{sqt} – school, summer, splash pads, and schedules

I’m joining This Ain’t the Lyceum today for the Seven Quick Takes link up! Head over and read some other interesting, humorous, and uplifting thoughts from the past week 🙂 The topic this week is supposed to be book-related but I didn’t know until too late – still, I’m looking forward to reading about other people’s recent reads!

1. Almost every school in our area is back in session (some have been for several weeks already), but the highs are still over 100 most days, we’re still in the middle of monsoon season, and it just generally feels like summer. Kids are walking past our house every morning towards the elementary school in their put-together outfits with their backpacks full and my three are hanging out in their underwear eating popsicles and asking to watch a movie…
2. The quite enjoyable side effect of school having started again is that all the fun places to cool off in the heat are mostly empty! The splash pads, for example, are no longer crowded! And we have some epic splash pads near us. This week we’ve been exploring the Cloud at Kiwanis since we’re in the area for swim lessons anyway:
   

   

   

   

   

   How cool is it to have a splash pad that thunders and pours like a rain storm at the end of each cycle? Rondel would get so excited every time the thunder started, just running around waving his hands, and Limerick would tell me, “the rain is starting, the rain is starting!”

3. The other nice thing about this splash pad is the large non-sandy playground adjacent to it, ideal for my skinny kid who gets cold after five minutes in the water. Being a climber by nature as well, Limerick tends to spend most of his time on the playground, returning to the splash pad periodically to cool down again. He doesn’t always like me to take pictures of him (which is why I often have more of the other two), but he was quite proud of himself for climbing up to the top and hanging in all kinds of crazy positions!
   

   

   4. I’ve noticed that all my kids will try to copy each other if they notice one of them doing something new or different. They do so, however, in wildly different ways. When Rondel saw Limerick swinging off the metal pole, he wanted to do exactly that same thing, and tried to climb up the swirly metal ladder – but his anxiety and fear of heights kept him from going quite as high, and I had to coach him back down (which is actually something I’m super proud of him for – not too long ago he would have panicked so much I would have had to lift him down). Aubade, on the other hand, picked a nearby ladder so she wouldn’t have to wait for the boys to clear off theirs and headed up, making it to the top repeatedly and trying again even after falling from the top rung.

   

   
4. Rondel and Aubade’s primary differences (sweet vs. fierce, cautious vs. fearless) show up in their pretend play at the park too (Rondel here is a baby inside an egg about to hatch. I am not sure what is going on inside Aubade’s mind!)
5. 

   

   Swim lessons (the reason we’ve been at Kiwanis) are also a lot less crowded once school starts. The boys are in a class together with only three other kids, and they love it! Aubade hangs out with me on the sidelines and we get some silly mommy-daughter time, and the boys learn new skills, play fun games, and get to be in the water. I think they would swim every day if they could, and they’re getting better all the time. I’ve been impressed also with how well the instructor is able to help five bouncy 3-5 year olds focus and practice during the lesson!

6. As Rondel’s scheduled activities increased, and as the summer tended to be less predictable overall, I noticed that he was asking me very frequently when certain things would take place, and how many days away they were, and so on. So we made a visual schedule for him so he can see when things are going to happen each day of the week! We have regular events like church, speech therapy, and swim lessons, as well as more flexible events like grocery shopping, going to the library, and playing at the park. I still need to print out the names of the days of the week (I still can’t believe I forgot to do so in the first place), and then I’ll share the whole thing here. It has been so helpful for him, and he loves checking it to establish his place in the week and figure out when different things are going to happen.
7. Speech therapy, which I so casually mentioned in point 6, could be a whole post of its own! For now I’ll just say that we’ve done three weeks of it, so there isn’t much noticeable improvement, but Rondel loves it and has acquired a passionate interest in board games as a result of it 😛 In lieu of any actual kid-friendly board games in the house he’s been racing animals across the couches by rolling dice – we should probably make a decent board of our own out of cardboard or buy a commercial game somewhere…

I hope you all had a great week! I’d love to hear anything that stood out or made you smile 🙂