high/low

f. graduated kindergarten this week. it was a sweet little ceremony. they sang the requisite songs about the days of the week and of course a song where they get to say butt eighthundredandfiftythousand times and then snicker and giggle with their cohorts. his teacher even included a candy-themed award presentation. think kindergarten version of most likely to.../best... fin was presented with the "100 grand" award for his outstanding math performance. which might as well have been a "most unlike his mother" award. but he was thrilled and so was i. and then he went up to accept his award and graciously shouted "yeah baby!" at the top of his kindergarten lungs on the way back to his seat. it was wonderful to see him so proud of his own accomplishments.















after graduation the plan was to come home and my mom would watch the lil boys nap while f. and i spent the afternoon at the swimming pool.

a little back story here. an unforeseen fear of the pool somehow developed while we were there last time, which i think correlates to the fact that when he asked to go down the slide in the big pool i responded, "sure, daddy will be at the bottom to catch you." apparantly this was the wrong response because therein began the automatic crying (which has now been renamed "my reaction"). keep up folks. amidst being yelled at 3 times by the lifegaurd because m.&k. were running around the baby pool, f. and his reaction sort of got lost in the fray. when it was brought up again on the way back to the car, he insisted it had nothing to do with the slide.

however, f. could not be talked into spending the afternoon at the pool with me. he could not be bribed into spending the afternoon at the pool with me. as hard as my mother and i tried, he was just not having it. when he thought we had finally given up and the little boys had gotten up from their nap, he says "you know, i think i would like to go to the pool now." in an effort to have him face whatever was causing his reaction head on, i said yes. then he backed out and said, "yeah, actually, i dont want to go to the pool."

instead i took them all for haircuts. boy do we know how to celebrate milestones around here.














f. sporting a new fauxhawk














m. terrified, but trying hard to stuff his face with hairy animal crackers and watch cartoons














k., who earned the gold star for the day.