Summer break, Day 1

Jack is off for the summer, well until Lego Camp starts next week. Kate is off this week. So, I wanted to make sure to give them a good time. Day 1, kind of hit or miss....

- Went to Dunkin Donuts. Wanted to start the week off with something fun for them, plus I hadn't had enough coffee. "Can we get munchkins AND a big donut?" asked Jack. Today, sure. Kate got something with strawberry frosting, Jack got the same, until I ordered a butternut, and he got one of those instead. They munched happily, I drank iced coffee, only later remembering I hadn't actually had any breakfast beyond a couple of munchkins. Oh well.

- Went to Greenwich Town Hall to pay a vehicle tax bill from the previous year. "That's where my soccer is," Jack announced as we parked in the lot; indeed, the soccer fields were down below. As usual, the kids wanted to touch everything as we waited in line in the Tax Collector's office...pencils, pens, counters, etc. As usual, I tried to stop them.

- Came home and took Kate's baby for a stroll down the street. See blog entry below.

- Painting! They love to paint and I love to let them, but there's some set up work involved and clean up after, so it doesn't happen every day. Kate made some nice faces with little arms and legs sticking out and some dots of green and purple and brown on the paper. Jack made people and what looks like a robot of some kind, both with happy smiles.

- Lunchtime. Kate was too tired to eat anything -- didn't nap yesterday, so we took things easy today -- and went up for her nap. Jack ate roast beef, yogurt, chips and bread.

- Jack and I played on the porch some with his dinosaurs and Optimus Prime, the Transformer. Apparently in this story the dinosaurs were evil and Optimus had to smash them all. I kind of felt bad for them because he was a lot bigger and more mobile. And he was operated by Jack while I was making the dinosaurs run around, so clearly they weren't going to win.

- We built a robot of some sort with Legos, making it look like a picture Jack drew. I said, hey Jack, that's impressive; you had a vision, and we made it real. I explained what I meant by vision. He said, "I don't want to learn any more new words...I already know enough." We get this from him every once in a while. Over the rest of the day I gave him examples of how great it is to learn words, so you can say things like chandelier or corn rather than "black thing with lights on the end" or "yellow and white thing with little circles on it." Emily, at dinner, said, What if we just called you, brown-haired boy with brown eyes, instead of Jack? He got a kick out of that one.

- Kate woke up and she had lunch, while Jack had a snack. Grapes. Really can't go wrong with fruit.

- We played in the back yard some, swings for both and pitching to Jack. It's pretty dangerous really, because he can hit and I'm standing somewhat closer than regulations. A couple of line drives he's hit back up the middle have been worrying.

- Finished a book and put Jack to bed. Decided we're going to do something new tomorrow.