One Normal Week of Summer. Including Shopping.

Well, here it is. Our first "normal" week of summer. Between camps and work trips and grandparent visits and church trips and road trips and such, every week so far this summer has had something, and this week doesn't, and it has been delightfully uneventful. It is also, incidentally, our last week of summer, and I am trying not to be sad about the fact that it has been so much crazyness that summer kind of happened not the way we wanted it to, but whatever, *brisk clap* this week has been good.

Want some mundane details? (I have been informed life is in the mundane details, and those are sometimes the things most worth remembering, so... say yes.)

Charlotte wore this shirt the other day and proudly proclaimed it her cello shirt! Uhhhh, no, little sister of an orchestra kid, that is a guitar. But nope. She will not be deterred. It is a cello, on her shirt, TELLO ON MAH SHIRT MOMMY. Okkkay then.

Anneliese came home from Lake Wateree with an old toy of Aunt Emily's, a Rainbow Brite sidekick named Puppy Brite, and she luuuuuurves him. This thing's tag says 1983 y'all! She has a like-new toy from 1983! But it is covered in rainbows and comes from her favorite 80s DVD set (yes we have the DVDs) and I will never sway her from this love, because it's adorable, and Rainbow Brite kicks ass. I'm glad she likes her. Also Puppy Brite, who is tackydorable and very Anneliese. I'm glad Emily was apparently never very attached to this thing! (Yet they somehow kept it anyway?)

Charlotte has been working hard on her pottying. Sometimes that means you need a quick break from the pool to poop with your goggles on. Wait is this the stuff we are supposed to, or we're not supposed to put on the internet for fear of embarrassing our kids? I can't remember.

Ali is doing just great, y'all. After a hard June/July, a few weeks away (for me), a new dairy-free diet (for Barbara), she is a sweet easy girl to have around, and I so love our morning snuggles while she drinks her milk and I drink my coffee and she grins at me and we both are secretly thinking thoughts along the lines of sweet nectar from heaven. Sometimes aunt life is just the best.

Daniel Tiger (who is not in our family but might as well be) has a baby sister! Even Nathan, who sometimes says he doesn't love Daniel that  much anymore because it is for babies (let the record show he is still obsessed with Thomas the Train, so....) was super excited for the new baby episode. And I don't have any shame in saying I cried and cried when that baby tiger was born. At a cartoon! For kids! I don't care, I love them. (My children were as riveted by this as they have been about anything on tv in a long time, which is probably why I love it too, and oh I don't care the reasons I just love that Tiger family.)

I did some back to school shopping with Nathan yesterday (I also got a slew of things for the girls last week when we were out of town), and he wanted to eat at K&W, which we did last year in a learning-to-use-a-cafeteria event, and he now apparently thinks is an every-year-school-shopping-day event, and he loved it and thought it was special, so I did too. He ate baked spaghetti, mashed potatoes, and blue jello, and if that's not a lunch of champions I don't know what is.

We also tried on lots of clothes for him, and he talked me into these brownish odd khaki-colored pants (he says they are the color of a train named Diesel 10) (see? Thomas obsessed) and also these lime shorts which he wants to wear for his first day of school. I have no idea what he will wear them with. I wanted him to pick a shirt for the first day of school, but he loves these shorts, so the shorts are what's happening. (I both love and hate shopping with him.) (Mostly love.) (And I do like the shorts! I do! Not that shirt with them though.)

Also yes I bought him a full-caffeine coke icee because back to school shopping makes me super indulgent, apparently.

Also look at his back to school supplies! Who doesn't freaking LOVE back to school supplies??

Anyway it's weird to me that he is starting second grade next week. (Wait, let me say it again so it sinks in properly: SECOND GRADE.) Weird because he is clearly still a tiny baby who was just born, who still sometimes falls asleep in my bed snuggling his tiger that used to live in his crib, and his stuffed Rex that has been his special animal for years.

(And also a sperm whale, naturally.)

How is this tiny baby going to SECOND GRADE??? Stay tuned for more sappiness next week when school actually starts okay? Okay.

Also, apropos of nothing, I still have wavy hair, which seems like I think I need to keep the internet updated about now (vain, what) and a fantastic new scarf full of my most favorite colors, from my most bestest friend, and those are things that make not-fun mornings way better. And also coffee.

And this is what my summer should have been like, all along. But at least there's this week.