Edie's 9th Birthday Party

With so many people in our area who leave town for some or all of the summer, the "summer birthday kids" all try to cram in birthday parties before school ends.  Edie included.  This school year was shorter than usual because we had NO snow days, so the party frenzy was crazier than ever.  School let out on Friday, and Edie went to a party Friday evening, her own party was Saturday morning, her piano recital was at 1pm on Saturday and she had a pool party to attend at 2pm.  Wow.  Such is the life of an almost 9-year-old.

Edie's party, held three weeks in advance of her actual birthday, was at our community art center where the girls made "secret books," which are actually little boxes for special possessions.  They are a really nice group of girls and I manned almost the entire party solo while Chris and Gemma were at soccer.

Gemma and her 5th Grade Posse

For better or worse, Gemma has assembled an entourage of 5th grade friends this year. On the day she registered for Kindergarten, the 5th graders happened to be on the blacktop for recess when we pulled up in front of the school. A group of them ran to the sidewalk to "escort" her to the doors of the school.  She just smiles and nods as if it's all expected.  Like she's a celebrity.  Sigh....

So, it should not have come as a surprise to me that following 5th grade graduation, Gemma was asked to sign 5th grade yearbooks.  I spotted her from across the playground, but another mom (parent of the 5th grader in this photo) actually captured the moment.  I believe a line was forming.  We are in BIG trouble!

Last Day of Preschool for Gemma and Last Day of 3rd Grade for Edie

The girls' schools ended on the same day this year!

It was hard to see Gemma leaving her preschool and Edie's former preschool - Bowen Cooperative.  I loved Bowen and having spent the last two years as a co-president of the Board, I feel closer to the school than ever.  Our family made incredible friends at Bowen - the warmth and support of the community has always been amazing, and we will miss all of the teachers and especially the big red door that welcomed us each morning!  It will be wonderful to have the girls at elementary school together for the next two years - so with the sadness of leaving Bowen is also the excitement of knowing the girls will have that special time at school together next year!


Edie finished a fantastic year in 3rd grade.  Chris and I feel that she made great strides in math, literacy and composition this year.  She loves school and always puts forth her best effort.  Her teacher had nothing but good things to say about Edie and she especially praised her willingness to work hard, take academic challenges and her kindness to her peers.  We are very proud of her.

Happiest Hubby Ever

Chris went fishing with some work friends in early June, and had a fantastic day.  Here he is with his proudest catch (no, not me!):  a 25+pound striped bass.  I believe this was the largest striped bass he has ever caught!

Gemma as Claude Monet

One of the loveliest spring activities for the 4 year old class at Gemma's preschool is painting "en plein air" as Claude Monet.  Here is Gemma painting water lilies.  The class also learned about other painters - such as Van Gogh, Renoir and Paul Klee - and learned their styles of painting as well.

This is Gemma....

I have been updating the blog and found this photo, which to me is Gemma's personality shown perfectly in one photo.  She is (1) using something that "big kids" use, (2) making a loud noise, and (3) loving every minute of trying something new.  This is our Gemma!

Epic Sleep Battle

Let me start by saying that helping a child who was adopted as a toddler learn to sleep through the night is much more complicated - like TONS more complicated - than helping a newborn child learn to sleep through the night. I used tried and true techniques to train Sam to sleep through the night when he was a baby (with minimal tears) and never had sleep problems with him. Until he turned into a teenager, but that is a story for another day.....

When you adopt a toddler, they are absolutely traumatized and need to have every ounce of security in the world heaped on them by their new parents as they adjust. Co-sleeping is strongly encouraged, followed by a gentle transition to sleeping in their own cribs/beds. Check. Okay, now you have a 2-year-old who has grown to depend on you at night and whose attachment to you is still forming. So when, exactly, do you cut that little person off and let them cry their eyes out at night?? With Edie, the answer was never. She has always been a nervous sleeper and she was close to 4 years old before we got her to sleep through the night without us. Without tears. She liked the door open and lights on in the hallway (still does). But she slept ... until one year later when Gemma arrived on the scene. For a variety of reasons that aren't appropriate to share on this blog, Gemma's sleep patterns were even more troubled when she came to live with us. It took her longer to settle and feel secure. Getting her to sleep now is not the problem - that's easy. The problem arises during the night. At age 4 she still expects us to come when she calls us at night - and we come because if we don't Gemma screams at the top of her lungs and wakes Edie up and Edie starts to panic about losing sleep. Then we have two children who can't sleep, plus two adults who can't sleep. So one of us has slept with Gemma for part of the night for the past three and a half years, with probably a 5 or 6 nights in TOTAL she has slept through the night without us.

It is HELL, I tell you.

We have been working on small changes over the past 6 months, to encourage Gemma to get back to sleep on her own. We have had some success, but not enough. Last week, we decided that the time has come for, drum roll please...... the Epic Sleep Battle.

