Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I am so excited that school is getting closer and closer.  The girls are getting on each others' nerves more and more.  We have resorted to giving them lines to write a little more often.  In fact, it became an all-day punishment last Sunday.  They both had to write, “I will not hit my sister _____.”  Fill in the blank with the sister’s name.  Amy was given 200 lines and Misha 50.  They literally took all day to get it done.  Misha spent the first couple of hours whining that 50 was just way too many for her.  Her printing is atrocious, and I might just continue to give her lines to help her improve.  Amy has quite neat writing and normally could knock out 200 lines in a couple of hours.  I don’t know what her problem was on Sunday, though, maybe she was hoping we would retract some of the punishment.  One of Amy’s other experiences with lines came when I made her write, “I will not hit my sweet sister Misha.”  She looked at the sentence and said, “Sweet?  Aw come on.”  Still makes me chuckle to think of it.

Kristen is a screaming, crying, whining, unpleasant little bear lately.  It is embarrassing to take her to stores and restaurants because if she doesn’t get her way, she screams LOUDLY.  Flicking her cheek, swatting her bottom or having her sit on the stairs is not a deterrent at all, she just gets madder.  Don’t know what I am going to do with that temper of hers.

Swimming lessons are almost over for the summer.  They have been every Tuesday morning at 10 am for the past seven weeks and next Tuesday is the last time they meet.  Because I have taken Kristen with me, I haven’t been able to watch the girls very closely and see their progress.  Kristen likes to play and I finally got smart and started taking toys to keep her busy.  I went swimming with her one week, but after 45 minutes, she’s had enough and wants something to eat.  Just seemed like a waste of $4.25 to me.  On the day that I swam with Kristen, I looked over at Amy in her lesson expecting to see her practicing her strokes or some swim-lesson type activity.  There she was sitting on the edge of the pool with blood running down her face.  One of the other kids in her class had accidentally kicked her in the  nose.  I thought, “It would have to happen to Amy.”  She’s not usually prone to bloody noses, none of my kids are, so the bleeding stopped after a bit.  She played in the pool for a while after her lesson, but wasn’t putting her nose in the water.  Not so much fun so she was ready to leave when I said it was time to go home.

Misha celebrated her 6th  birthday on July 9th.  We told her that she could invite one friend to come to dinner with us at Cinzetti’s.  She chose Jonah Wasden and his entire family ended up coming with us as well.  Jonah gave her a cool Crayola coloring gift with magic markers, glitter glue, and cool pads of paper.  Of course, you can imagine that Amy was equally happy with the gift until I told her she was not allowed to play with it unless Misha gave her permission.  Boo hoo for her.  We also gave Misha a fuzzy warm robe that Amy loves.  I catch her wearing it pretending to be a doctor dressed up in surgery clothes.

Chris was antsy to get away this month.  We were lucky enough to find space at the Trendwest property in Steamboat Springs from July 4 – 6 and headed up there for a couple of days.  We missed out on all the usual 4th of July activities, but it was nice to get away.  The girls loved the pool and we took bikes for riding on the trails.  I think we rode one morning for 6 miles, Misha on her little 12” wheels with her legs going and going.  She got tired.  Kristen sat behind me in a bike seat.  She was pretty enthusiastic about it to begin with until it wasn’t so comfortable to keep her legs spread around the  bike seat unnaturally for so long.  Chris and Amy stopped along the way for a short walk, but I knew Kristen and Misha were tired.  We headed back to our condo.  Poor Kristen had been sitting in a dirty diaper for awhile.  Amy and Chris didn’t show up for awhile and I began to worry.  Calling on the cell phone didn’t get much response.  Finally Chris called to say they had gone to a store looking for a bike lock and would be back shortly.  They probably rode 10 miles that day.

If the girls thought the biking was tough, they would have never begun the hike past Fish Creek with us the next day.  We hiked up to a bridge that took about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  I held Misha’s hand and mostly pulled her along behind me.  It was a workout for me, so I know their little legs and hienies were hurting too.  Kristen was in a backpack carrier on Chris’ back and fell asleep along the way.  I have a small pillow tied to the bar of the back pack for just such a moment.  It only took us 40 minutes to get back to the van.  Woohoo.

Then, Chris took Amy and Misha tubing on the “Mighty” Yampa River after lunch.  Mighty is an overstatement.  Kristen and I walked around the shops downtown and then ended up waiting at the stopping point for 1 ½ hours.  Chris told us to be there by three.  We were, they weren’t.  And again he wasn’t answering his cell phone.  A little more understandable since he was on the water.  I guess Amy complained from the get-go.  She mostly didn’t like the slime in the water and was nervous tubing.  Bugged Chris to no end and they finally got out of the water about three blocks from where I was and walked.  Misha had a great time though.

Amy has been renamed by Kristen to “Annie”.  More of the emphasis is on the latter end of the name.  And she can tattle.  One day Amy was lying on the couch sick (actually it was after we got back from Steamboat, and she must have had sunstroke.  She threw up all day long).  Kristen was trying to take the barf bowl away from Amy and Amy kept saying, “You can’t have it.  I’m sick and you’re not.”  So Kristen comes to me with perfect tattling intonation and says, “Mommy, Annie say no sick.  I sick.”

Misha has been renamed to Nishe.  Sounds kind of like Kristen is saying nice with a lisp.