Last Child Syndrome

I was the baby of the family growing up. That means while your siblings may think that you always get your way and have it easy (okay, sometimes you do) it really means terribly tramatizing things like having to wear hand me down underwear and not having any pictures of yourself. So, and I'm sure it is subconsciously, this past month I seem to have taken a lot of pictures of Kate in an effort to make sure she doesn't suffer as I did. She also has lots and lots of new underwear.

The other reason I think I took a lot of pictures of Kate is that I see everyday that my baby is not a baby anymore! She graduated from preschool, she went to soccer camp, had her first ballet recital, she has friends over all the time, she just lost her first tooth!!! She is still little enough that she plays make believe (particularly house where all the characters are animals) and snuggles me, but I see how close she is to outgrowing all of that. *sigh*

Emma makes an appearance in the pictures because she of course, was in the recital too. Her class is no longer a group of tiny dancers that hop around. Her class is really, really dancing now. When did that happen? They go to Clytie Adams and they always do a great job. The girls get to dance on a full stage with live music, which is a great experience. And when they are not onstage, they are entertained in another theatre by a magician. Kate giggled for days about the magician's jokes, so he must have been good. That Clytie has things down to a science.

During this time, Rob was off at Scout camp and Sierra went to Space camp, then Girls' Camp. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of any of those because I wasn't there, but the report I get is that they both had fun. Especially Sierra at Space camp, despite being stranded in the airport for a day and having her luggage lost, she had a marvelous time. She assures me that the marvelous time had nothing to do with all the older teenage boys in her group, and everything to do with the learning experiences. Uh huh. Girls' Camp was also fun, but minus the cute boys.

So at last count, there are only six more weeks of summer. Summer vacation is officially half over. I am okay with that because truth be told, I am exhausted. The lazy days of summer involve an awful lot of driving around, cleaning up, and staying up late. But in six weeks, I will have ALL SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN. This puts me in a whole new category of life. I am excited because I think that means I get to shower more often, etc, but it also means that my children are half grown and I am old. *sigh*

ps- recital video below