Boring updates, again.

So. Summer.

We had family visit. We visited family and friends in Seattle. All of that was excellent, except that the kids turn out to be woefully ill-prepared for long car trips, and almost died of frustration during the drive to Seattle. Otherwise, lovely. Did you know there's a park in Seattle where you can ride a zip line, watch polynesian cricket, and visit a food forest? There is.

Then the girls and I went on a trip to visit friends, which was also lovely. The only sad part of our trip was that Cook stayed home to earn money and hoard his scarce vacation hours.

And THEN we went on a weekend camping trip with friends, which was also lovely. And now we’re home.

Our summer routine is anchored by Duchess's swim team practice, an hour every weekday morning. This is kind of an epic thing for an 8-year-old, as it turns out. I think she'll enjoy it more when she gets to know some of her teammates better, but for now it's just a lot of swimming. A LOT of swimming. Watching her attempt the butterfly after 45 minutes of nonstop swimming makes me feel tired, even as I lounge by the pool reading Richard Scarry books to Skipper. Duchess doesn't hate it, and she is proud to be pushing herself, but she's not enthusiastic.

For me, the summer so far is about learning the limits of my parenting toolkit. Skipper is in what I desperately hope is a difficult stage, and not the flowering of a sociopathic personality. She likes nothing more than provoking a response from me, and she's at least as happy with a negative response as a positive one. Duchess has had evil stages, but she's always remained heavily invested in getting approval from authority figures. Not so with Skipper. Skipper doesn't care. She is also very proud, and cannot admit fault. Oh, AND she's finally transitioning out of napping, which means she's exhausted and horrible by the end of the day. And timeouts just don't work on her. All of which, when you throw in an impatient, ungenerous parent, is a recipe for disaster. Or at least a lot of yelling.

The other thing we're doing this summer is watching the original Star Wars movies. We are very busy.