March: The Babysitter Month

I have a very small part-time teaching job now, but its first month required close to full-time hours for writing and planning. It was a strange shift for me to spend so much less time with kiddos (M especially) this March than ever before, but they adore their roster of babysitters and do not see anything wrong with the arrangement. Now that the curriculum is done, future sessions of the class will be less time-consuming, but it was interesting to work close to 40 hours/week for a few weeks. Our weekends and unstructured Mondays were suddenly sacred, and provoked intense nostalgia for the seemingly endless unstructured months of years past (during which, of course, I was constantly pining for more structure).

Monterey Bay

Talking about tuna

"That looks like a murmuration but of fish"

Climbing a clam

Parents at M's school performed dramatic recreations of children's books: guess our book choice

And yet another big babysitter day so grown-ups could attend grown-up ballet 

Three cheers for uninterrupted Mondays

Three cheers for dry creek beds

Three cheers for Mom actually paying attention to me and not a syllabus

And way more than three cheers for cookies

Unidentified flower at the creek

We're lucky we remembered L's 3 years 3 months and 3 days photos within a few days of her actually being this age

Their lives are going to be measurably much more awesome when this kid can read, any day now

Though he still spends most of his time constructing and deconstructing and constructing again

California kid

We can never move, they love sushi too much. Maybe to Japan...

A common sight

Baby's first solo little Lego build

Cul-de-sac riding is everyone's favorite thing. Except maybe our neighbors'...

Guess who's back?!

A favorite park

I asked each kid to "put on something nice" for school pictures

They have slightly different concepts of nice

Rainbow birthday cake with a cherry on top

"Spooty ottopus"

"Tate a pitcher of me huggin my Duh"

"Tate a pitcher of me huggin my Subidog"

Double tongues

Juice bliss

Presented with no comment

We have single-handedly funded our library for the entire year with our late fees because we have to borrow too many books to keep track of every time we go. Not a problem.

Bowling field trip at school

The ISS passing over the 101 -- "Goodnight astronauts."

The perfect dress