Phase I: For several days, Chris tried to bribe Gemma back to sleep at night with the promise of a small candy the next morning. This worked, sort of, but is not really sustainable. For her teeth, if nothing else.

Phase II: Supernanny. Gemma woke up at 10pm last night and asked for me. I told her to go to sleep. She cried. She got out of bed. For the next 45 minutes, I carried her back to bed with no words and no eye contact approximately 60 times. She tried everything, every tactic she could think of throwing my way. Then, for the next hour and 15 minutes, she would alternately cry, talk, yell, get out of bed. But each time with a longer cycle. After almost 2.5 hours, at 12:20am she gave up.

Who knows what tonight will bring, but I feel emboldened. Bring it on, Gemma, bring IT ON!

Meanwhile, I think someone is a little tired. :)

Beach Day in April!

We went to the Cape for Patriot's Day weekend - and the weather was perfect for some bike riding on the Rail Trail - one of our favorite activities!  We tried some new trails this time, including a side trail in Eastham that took us to the fabulous Coast Guard Beach.  This is thought to be where the Mayflower first sited land in 1620 - what a beautiful land they must have seen!

First Day of Soccer

She wasn't really "in it to win it," but she still looked cute. Her team is the Kingfishers, and it's the preK league. Lots of watching the grass grow!

Neighborhood Egg Hunt

We spent Easter weekend at home this year, and were lucky to be invited to a BIG egg hunt on the cul de sac where a lot of our school friends live.  Look at these cute kids!

Other Winter Happenings

I am sorting through months of photos, and have a lot of wonderful winter memories to share.....

In late December, we were lucky to have a visit from cousin Isla, my SIL, Barb, and (briefly) my wonderful brother Will.  We were able to celebrate Isla's 5th birthday and run all over town holiday shopping.  Barb and I had so much fun - she is the perfect person to take along on errands!  The girls had a fantastic time with their cousin - Isla and Gemma got to spend a lot of time together!!

In January, we took Chris' parents and Aunt Ginny to Cranwell Resort in the Berkshires to celebrate Don's 70th birthday!  Chris' Aunt Kathleen and cousin Kelly and her family also came. Marianne hosted a wonderful birthday dinner on Saturday night. The kids spent hours and hours in the pool - just the cure for the winter blues.

Sadly, no amount of team apparel purchases could help the Patriots in their heartbreaking Super Bowl loss against the NY Giants in February.  This happy photo was taken before the game......  Chris could not be consoled.  He later decided to jump on the Bruins bandwagon, with mixed results!

Edie and I thoroughly enjoy our time at the Hipstitch sewing lounge here in town.  We have done a number of mother and daughter sewing classes with friends.  Here we are with my pal, Krista, and her two happy sewers after completing an easy tote bag project!

Edie and her friend, Darwin, participated in our school's annual Invention Invasion.  They invented and designed the "HaScarMitt" which in an all-in-one Hat + Scarf + Mittens for those pesky younger children who lose their outerwear.  Their prototype is modeled by Darwin's little sister.   Those interested in ordering can contact Edie directly!

At the same Invention Invasion, Gemma managed to sneak her way into 4th grade buddy Lucy's "Everything Box."  I am still unclear what this box does, but I do know that Gemma spent most of the evening inside the box where she helped dispense items through one of its various tubes.

We had so many warm winter days - here is Gemma picnicking on a super warm weekend in early March.

Edie performed in her first play - the Wizard of Oz.  She was a munchkin along with her friends, Chloe and Katherine.  Our city has a wonderful theater program for elementary school children.  You have to sign up almost a year in advance as the program is super popular.  In 2013 Edie will be performing in Anything Goes and The Sound of Music.  If her mother can get her act together next year, there may even be some audible video to share!

All in all, it was a wonderful "winter" - we had almost no snow, lots of lovely weather, great getaways, and (knock on wood) no illness.  I think Gemma got the vibe just about right with this signature Winter 2012 look!

A Special Birthday Visit

My dad turned 75 in March.  He is truly someone who doesn't want or "need" anything and is pretty impossible to shop for.... I was mulling this over last November and thought that perhaps I would fly down to see him for his birthday weekend - or better yet - maybe my brothers would like to come with me?  Did I dare suggest this??  (It's one thing to fly to FL from Boston - a much bigger thing to fly from the West Coast!)  It was as easy as one email - my three wonderful brothers thought it was a great plan and we were quickly able to share the news with Dad - who was over the moon with excitement!

We had a great weekend together!  While it would have been great to have our entire families there, it would have been impossible to schedule and.... dare I say it?.... we all enjoyed our time alone.  As Will said:  "We need to do this more often!"  I completely agree!

