Finley Quacks Up His Baby Sister

For a while now, Finley has realized that he can make Dagny happy and, more recently, that he can make her laugh. Here he is with his Duck Tours souvenir quacking up his favorite audience member:

Dagny Rocks

Going to playgrounds these days isn't as easy as it once was since Dagny is less like a portable vegetable and more like an actual person.  At one of our favorites, the fire truck playground, after pushing her in the swing and the stroller for most of our visit, I plopped her down in the rocks as Finley went down the slide over and over and landed right in front of us. 

 

At first, she kicked her feet around and tried to eat a few rocks, but then just started to dig and dig.

 

She had a grand old time! With only a couple other reminders to not eat the rocks, I was impressed how well she played.

Almost ate a few here...

Hooray for rocks!

 

Mother's Day 2013

No captions needed :)

Forseters in 2013 and beyond

Hello dedicated followers, just a few life updates for those that we don't get to speak with as often:

1. Dan has officially retired from competitive ultimate, saying farewell to his Ironside teammates and wishing them well.  He'll still coach Tufts and is going to play some summer league disc with a local team, but it certainly won't be the same and while I appreciate how much more he'll be around--I know we'll have to find him a new competitive outlet!

2. With my current long-term subbing position coming to an end in June, I have been on the job hunt and I am proud (and relieved) to announce that I have accepted an offer to be the newest Kindergarten teacher at the Alcott School which is in the lovely, neighboring town of Concord.  Here's their website:

http://alcott.colonial.net/

I'm so excited to have a new position that will truly be mine and that I will still be so close to home.  After all the job changes and such since Finley's arrival back in 2009, this new path makes me feel like it was all worth it and meant to be!

3. We are finalizing the paperwork for Finley and Dagny to attend the local temple's preschool, Congregation Beth Elohim's Early Learning Center (CBE ELC), starting in the fall. Finley will begin just before Labor Day, but Dagny will have to wait until October or November since the youngest kids can be 15 months and Dagny won't be 15 months until October.  Both kids will stay where they are now through the summer and then Finley will switch at the end of August and Dagny later in the fall.  That will mean two different drop offs and pick ups for me for a while, but we'll manage.  We've been very happy were they are and it will be sad to say goodbye, but we are excited about adding the Jewish cultural and religious aspects to their early education and becoming part of an active family network within the school/temple.

Our Own Great Outdoors

Dagny's baby swing finally arrived last Thursday and Finley was THRILLED to have Dan install it, yes, Finley--he was so happy Dagny could play on the swing set with him now.  Love that big bro.

 Dagny loved her first ride and it was fun seeing both kids swinging in the spring air.

Finley can really pump his legs now and with a starting push, can maintain the momentum for a while which is pretty cool.  Later, Finley just had to see if the baby swing was more fun than his...

...but quickly announced he was too big.  Phew. Then, we headed out to the front yard to play some baseball.  Dagny and Dan played in the grass while Finley and I took turns being the pitcher and the batter.

 Wow, our grass looks lush, eh? Thank you to two days of rain!  Finley ran back to the garage to get a frisbee and soon he and Dan were tossing it back and forth like teammates.  Dagny wanted in on the game.

 Here's how far and accurate the kid can throw these days...

We're still working on the catching, but he can do better at close range :)  Making his dad and I very proud!

Mailman on a Push Bike

So as I try to recreate the cul-de-sac childhood I enjoyed, I wrote a letter to all 40 or 50 houses in our three street neighborhood introducing ourselves and inviting people to join us in creating a more connected community.  I asked for email addresses to create a neighborhood list that we could all use for babysitting, petsitting, contractor referrals, block parties, playdates, yard sales, get togethers, etc.  I know, I know, you think I'm so dorky...ah well...last week, I popped Dagny in the front pack and suited Finley up to be my mule and off we went.  He was pretty stoked to get to deliver mail!

He can pretty much pedal without any help, but pushing does make things go faster and the steering more reliable.  Finley the Mailman was an eager participant in this outing and loved putting the bright yellow papers in mailbox after mailbox.

