Summer Days

I love the summer. I love the suspended pace.  We have a rhythm to our days but no urgent schedule. I love the long days and good, fresh summer food. I feel like I eat so healthily in the summer. [Until about 10:00pm when I eat like a bear going into hibernation. If a bear going into hibernation ate chocolate.] The truth is I heartily enjoy vegetables but sugar is like kryptonite to me.

Anyway, it just seems like things are finally starting to get easier. The kids are playing well together and Elliot is being so affectionate. Whereas just a few weeks ago he was so defiant and most of what came out of his mouth was foul language (no kidding), now he says, “mom, I love you SOOOOOOO much!” or “oh, mom, I love your skirt.” He is very cute with his compliments. I’m surprised by what he notices. I have a feeling he is going to be quite the ladies man. He only tries to mortally wound Anwoo a handful of times a day, which is a vast improvement over his previous non-stop attacks. Even though I think preschool was a great experience for both of them, it was exhausting and left them both sort of cranky afterwards. Now that preschool is over they seem less ornery and there is a better, happier spirit in our house.

So this is how our summer is settling out so far: On Mondays I load Andrew and Elliot into the jogging stroller and Oliver gets on his bike and we all head over to a park for “Summer Running Club.” Summer Running Club is the brainchild of my friend Amy. She made little punch cards for each of the kids to track their laps around the park. One lap is roughly 1/4 mile. Oliver already ran 5 miles! Elliot has only gotten 6 holes punched which means he’s done 1.5 miles over the course of 3 weeks, mostly walking and holding my hand. The kids are developing healthy habits and setting goals. I love it!

On Tuesdays and Thursdays we go jogging on the trails with some friends for what Oliver calls “Mom Running Club”. I am training for the Napa Valley Ragnar, a relay race in September from SF to Calistoga. You would think with all this running and vegetable eating I would be one svelte momma. You would be wrong. Perhaps there is some correlation with my late-night sweets consumption.

On Wednesdays we often go on an excursion with friends from church to a museum or the zoo or some other field trip destination. Last week we went to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley.  Today they went to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, but skipped that because we went with Ryan not too long ago. Next week we are going to take the ferry into SF which should be quite exciting.

On Fridays we go to the park or do nothing at all. And one of those days we have summer art group.

   

We are just as occupied but it seems less busy or routine. It feels like every day is an opportunity to have a fresh adventure or do nothing at all but enjoy each other’s company.  It seems like things have just settled into place and we’ve found a good pace. I’m hoping I can sustain it.

Boys’ Room DIY Improvements

The week the boys were in camp at Elliot’s preschool I went on a little DIY bender. It was so much fun to have 4 hours a day to work on this project with minimal interruptions. This is what I did:

Made black-out curtains. The boys’ room faces east and it is VERY bright first thing in the morning. I’d like to delay wake up as long as possible. In theory these should also help them fall asleep faster at night when it is still light out. In practice that isn’t working. It does help keep their room cooler when I draw them closed during the day. I am really happy with the way they came out.

Painted some furniture. Specifically, their old dresser from the nursery and a desk and chair I found by the side of the road. Can’t beat that price.

Before:

After:

If you can’t tell I’m trying to work a subtle nautical theme. I don’t want it to be too literal but still capture the beachy/boaty spirit.  I really don’t know if it does, but in any case, it’s a start. This was the first time I’ve done a project like this and it was a lot of fun. I made quite a few mistakes. The most obvious being that if you plan to paint something a dark color like navy you shouldn’t start with white primer. It took 5 coats of paint to finally get the color I wanted.

Here is the old nursery desk after I repainted it. Its size and shape are not ideal for the space under the window, but it’s what we have so I’m working with it. It’s the same color as the desk, it’s just bad lighting in this photo.

       

And finally, here was my little sidekick through out the whole process. He was more (Monday) or less (Friday) content to hang out or take naps in his car seat. What a kid!

The Mom & Oliver Uno Challenge

We battled it out during Elliot’s nap times-- five games a day for the past 12 days. In the end it was close, but Ollie pulled out a clutch 4 game streak to become the first official Halverson Uno Champ. His reward: a bag of Skittles. I lost out on frozen yogurt. Oliver wisely pointed out that had I won I would have had to buy my own frozen yogurt anyway since he has no money. True enough.       Oliver is THRILLED with his victory, can you tell? I, on the other hand, am so sick of Uno. Does anyone have a suggestion for another game that might work for a 5 year old?

