tawbubby

Daph has been celebrating for a week.  On her birthday, we went to Water Country USA.  We had a blast.  She asked for pizza and a “beach cake with a sun” for dinner.  I was pretty proud of our cake.

She got some really nice presents, I’ll highlight three.  She got a new backpack for kindergarten:

And a mop.

Yes, a mop.  We were caught without one.  Saturday night, we were eating dinner, talking about what she might want for her birthday.

D: “I don’t know”

Amelia: “Maybe something like Legos?”

D: “I don’t want Legos for my birthday, I want a mop!”

Um, o.k.  She got it a couple days late.  And she loves it.

Today, she got a really cool bubble blower from her friend.

Daphne had a birthday party today at Children’s Museum of Richmond with two of her friends from Purple room as co-hosts.  There are a lot of July/August birthdays and it was really nice to combine a few.

Here she is getting a snuggle from Seymour the dinosaur, mascot of CMoR.

Here are the three birthday kids.  You can watch them while everyone sings “Happy Birthday’ here.

The cake was gorgeous, and each kid got to eat the piece with their own name on a package tag.  Which was the first thing Daphne announced to her Bebe this evening.

The museum’s been redone since we last visited, there’s come cool new stuff.  This is my favorite: it’s not everyday you get to milk a cow.

Or hang out in a bat cave.

It’s all over, she had a really good week.

A quick post of some accumulated pictures.  Here’s some water slide action, for those who like videos.  Last week, Daphne and I went with Amelia for her weekly Cobblestones Water Park visit.  She went on one bigger slide twice, too.

Daphne went to a birthday party at the YMCA climbing wall, and Ethan took this great shot.

A babysitter taught Amelia to shuffle…she’s proud of her new skill.

Daphne got to host her class guinea pig, Chewy, for a weekend.  It was lot of fun.  He is very social and cute, and boy does he love parsley.

Amelia got a new hand-me-down bike from a friend’s daughter.  She’s so tall.  She’s going into 1st grade and got the bike from a girl going into 5th grade.  Her first question on her first ride with this bike was “When is the last day of summer, mama?” because she knows I hope she’s off training wheels this summer.  She has some muscles in those legs.  She rode all the way to our pool, around the pond, back past her friend’s house to say hi, and home (maybe 1.5 miles).

She also learned to play Solitaire this weekend while we were at The Cabin.  She had it easy because we set up 6 pile games, instead of 7, since the little table she played on was 6 boards wide.  Now that she’s home, she’ll have to try the harder 7 pile version.

Girls, reading on Daddy’s cot.  I hope we’re raising a family of readers. (D&P that’s Lemony Snicket #11…).

Daphne loves pretending with her playmobile toys.  And she has The Best hair.

And we made a pool in the river for them to play.  She enjoyed sending leaf boats across the pool, from the entrance to the exit in the flow of water.

Watch out for this girl when she plays Cowboys with the neighbor boys!

Daphne got to play glow-in-the-dark golf with her Daddy one night when Amelia had a sleepover.  Super cool.

This kid is cute.  Amelia would be the first to tell you.  Adorable!  Cute-iful is my word for her now, from a song she danced to in her spring dance recital (“C is for cute-i-ful”).

She’s just floating, and cute, on my hip in this one.

Even when she’s slightly blurry, she’s cute!

Gotta admit the side view is even really….Cute!

She’s very cute in her Curious George baseball cap.

Of course she’s cute scrambling all over the rocks at Lobster Cove.

And all tuckered out from vacation is really Cute.

The girls used our old iPhone3s for cameras during our trip to Monhegan Island.  Here are Daphne’s pics of:
A Duck.

And Amelia.

Here are Amelia’s pictures of:

A Duck.

And Daphne.

Daphne dances with Ms Katie on Mondays at her preschool.  They have a recital in the gym.

She got to start “Let’s All Dance Like A Daisy” from behind a flower pot!

We can do the Daisy Dance all day…

She also did a tap to an alphabet song.  Her line was “B, you’re so Beautiful”.  My favorite part is “Alphabetically speaking, you’re o-tay!”

Daphne is actually 43 inches tall now, a new ride category at Busch Gardens.  Clearly in the purple.  She’s been talking about it all winter.  We finally made it down there, after she’s been asking all spring “When are we going to Busch Gardens?”

Daphne is our brave girl.  She rode this once with each of us, and in general is game to go on most rides.

Still smiling, second time on the ride.  (Thanks for the glasses, Mel!)

And on the swings with Ethan (which Amelia likes, too, but only in a double seat).

Amelia isn’t as brave.  Daphne gives Amelia a good push, sometimes.

This is a roller coaster that makes a water spray after a loop, and they are waiting for the approaching spray.  Amelia’s ducked behind Ethan for protection.  Daphne says “Bring it on!”

This is more Amelia’s pace:

This is a giant tube slide to get down from a tree house & net climbing structure.  I love the slide.

The big event was the Roman Rapids- a water tube-get soaked ride.  This is the ride Daphne talked about all winter.  We all went, we all got soaked.  They didn’t want to go again.  Until about 10 minutes into the car ride home, when they said maybe they’d go twice next time.

Awesomeness!  Purple under eye stripes are left over from field day.  Leotard was from practicing her dance recital song.  And of course, safety gear.

And, yes, I cannot get enough of this kid.

Daphne doesn’t love art as much as her sister.    I think she sometimes can’t imagine where to start with a blank piece of paper, but she also hasn’t embraced coloring books.  She’d rather play with her trains!

But, she is starting to draw some recognizable pictures.  She draws smiley faces, sometimes in a boat.  Sunshines.  She used to draw a lot of circles.  Now she plays with little blobs of scribble to see their shapes and colors.  She loved making this rainbow with lines for each color:

She is a pro at rainbows.  That might be her favorite thing to draw or paint right now.

I am not sure what this is, maybe a person?, but it was clearly intentional!

This came home on Thursday from her occupational therapist:

We got outside a couple evenings this week in nice weather.  Tuesday night our neighbors had a osprey in their tree.  The osprey was sitting on a branch, eating a fish!  Well, a half fish.  We didn’t see it eat the first half.  The fish cross section was clearly visible under the bird’s talons.  It was really neat.  Daphne was able to find the bird a couple times in the binoculars.

Since last year, Ethan’s been promising Amelia a clip on flower for her bike, if she can ride it to our neighbor Sahana’s house.  Folks, this is not far.  But it is all up hill.  She got there tonight with two or three one finger pushes from me. But she made it.

Apparently the important thing was that she knew she could do it.  After dinner, she decided she could go all the way to the top sign.  There’s no stopping her now!

She is pretty funny riding down hill.  She won’t let loose.  She glides for 10 feet, then brakes, glides, then breaks, glides, then breaks.  She is  very careful.  Though some how she ended up with a scratch on her shin.  She proclaimed she had a great ride, as evidenced by the boo-boo.

This is a picture of Daphne belting out Katy Perry’s “Firework” in the back seat of my car.  Here, she has a hairbrush microphone (and I had a red light). She reliably pumps at least one arm in the air for the first chorus.  It’s the best thing to see in the rear view mirror.