Ian. For Maya, the joy appears to be in the creating of the item rather than the item itself.

Throughout the late summer and early fall, Ian had been on a notebook bender. He’d create little notebooks out of stapled together pieces of paper and then fill them with his name and Maya’s name. He eventually added Mom and Dad in there too. Occasionally, he’d ask us how to spell another word (“moon,” for example) and then that would make regular appearances for a few days before slipping back into Ian’s mental ether to be randomly called upon at some future time.

Ian and Maya at the baseball game, complete with rainbow

In September, we got to go to a Round Rock Express game, courtesy of Sean’s company. They rent a suite, offer up a bunch of food and drinks, and then let us relax and watch a baseball game. Maya LOVES it. Ian loves the food part, for sure, but I truly believe Maya is interested in the game. By the end of our time there, she had a basic comprehension of the rules and kept good track of the score. It was a double-header and one of the games was rain-delayed, so we had to leave without seeing it finish. Maya made sure to check on the score when she woke up the next morning to see whether her team had won.