Something for everyone

Andy has been aching to go to the Solar Decathlon for years. And yesterday he finally got his chance. He said he was "gathering ideas." Uh-oh. 

 Go Bucks!

 CalTech's entry. See the look on this guy's face? That's about how excited the girls were the entire time. 

 OK, so you want to know how we got the girls to wait in all the lines to look at eco-friendly houses? That's right. We bribed them. The National Book Festival also happened to be on The Mall this weekend, so we lured them (mostly Amalia) with PBS character hugs. Above is Pig from Super Why!

 Sid the Science Kid

 Clifford the Big Red Dog

 Princess Pea (also from Super Why!)

This is the only character we could get Lily to pose with. Martha Speaks is her favorite show. (Mine too! Well, of the ones the girls watch, I mean. It teaches vocabulary and features a dog who talks because she eats alphabet soup. The characters and story lines crack me up. In one episode, Odysseus helped a seasick boy get over his fear of being on a boat by declaring, "Truman! You've got to persevere!")

Woofster, a new character being added to Super Why!, apparently. (We learned this at the PBS Kids tent.)

Curious George (Amy, are you still reading this? Are all these pictures of costumed characters making you cringe?)

Mr. Steve from SteveSongs

 Singing his big hit, "Shapes." It's very catchy. Believe me. 

 We could not get the girls to go up onstage. Perhaps they are my children after all. 

Early girl

Amalia loves her tomatoes. If we take her grocery shopping, she'll eat a whole carton of the gourmet tomatoes (you know, the variety pack of little green, orange, and yellow ones) before we get to the checkout stand. 

 I believe the one in these pictures was picked up at our local farmers market.

I really only took the pictures because it reminded me of my childhood. I used to pack tomatoes in my lunch and eat them whole like apples. Just like this.

Snippets

Wearing jeans this week after a summer of skirts:
Lily: I'm going to always wear pockets. They're so helpful!

After Amalia snatched the Complete Works of William Shakespeare away from Lily:
Lily: Give that back! You won't like it. It doesn't even have any pictures.
Amalia: But I love words!
(Not that Lily was reading it, mind you. She just liked the gilded edging.)

About a boy at school:
Lily: You know what? Gabo used to be mean. Then he was funny. And now he's nice.

Waterlogged

More extracurriculars! Passing up more dance or art classes this fall, Lily instead decided to join a swim team. Well, team perhaps is a bit of an overstatement--the focus is more on skill-building than competition.

We were a bit nervous since she only learned to swim earlier this year with the help of some instructional videos Andy and I found online. (They're great, by the way, if anyone is interested.)

But her lack of formal instruction, didn't seem to faze Lily at all. Here she is trying out the backstroke. And Andy reports that she loved wearing flippers.

She may have a ways to go before the team's first meet in November, but she came home with a glowing report of her first lesson, so I'm thinking this will be a fun adventure. Go Sea Devils!

Amalia's first dance class

My mother recently pointed out that we had signed Lily up for various dance classes when she was 2 or 3 and asked me whether we had anything planned for Amalia.

Not wanting to neglect our second child, we found a dance center that was offering a couple of classes for Amalia's age group: Little Ballet Princess and Rhythm Jump Jam. Guess which one we signed Amalia up for.

Correct. It wasn't the ballerina one. As it turns out, however, they didn't have enough enrolled in the 9 a.m. class, so Amalia ended up with the princesses today. Next week, we'll move to the 10 a.m. Rhythm Jump Jam class.

This was Amalia's first class ever, outside of daycare. She started off in observation mode, not really participating. But about halfway through, she got into it.

 And she really liked Miss Erin, who is lying next to her in the above picture.

 Amalia's dad thought Miss Erin was pretty OK too.

A quick clip of Amalia's first dance class. I'm thinking the Rhythm class will be good next week. 

Lily sitting with Princess Mhoon, the director of the dance company, watching Amalia's class. Lily went to a weeklong dance camp this summer run by Princess Mhoon.

Glover Park Day!

 

 Today was Glover Park Day, a local celebration of our little DC neighborhood.

 Lily brought her trusty jump rope. 

In addition to food and music, there are a bunch of local vendors that set up tables and pass out candy and balloons to the kids so that they can get the parents to talk to them. Even Pepco had a table, a clever PR move given that Glover Park pretty much always loses power when it storms. 

Jitterbug. She might love live music almost as much as I do. 

Back at home, the girls set up a similar gathering in the playroom.

Presided over by a giant hamster, apparently. 

That's a lot of orange juice. Note also the firetruck standing by. 

She's got moves like Jagger. 

Jumping beans

I would count this as a successful summer for Lily. She learned how to swim, hula hoop, and jump rope. Not to mention read up a storm. 

What Amalia lacks in technique, she makes up for in enthusiasm. (Gee, I think I've written that exact sentence before on this blog.)

Ask a silly question

Last night as I was helping Amalia get ready for bed:

Me: Why are you so stinkin' cute?

Amalia: Because I love to!

X chromosomes

I don't know how Andy got Amalia to wear this shirt this morning. She has been on a t-shirt boycott of late, literally. She says that t-shirts are for boys only. Perhaps she's decided they're OK when paired with a flouncy skirt and strappy sandals. Seriously, how are these my children?

Tonight we had dinner with our new next door neighbors of previous blog post fame. There may very well be a tunnel dug between the two houses before the weekend is out.

Naming names

Conversation in the car this evening:

Andy: Lily, do you know the difference between fauna and flora?

Lily (indignantly): Those are NOT the names of our new neighbors!

Me: (snort!)

Lily's right. A new family moved next door (sadly, our Argentinian neighbors bought a house in another part of the city). They have two girls, much to Lily's delight, and one's even in first grade.

Their names are Zahra and Baraka. Exotic, yes. Scientific classifications, no.

Then Andy went on to postulate how we should have three kids and name them Herbivore, Carnivore, and Omnivore. To which Lily immediately replied, "Well, those would have to be boys. Those sound like boy names."