Some boxes were up too high or were too tricky to pull open, but Finley persevered and was so helpful.  Much to my surprise, we made it to nearly all the houses before I ran out of photocopies and Finley ran out of gas. We headed back home and after parking his bike in the garage, Finley said, "When you get more yellow papers, you can put them in the mail by yourself, okay?"  Indeed--I guess child labor isn't outlawed for a reason :)

I've already received some pages back in our mailbox with people's info and gotten emails from others, so we're off to a good start! Summer block party here we come!!

Maybe I am as civic minded as my father...gulp...

After School Antics

Sometimes it's a challenge to figure out what to do with the kids between school pick up and dinner on the weekdays.  Finley would be happy to just go home and play, but Dagny isn't always as easy going so we try to keep things interesting.  Thursdays at 4 are Finley's gym class and so Dagny gets to watch her brother in action through the windows that are just at her eye level.

Here's Finley with Coach Mike:

And since this week marked the end of another session, there was a certificate presentation.  Look closely as how awed Finley is about the pink piece of paper he received as he walks back to his spot.  Life is good.

Other days, we try to explore our town and since a brand new frozen yogurt place opened up a few weeks back, we just had to patronize this new establishment. Finley went wild and got vanilla with some sprinkles and a few M&Ms.  We took our bowls outside where Dagny could crawl around and we could all enjoy the sunshine.

Much to Finley's joy, there was an endless stream of traffic going back and forth out front.

He ate most of this frozen yogurt and then helped me throw out our trash and recycle the funny square-ish spoons that we had used.

Now what will we do next week...

Tufts Legacies

Last weekend, Dan was away coaching at Dartmouth and so we invited over some friends to play.  Tali and Baby Nola came over first; seeing both girl sitting up and nearly interacting was quite something! Nola was born in October, so Dagny's about 3+ months older.  Both of Nola's parents are frisbee playing Tufts alumni like Dan and me, so let's hope at least one of our girls grabs a disc and continues the legacy.

 Soon after Tali's arrival, Gabi came over with Charlotte and Joey.  Charlotte and Finley took off for the basement while Joey was the big man on campus upstairs with the two babies.  Charlotte and Joey's dad, Dave, is a Tufts frisbee guy, as well, so it was Tufts' progeny mania at our place!  Nola and Tali headed home for bedtime, as the rest of the kids sat down to dinner.

 We headed outside to try the new swing set for a few minutes and that led to some driveway car driving followed by some baseball and frisbee tossing in the front yard, the dads would have been proud!

After we said goodbye and got Dagny to bed, Finley created a hayride mash up by hooking up his wooden farm train carriages to his front loader tractor.

 He was very proud of this creation and asked me to take lots of pictures of it in case it came apart.

Dagny 10 Months +

Dagny hit the 10 month mark and kept on trucking.  She's crawling everywhere, even up the entire basement staircase.  She can pull up and cruise around on two feet.  A few times last week, she got herself to a standing position and then let go to be "Free Standing" but that lasts just a couple seconds at best. Not too shabby!

She can push herself backwards on her little car.

 She's eating more and more people food now that she's got nearly 5 teeth (including two on the top with a cute little gap in between).  Here she is showing off her fork skills post-dinner.  In reality, she can eat things off a fork if we poke the food onto it first.

 The biggest development is probably her talking.  She's able to say "hi" and wave, which is adorable (except at 6am).  She will echo "uh-oh" if something falls or she drops something off her highchair tray.  We also think she's saying "no" sometimes, though her dramatic head shake makes the word not too necessary.  Dan's working on getting her to say "up" when she wants to be picked up and claims he's making good progress :) Here are a couple of blurry videos I took before bed the other night trying to capture her waves, "hi's" and one "uh-oh".

At school, she continues to have fun with her little friends.  She chases her buddies through the tunnel and up the climber.  She has learned to enjoy the sandbox and crawling around outside, too.  Last week, her teacher told me how she crawled up to a friend who was having a snack and began to feed her cheerios and then the little girl fed her some in return.  How funny! She's a handful, for sure, but so darn cute :)