Hazel's first purchase

Hazel does not yet get an allowance, but she had recently acquired two dollars. Juniper gave her a dollar as consolation when Hazel was devastated about dropping her sippy cup into a canyon. A neighbor gave her a dollar for no reason other than the fact that people from different cultures have different ways of expressing their affection for adorable kids.

Hazel took her $2.00 to the UUCA yard sale and was delighted to spend it on this small dollhouse. It was money quite well spent. Hazel loves her dollhouse and all the tiny things it contains. It's beenin heavy rotation since she got it a couple of weeks ago.

Ready for Action

Happy Sisters

Sure, there are the occasional property disputes and the moments when one of them is deliberately annoying to the other. But for the most part, our girls get along really well together. We couldn't ask for better.

For those of you who are far away and do not often see Hazel and Juniper in person, the smiles in this photo are the real deal.

First day of school - for both girls!

Today was our very first day of having both girls in (pre)school! Getting ready this morning  definitely felt like a new stage for our family.

Two girls excited and ready to go!

"I'm so excited...

 ...about goin' to school!!"

Fill in the obligatory comments about how much she has grown over the past few years.

Hazel could hardly contain her excitement about finally getting to go to school.

 All important occasions are best marked by a good monster face.

 "Now I'm a big kid!"

In her typical fashion, Juniper ran into her classroom, yelled "surprise!" to her teacher, found her seat, and started coloring her name card. When we said goodbye, she hardly even noticed we were leaving.

Hello, independent kindergartener. Today, your seat. Tomorrow, the bus.

We were a little less sure of how Hazel would do being dropped off at the Learning Lens. She is often hesitant in new places, and it was definitely a process to get her used to being left in the church nursery (the only non-family childcare she has had before today).

We needn't have worried. Who could possibly be sad about being left in a place this exciting and full of exactly everything kids love?

An added bonus is that her good friend Henry is in the same class!

After we each read Hazel a book, we kissed her goodbye and left her on the way to some important mission--maybe putting out a fire, or maybe just helping to make a smoothie for breakfast snack.

We were feeling sentimental last night and snapped this photo of the two girls asleep the night before school starts. They are both tuckered out after their full days today, and both report that they are looking forward to going back to school.

Classroom visit

Friday was orientation at the International Community School, where Juniper will start kindergarten tomorrow. ICS is a public charter school with a mission of providing high quality education to refugee, immigrant, and American-born children. We feel really lucky that Juniper won a spot in the lottery to attend ICS. We're excited about both the curriculum (emphasis on investigation and discovery, project-based learning) and the diverse community (half of the kids in her class are learning English as a second language).

 

We visited Juniper's classroom and were delighted to meet her teacher. Ms. Wong seems like she will be a great fit with Juniper, and Juniper was obviously smitten with her. At one point while we were there, Juniper needed to go to the bathroom. Ms. Wong discovered that the light in the girls' room was burned out and started to apologize. Juniper cheerfully replied, "It's ok, I like to be in the dark." Aaron and I raised our eyebrows and told Ms. Wong that Juniper was trying hard to impress her. At home, Juniper refuses to enter rooms with no light.

Mother Goose

Hazel has discovered Mother Goose, and those old nursery rhymes are in high rotation in our house. Humpty Dumpty is her favorite (she calls our nursery rhyme collection the "Humpty Dumpty book"), but she loves all of them. On a recent long car ride, Juniper entertained herself and Hazel with repeated readings of "Old Mother Hubbard." The girls were laughing themselves silly at the antics of Mother Hubbard's dog. Juniper occasionally had to stop reading to catch her breath from laughing so hard, and at some points they started laughing with anticipation before the punch lines even came: "oh, oh, oh, this is the funny part!!"

Aaron and I enjoyed their obvious delight in the silly poem, and we were struck by the thought that kids have been laughing at these rhymes for over 200 years. Many thanks to friends Diane and John, who gave us this book shortly after Juniper was born.

Summer vacation

We just finished a terrific vacation week! Our vacation started with a visit from Aaron's sister Rebecca. She came down for a long weekend, and the girls were delighted to spend time with their beloved Aunt Becca. (The grown-ups also enjoyed her visit!)

 

We went up to Chattanooga, where the girls had a great time at the Ross's Landing Park. The highlight of the park is a long staircase with water running down into a large wading pool at the bottom. The entire water feature overlooks and is fed by the Tennessee River.

 The girls also enjoyed getting to play in the hotel room. We had adjoining rooms, and they were endlessly delighted by the ability to open up the interior door and go back and forth between our room and Janet and Rebecca's room.

We rode the Incline Railway, described as the world's steepest passenger railway, up to the top of Lookout Mountain.
 

After our day in Chattanooga, Janet returned to Clarkston, Rebecca went home to Chicago, and our family met the Delaneys for a few days in the aptly named Cloudland Canyon State Park. Our cabin was just a few minutes' walk from this amazing view of the canyon.

The kids loved having so much time to play and have fun together. We spent a lot of time around the cabin listening to the happy din (and occasional shrieking arguments) of kids running around being kids. One of their favorite activities was playing train with camp chair seats, frisbee steering wheels, and sticks for tickets.

Roasting marshmallows for s'mores was also a big hit! Violet patiently held her marshmallows not-too-close to the fire and waited for perfection on each and every one; even the mildest suggestion of char, ash, or other imperfection relegated the blemished marshmallow to the fire. Juniper enthusiastically and impatiently waved her stick around, burning some marshmallows, nearly hitting people in the face with others, and enjoying the whole process. (Note where the girls' sticks are pointing in this photo.) Hazel slowly and deliberately ate her s'mores with a gourmet's intense relish of a rare and amazing delicacy. Henry enjoyed the evening's activities indiscriminately, with apparently equal glee in the s'mores, plain marshmallows, camp chairs, frisbees, and sticks.

The kids observed mushrooms, frogs, flowers, slugs, lizards, moss, lichen, leaves, and bugs of all sorts.

For the most part, they were really good sports on our longest hike. The most popular part of our hike was probably this area with giant boulders where we stopped for lunch.

But they are still pretty young and small. We set off on a 2.5 mile loop, well stocked with snacks, lunch, and plenty of water. About 1 mile in, we came to an intersection and realized that we should take the easy half mile of road back to our cabin, not the 1.5 miles of trail that we had originally intended. I suppose one mile of trail plus a half mile of paved road isn't bad for two year olds!

All in all, a very fun trip! The girls told me this morning that they would like to go back to Chattanooga and stay in a cabin tonight, or maybe tomorrow. I told them we'd go back sometime, but not today or tomorrow. They agreed that later this week would also be acceptable.

For more photos from the trip, check out this gallery on Aaron's website.