Let the Summer Games Begin!

  No, I’m not talking about the Beijing Olympics slated for August.  Just our family summer on DeWitt’s Traci Lane.  I’ll wager there will be more activity in the latter of those two places over this summer–just no gold medals!

  But first things first.  You know you’ve taken too long of a vacation from your blog when your cousin comments on your absence!  Thanks for prodding me back in to action, Catherine, oh queen-of-our-family-blogs!

  Truth be told, I’ve been swamped at work, run ragged at home by the kids, and also fighting a bit (we are telling the truth here, after all …) over the last two or three weeks to figure out when our family will be complete this summer with Michael in it.

  Yup, there’s my reference to letting the summer games begin.  Michael’s done with 1st grade now, summer’s begun, and we’ve (sort of) worked out a summer schedule with his mom that has him here at the moment for 11 days.  Oh my gosh is it wonderful to know he’s gonna wake up and go to sleep, and spend every exhausting moment in-between on each of those days, with us and his brothers and sister here in DeWitt.  And we have good reason to expect Michael will be with us for another 5-6 weeks yet after this.  Amen.  This is reason itself to love the summer.

  Our house bustles even when Michael isn’t with us, of course–3 kids under 5 keep us on our toes and ensure that we always lack the proper amounts of sleep, for sure.  But we positively glow when he’s here, and we all feel a completeness that’s subtly missing when he’s not.  Finn has his favorite playmate when Michael’s here, and Caroline has her favorite reader and jokester (at just over 26 months now, she already amazes us by trying to mimic Michael’s jokes back to him … precious!).  Charlie is growing in the shadow of his biggest brother, loving Michael’s attention when he gets it, and Michael is so good and sweet with him.

  So in sum, we couldn’t be happier at the moment.  We have such blessings in our lives, with our children at the top of that list.  And now that we have the summer to enjoy them all together for much of that time, we are positively ecstatic.

  BUT … (there’s always a but …)  First Kara and I have to whisk ourselves off to Chicago for a 3-day get-away that coincides with my attendance at a national conference where I have a 1-hour speaking gig this coming Monday a.m.  So as much as we brag about loving every summer minute we have upcoming with the kids, isn’t it ironic that the first thing I talk about is a trip Kara and I are taking without them???

  We’ll come back, though, to a July family vacation to Naples with Grandma Zech and crew, quickly followed by an early August family vacation at a rented cottage on Platte Lake, west of Traverse City and just a few miles from Lake Michigan.  I know, I know … who goes to Florida in July?  Well, we do, and this will be the third time we’ve done it.  With the pool an every-day, all-day treat, the summer Florida heat is quite manageable, and Naples is lovely when it’s quiet in its summer lull.

  Now, with our summer schedule laid out, I think I have to give a kid update.  When 3 or 4 weeks pass in the adult world, nothing changes.  When 3 or 4 weeks pass in the life of a child, a lot changes!

  CHARLIE … is almost standing on his own, and will walk a few halting steps if guided by the hand.  He’s desparately in need of his first official hair cut, particuarly if he’s going to look spiffy, trim, and neat for his first birthday party (scheduled for Sat., July 26, at noon at our house, for any family members needing to calendar their summers out that far!).  He has the perfect sense for scoping out dangerous situations, whether that’s trying to pull electric cords or nightlights from their outlets, crawling straight for open doors or unblockaded staircases, or climbing in to the open dishwasher to play with steak-knives and the like.

  CAROLINE … has a vocabulary normally heard from 4- or 5-year olds.  This girl’s a smarty!  As I noted above already, she’s already in to trying to tell jokes–to impress her big brothers, we think.  She loves shoes (a budding woman after her mama’s heart!), and is quite adept at putting them on herself, though she usually opts for putting them on the opposite feet!  She also loves being outside, swinging, playing with her brothers, etc.  It’s a challenge for sure getting her to come in.  Oh, and she’s coming off the biggest bout of diaper-rash-caused-by-a-two-weeks’-running-case-of-diarrhea that we’ve ever encountered as parents.

  FINN … is his normal movie-quoting encyclopedia self.  A current fave is the Underdog movie, which he’s watched quite a bit recently after receiving it as a gift from Grandma Zech.  He caught us by surprise recently with this gem–when Kara made some reference to the mailman coming, Finn shot back with, “Oh, yeah, the great North American mailman …!”, taken right from Underdog’s slobbery lips upon his first superdog encounter with a mailman in the movie.  You are great, Finn–one of a kind!

  MICHAEL … is 7-going-on-12!  As Kara noted a few days ago, he delights in helping us parent, clueing us in when he sees a younger sibling doing something he knows we don’t like.  The poor kid–that usually turns us on him with our tattle rule:  No tattling unless blood is visible or a trip to the hospital ER is necessary.  Michael lives in Zelda world right now.  What’s that?  You haven’t heard of Zelda?  Actually, she’s a little girl named Tetra, leader of a band of marauding little pirate kids, including her side-kick friend, Link.  And then she discovers that she’s really the long-lost Princess Zelda of the Kingdom of Hyrule.  I’m not sure what they’re supposed to do once she and Link make this little discovery; I’d have to play Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS to find out, and I’ll leave that to Michael!

  So that’s the update on the 21st Century Dad’s kids at the moment.  I’ll try to keep up more regularly now, Cat!

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Tags: Caroline, Charlie, Finn, Michael

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