These two started their summer break last Friday with bike rides, ice cream and their favorite body tracing activity. It’s interesting to see how their body tracings have improved over the months from just coloring in randomly, to now attempting to draw facial features, hair, and other smaller details, using various colors for various body parts, trying to color between the lines, etc. .
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More importantly, it’s rewarding to see how much their confidence has improved as far as exploration in art goes, and how cooperative they were with each other while working on this project. If you are a twin mom like me, you probably have learned already that competition and conflict are constant companions while raising twins. When they were younger, there was a LOT more conflict. It was exhausting! I can see looking back now that all of that conflict was necessary for them to reach this point where they are able to also enjoy each other’s company. There’s still a lot of conflict between them, but now I can also see them attempting to express their feelings to each other, attempting to communicate with each other respectfully, and resolve their conflicts on their own. This is very hard, and I don’t do this very well either, but as parents with multiple kids, I think it serves us and our kids well if we’re able to embrace the conflict between our children as a teaching opportunity. .
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One thing I realized yet again while watching them work on this activity is, in the middle of all this busy-ness, chaos, conflict, routines, juggling of responsibilities, etc, my children sure are growing up much faster than I am prepared for. On that note, I can’t believe it’s summer already! I’m trying to plan time off from work to be able to enjoy summer with my family. I look forward to bike rides, sidewalk chalk, gardening, catching bugs, nature hikes, playing with garden hose and lawn sprinklers, summer reading, library hauls, doing summer crafts outdoors, local field trips, popsicles, lots and lots of ice cream and much more. So exciting!
We were busy this morning building homes for our stuffed animals using origami paper and masking tape (my 11 year old’s idea). While we were at it, we also built a lego bed and a LEGO container filled with bugs for Mr Camrin, the chameleon (my 4 year old’s idea). Then we built a huge lego sleep chair for our other stuffed animal - Mr Horsie (because he is too big for a bed...my other 4 year old’s idea). Then we sang lullabies, put up signs of a quiet coyote to let everyone know that our stuffed animals are going down for a nap, promptly sushed anyone who dared to raise their voice, and headed off to our swim class with promises from mommy to make sure the house is quiet for the stuffed animal nap time. A quiet house sounds like a good deal for mommy too so she’s all in for that 😄❤️❤️❤️
