maddy is 7!!

our baby girl has been out of the baby stage for quite some time, but it feels like the year 7 brings about a sense of being done with little girl things and moving onto the big girl stage. why, in parenting, do the days drag on, but the years fly by?





gifts from mommy and daddy

cupcakes for the class

cake for us

where else would madison decide to celebrate her birthday but the american girl store? if she could move into this store she would. we had tea in the cafe and then the girls took their dolls down to the salon for some earpiercing and hair styling.

maddy got this very real looking stuffed dog from nana and papa josh. the first thing she did was girl it up with bows and a new "ear-do".

i think i've mentioned in earlier blogs that the girls get a madame alexander doll to add to their individual collections every birthday. madison's collection is snow white and the seven dwarfs and she finally has the snow white. you can clearly see she is thrilled.

fall activities

hailey and jess started soccer this past weekend. they have games on both saturdays and sundays, but the coaches are nice enough to schedule practice an hour before the games so that we're not running around during the week. both girls prefer to be goalie, and they are on coed teams, so they have to be extra tough.

maddy is doing a ballet/tap/gymnastics class. she is anxious to start swim lessons again, but we're waiting until winter when we have our weekends back.

hi ho, hi ho, it's off to school we go...

the summer is finally over. don't get me wrong, we had a fantastic summer and i honestly enjoyed this time with my girls, but after 14 weeks of all but one week together, we are all ready for a bit of space. the girls are attending park slope christian academy. they have always attended alternative schools, so this is the first time they will go to school on fridays. this is also the first time they are required to wear uniforms to school. the girls actually like them a lot because it means wearing a dress or skirt every day. i like them because there is no fighting over what to wear in the morning.

we have never taken the subway during morning rush hour, so we were unprepared for the sardine-like experience tuesday morning. we watched two trains go by that were full. when i say full, i mean people pressed up against every door and every window. those with more experience than us somehow pressed in by elbowing and shoving. none of this was upsetting to the passengers already on board. they seemed to know that that this is just the way it is when commuting to work or school. we finally gave in and shoved ourselves into the next sardine can coming our way, and a couple of stops later, we were at school...on time and intact.

labor day weekend

we spent labor day weekend with neighbors and friends. our landladies are from barbados, so they feed us a lot of fantastic carribean food.
our neighborhood was party central the entire weekend. the biggest nyc parade of the year happens 3 blocks up from our house on labor day. it's a carribean festival/parade where all the peoples of the carribean carry flags from their country of origin. there's lots of dancing, good food, and great costumes (it must be hot in the carribean because a lot of the costumes were very tiny :)). there were 77 floats participating this year and 3 million people watched them go by. it was a phenominal event to witness first hand, but we are thankful that the all-night dj has gone back to his day job.

some updates

the girls got back from camp this past saturday. they had a blast and still haven't stopped talking about it. they are certain that they would like to go back for at least two weeks next year. actually, if clay and i didn't object, they would spend their next summer entirely at camp.
some of their favorite things were horseback riding, swimming in the lake, campfires, and the end of session sadie hawkins dance. maddy and hailey still think boys are gross, so they didn't ask anyone to the dance. jessica couldn't decide who to take, so she went with two boys. aside from the dance, the camp separated boys from girls so that the kids could focus on having fun and not their budding hormones.
clay and i had a great time while the kids were gone. we went to caroline's (a comedy club in manhattan), ate at all the great restaurants that we can't take the kids to, did some shopping, and saw several movies. by about friday, though, we were ready to have them back.