Fall Swimming

Call us crazy, but we joined a tennis club with a pool on Labor Day weekend. We had every intention to join in August -- once our summer travel had ended ... but we waited, not inspired by the especially cold summer.

The benefits of joining a pool on Labor Day weekend is that they were offering a killer deal, and waved the exorbitant initiation fee. The other benefit was a bit of a gamble, but we figured cold summer, hot Fall and we were right.

This weekend as the temperature peaked in the 90s we enjoyed hanging out at the kiddy pool. The boys loved swimming in one to four feet water. They actually are improving -- better than they did in a year's worth of swim lessons.

Our summer should end somewhere around Halloween. So until that time we'll be Fall Swimming.

When Company Comes a Calling

It is amazing to see how much my boys have grown. This weekend we walked through the California Avenue Farmers Market in Palo Alto, and my boys were downright delightful. A year ago, and it might have been a different story. We may not have tried it at all, then again we are pretty brave ... we love to travel with our kids.

Now that I have a kindergartner and a four year old everything is getting easier and more fun. Last month the East Coast grandparents visited, and everyone, adult and child alike had a good time. Of course some things don't change. We planned ahead. We had a plan A and plan B in terms of activities. We knew where we were going to eat. We mixed kid fun and adult fun. We hired a babysitter. We leveraged old stand-byes that the boys enjoyed... And we had three days with a limited number of meltdowns and kid craziness.

We started off the visit by hiring a babysitter and going out for an adult dinner at one of our favorite restaurants Evvia.  The next day was Friday, Jonathan took the day off, sprung the boys from daycare, and he and his parents took them to Monterey. They combined kid fun -- a visit to Dennis the Menace park -- with adult fun-- a walk down Cannery Row.

On Saturday they got to enjoy ice skating lessons. Xander who only likes to stay on the ice for the 30-minute lesson, skated for most of the free skate to show off his moves to his grandparents. That afternoon we went to Vasona Park and the boys road the train and played. We all went to Steamer's Grill House for dinner and the boys were well behaved. It helped that the restaurant is noisy.

On Sunday I wanted to take the ferry to Angel Island, but alas it was foggy and cold in San Francisco ... so we opted to go to the Bay Area Discovery Museum. We finished up the day with an early dinner reservation at the Slanted Door, and then dropped the grandparents off at their San Francisco hotel.

What we've learned from these visits, is not to overachieve in the activities department. We kept it simple and everyone had fun.

Overscheduling your Kindergartner

Today I looked into extracurricular activities for Xander. He is already in the afterschool program, and now I have the option to sign him up for some extracurriculars. I have plenty of choices, but how much is too much? There is art, which I think he would really love, soccer (he's already doing our local PAL league anyway and this would give him another opportunity to practice) and dance. The challenge with dance is that it is on Friday, the same day as his PAL league soccer practice... and he is already dead tired from a week at school...

At the same time he has told us he doesn't love the afterschool program. And honestly I'm not sure how I feel about it either. When I pick him up I see all of the kindergartners playing video games or watching movies. I know it is the end of the day, and that the program does other activities other than putting the kindergartners in front of the TV ... but this is the impression I get at 5:30 pm.  We come from a daycare without a TV, so it does bothers me that this happens in an afterschool program.

Jonathan and I are just starting to comprehend the concept of over-scheduling. We did overcommit this summer. We had the boys signed up for skating on Saturday and swimming on Sunday-- and we lost our weekends. We learned our lesson, and going forward we know the most we can support is one weekend activity... but how much can he handle during the week?

We're just in kindergarten and I'm already debating how much I want to sign him up for. Imagine what life will be like when he is more self directed -- telling us what he wants to participate in. I definitely don't want to overschedule him, at the same time I don't want him to miss out.