Summer Art

Last summer my friend Suzy and I had such a great time doing weekly art projects with our kids that we decided to continue our tradition and do a long distance version this summer. Although we don’t get to enjoy gourmet lunches together after the projects, we are collaborating on ideas and giving each other inspiration. I talked my friend Anna McFadden into doing it with me here in California so we have a small actual art group in addition to our virtual art group back in Nashville.

Today I taught a lesson on symmetry and we made flower mandalas. I tried teaching symmetry last summer when we made paint butterflies (you know, when you drip paint onto a piece of paper and fold it in half and gently press the two sides together. Viola! A butterfly!) Anyway, my explanation of symmetry went wildly off track last year when I said that “if I were to cut this picture in half, both sides would be the same.” They freaked out because they thought I was going to cut their pictures in half and even though I explained emphatically that I was not going to cut their art in half they couldn’t get beyond that. 

So this year went better. I first had them do a symmetry exercise before I tried explaining it with words. I drew a line down the middle of a piece of paper and created a simple shape with geometric pattern blocks one one side of the line. I had them repeat the pattern on the other side, to make it “same on the other side". I explained that this type of pattern is called symmetry. Then we made some asymmetric shapes and talked about what made them asymmetric. We looked at some pictures of animals (crabs, butterflies, people) and talked about symmetry found in nature.  I also introduced the concept of “lines of symmetry,” and “radial symmetry.” My explanation of radial symmetry was a little rough, but they got the concept, despite my poor explanation. We then went out in the yard and hunted for symmetry in nature.

Then we came back inside and made these awesome flower mandalas which are examples of radial symmetry. I got the idea from The Artful Parent. All it took was some paper plates, contact paper and some flowers and leaves. Easy peasy and the kids really, really enjoyed it!

   

Crazy Balls and Mud Pies

Have I described how much I love our backyard? It is the perfect backyard.  And by perfect I do not mean perfectly manicured. It has weeds galore. But it is perfect for our family. It is fenced, flat and not too fussy. At one point it was nicely landscaped so there are still flowers in every season and fruit trees. It retains some its former glory but it is slowly reverting to its natural state. The boys, no doubt, are hastening this process. They throw “mud bombs” down onto the basketball court, they re-routed the flagstone path according to their own whimsy, dismantled part of the dry-laid retaining wall, and dug up some old irrigation lines. [Did I mention how much I LOVE renting!! I hope our landlords don’t blogstalk us…I’m doing my best, I just can’t watch them ALL the time.] They have a booming mudworks construction operation with all their diggers, dumptrucks and backhoe loaders.  They have several excavation efforts underway, too. I think they are building a quarry.

Now that the days are longer we spend most evenings hanging out in the backyard. Ryan and the boys invented a game called “crazy balls.” The object of the game is to hit all the balls (tennis balls, footballs, whiffleballs, basketballs, soccer balls, etc) into the hula hoop with croquet mallets. It replaced “dingleballs” (aka “red-neck golf”, a.k.a.  the “bonk-on-the-head-game”)  as our backyard game of choice since Elliot  kept bonking himself in the head with that game.

I have to go to bed since I re-committed (just this morning!!) not to stay up late. I am in the middle of a great book and a huge DIY project so it’s been very tempting to stay up late. I would write more about our backyard fun but here are some pictures and an open invitation to come visit and hang out with us in the backyard and experience it yourself.

          Our neighbors have a plum tree that hangs over into our yard. Tonight I gave Anwoo his first taste of plum…he ate the whole thing. I was reminded of an image from Ann Lamott’s book Operating Instructions in how she describes the first time her son ate a plum he slowly pushed the peel back out of his mouth like a dollar bill being rejected from a vending machine. I really like that image and was tempted to see what Anwoo would do with the peel but reasoned that he might choke on it so I didn’t let him try it.

Drains to the Bay

The boys are fascinated by the storm drains in our neighborhood. They always stop and announce cheerfully, "This drains to the Bay!" and then they shout, "Hello, San Francisco!" as they peer down into the drain. I don't know where they got that idea that the people of San Francisco can hear them through the storm drain but I think it's hilarious.

Big and Little

This afternoon as I was unstacking the dishwasher Oliver and Elliot were outside getting down to work of their own. They were methodically removing all the tomatoes on my plants before they had a chance to ripen. One was picking, the other was squishing them with his sneaker. These are my favorite Sungold little orange cherry tomatoes. I was so mad. I said, "You guys are little rascals!!!" Oliver got upset and objected to that appellation. "Mom, we are NOT little rascals. That's mean. We are BIG rascals."

So now I've put my big rascals to work. Elliot is unstacking the dishwasher and Oliver is folding laundry. Too bad the way they do it is actually just creating more work for me to do later.