The bad news - the only photos we have of the five of us together were taken with an iPhone (poorly) and the only good photo I got from the trip was a giant inflatable lobster flying over the beach in Boca Raton. Thank goodness for the memories, right?

A Parenting Lesson

On the way home from Turks & Caicos, we hit a few travel snags. To me, these are part of the adventure.  To Chris, these are a direct assault on his well being.  Let's start with the airport waiting lounge holding pen in Providenciales.  The security line was so long the airport must have paid the guy pretending to be a cab driver who occasionally came out to enthusiastically thank us for choosing the Turks & Caicos for our holiday destination.  At security, the guards sternly threw away a pair of rounded child scissors (belonging to Edie's tearful friend, Lilah) while completely missing our larger pair of pointed scissors.  Five planeloads of people were crammed into a room designed to handle at most one or two.  When we finally were able to board, they decided to pat down Gemma who was wearing skin tights leggings and a skin tight shirt.  Chris was about to lose his mind.

In Miami, things were not much better.  The airport is under construction and not well laid out to begin with, so getting to passport control was like being led through a never ending series of hamster tubes.  We retrieved our luggage and rechecked it.  We traveled many, many moons to get back to our gate. We were VERY early.  We ate.  We got back to our gate in plenty of time and learned that our previously assigned seats were not ours any longer.  The most ridiculous boarding process in the history of American Airlines then played out, and we were not given seats, nor were any passengers asked to voluntarily be bumped.  I won't go into details, but as Chris LOST his mind and had to leave the immediate vicinity of the gate, I learned that American had committed every infraction you could commit against passengers who had guaranteed seats (including a giving a couple of our boarding passes to someone else!).  We were well compensated for the tickets, but at that point Chris was saying lots of heated things which I probably should not share publicly.  It was 9:30pm and we booked a hotel.   We bought toothbrushes.  We arrived at our hotel at 10:20pm with both kids close to tears, partly from being tired but at least as much if not more b/c their daddy had steam blowing out of his ears.  We crawled into bed.  Edie quickly realized that she had lost her prized little dog (see below) somewhere at the airport.  She starts to sob.  Chris begins to swear and thrash.  Hilarity ensues.

Okay, just kidding, hilarity did not actually ensue.  (Although I find this whole story hilariously funny to tell my friends now!)  In the dark, I used my trusty iPhone to track down the Hudson Newsstand at the airport where Edie believed she had left the dog.  The heavens opened and an employee answered the phone after about 50 rings.  This nice employee located the dog and would said he would leave it for us to retrieve the next morning.  Crisis averted.  Well, one of them.  We arose at 4:00am, retrieved the dog at 5:45am, and got on the first flight back to Boston.  Gemma threw up after all the turbulence on our descent.  Chris looked like a man defeated.  The crowd roared.

Okay, where does the parenting lesson come in?  There actually IS a point to this story.  A few weeks later, I was reading to Edie from a nice Buddhist-inspired bedtime story book.  The story that night was about a family who needed to cross a desert to attend a family wedding.  They needed to travel at night to navigate by the stars, but their navigator fell asleep the first night and the camels went on unguided and they woke up hopelessly lost and low on water.  They were still lost the second day and the family was starting to panic, but the father told them that they would be best able to find water if they stayed calm and explored all possibilities.  Sure enough, after many setbacks, they did find water and made it to the wedding on time.  After the story was over, Edie turned to me and said "Mommy, can I ask you a question?"  "Sure honey," I said.  "If we were lost in the desert without water, would OUR daddy be able to get us out?"


(Disclaimer:  Occasionally I poke fun at Chris in the blog.  I write the blog; he does not.  So who can blame me for having a little fun??  Rest assured, he would have stories to share about me if only he could.....)

Turks & Caicos

Thanks in large part to some advance planning on the part of our friends, Dave and Sarah, we had a blissful week in Turks & Caicos over the February school break. We stayed at Beaches, which is a resort designed for families. It's all-inclusive, so once you get there there is nothing to think about at all... except which pool to lounge at, where to eat lunch, and what kind of cocktail would be best before dinner. Everyone was very happy!




Edie and her friend Lilah spent hours and hours in the pool, enjoying the swim up bars for smoothies, and the freedom of not having to be with parents at all times.



Gemma went to a kids camp most mornings, and enjoyed lots of activities which often included a visit from a Sesame Street character.



Chris and Dave went bonefishing one morning while Sarah and I held down the fort by the pool sipping ice tea and wondering how the girls were doing at kids' camp. They caught many bonefish (eight I think) which was a highlight of the trip for Chris. Look at that water! The beaches and water around Turks & Caicos are phenomenally beautiful!



We scheduled a family photo shoot toward the end of our trip. I am not allowed to post all of the photos, because we may use some on our holiday cards... but here are a few of them. We really liked our photographer!