Summer update

We're wrapping up the first week of summer, with mixed reviews so far. The kids have been relating to each other in three ways (in more or less equal amounts):

1) fighting like demented ferrets

2) playing together (mostly with small animal/people/houses-type toys) in a peaceful, persistent way

3) happily and manically screeching, laughing, running around, and yelling

States 1 and 3 make me insane, which means I'm insane 2/3rds of the day. I'm getting better about just ignoring both of them, but when I'm tired or in a hurry, I'm pretty incapable of handling it with grace. Something to work on, I guess.

Duchess is participating in the very low-key parks and rec swim team, which means an hour swimming every weekday. She's still warming up to it, but I think she'll soon make some friends and feel more confident. Skipper, after watching the swim team practice for three days, is getting excited for her swim lessons in a few weeks, and has decided that she WILL put her face in the water.

Duchess left school in tears, because she found out on the last day that the Nerd King is, after all, headed off to The School for Smart Kids. Stupid smart kids. Also, in case you're interested, this year's round of budget cuts hit only the disadvantaged kids at Duchess's school. The school will maintain a .5 FTE PE teacher and .5 FTE librarian, and add a .5 FTE music teacher, but will lose a total of 1.0 FTE in reading and ESL assistance. 

What else? There's a lot of stuff going on around here. In the first four days of summer vacation, we had several firsts - Duchess was stung by a bee,* the girls met one of their cousins (and loved him so much they have requested that he become their brother), and the girls drank their first lime rickey. Skipper now substantially overestimates her ability to drive both her bike and her scooter, and keeps her knees scraped up and bruised at all times. We found a candy store that sells a wide variety of gummy candies, which is thrilling. Duchess has read a tall pile of books already. We have THREE exciting trips coming up in the next few weeks, and in general this summer already feels packed with excitement. If I can just come to better terms with states 1 and 2, I think it's shaping up to be an excellent summer.

*She handled this as might be expected, with much sobbing and wailing and general freaking out. Skipper, of course, immediately pitched a fit because I was paying too much attention to Duchess, threw her scooter on the ground, and refused to move. As we were half a mile from home, at the tail end of a long errand-running trip that had involved quite a bit of shitty behavior, this was a pretty maddening episode. Luckily, Duchess pulled herself together admirably (to be fair, this also might have been expected - Duchess is a ridiculous over-reactor, but she usually rises to the occasion when necessary), and Skipper recognized that she was not acting in her own best interest, so after about fifteen minutes of deep unpleasantness, we finally managed to start limping home.