The days start to get shorter and big kids head back to school. We’ve been mercifully protected by this phenomenon being in a year-round preschool program. But only kinda.

Each year around Labor Day, the staff takes a few days to rearrange the school, adjust classrooms, move cubbies, and redecorate so that they kids can return and join a new school year just like everyone.

This four days away from school is relatively brief, but it forces us to take a vacation. This year, we’re heading to DC to visit the F and G parts of the family outside Bethesda. We’ll see our beloved cousins, auntie, uncle, and grandparents for far too short a time and then head on back to a new school year.

Holden’s class voted to become the Princess Whales in the fall. Sorry to anyone holding out genuine hope that the Robot Skeletons might prevail; in the end, even Holden didn’t vote for the RS. I will have you know that he was the only boy in his group to cast his vote for the Sea Turtles and all the other boys voted for Princess Whales, so there you have it. Even with Holden and two teacher votes, the Sea Turtles lost 9 to 5. That’s democracy. I’m assured that Princess Whales are, in fact, a real animal (and not just a sound-alike for Princess of Wales). We’ll be learning more about them over the coming months.

Milo’s class of toddlers is getting ready to become Dolphins. As such, we drop him off in the big outdoor yard with Holden and are working on a new goodbye routine. This morning, as I wrestled a book out of his hands, he talked me into reading it. As I read to Milo, a cluster of little ones joined in. I felt like the Pied Piper. And, no, saying goodbye wasn’t any easier after reading the book. Oh well.

Reading to 7 kids

As we sprint toward the end of Summer, Holden is taking his first official swim lessons. I signed him up for eight lessons (One each day Monday through Thursday for two weeks in a row). We’ve gone through three so far. Alec and I are very proud. I would say its going medium, but that’s just a blend of really hot and really cold, depending on the day moment, he either loves it or hates it.

There he is with the brown and blue trunks

My favorite part is watching him at the beginning of the lesson lining up with the other kids and telling the administrator his name on a clipboard. I think he likes the splashing and pretending he is as fast as a cheetah (as fast as a cheetah runs, not as fast as a cheetah swims)!

Upon my return, it was a flurry of birthday month activity. Holden turned the big 0-4 and there were also many adult birthday parties to keep us busy and social. We also had time to nerd out at the Maker Faire (you know, drive around cupcakes, see a functioning lego village, and watch a life-size mouse trap game).

Milo, Holden, Scarlett, Julian

This great June picture captures a moment in time. We all met up for dinner at Ryan and Whitney’s to celebrate some random Friday when none of us had a babysitter. You can see Milo with finger paint smeared all over his forehead; sometimes he comes home like that. Holden is happy. Scarlett is happy. Julian has a bandaid over his eyebrow from a self-inflicted incident. Getting them to turn around at the same time was quite a feat.

Other highlights in June:
My niece, baby Kate, was borne to Kristyn and Paul in faraway Leeds. We hope to meet them soon (and to get permission to share a baby pic). Holden and Milo now have a third girl cousin.

Whitney and I traveled to NYC to be part of a satellite media tour promoting The Rookie Mom’s Handbook. Makes a great gift… keep some on hand.

Alec had a birthday and Father’s Day and is/was certainly gearing up for our five year wedding anniversary!

Enjoy the pictures from May and June.

Ok so for anyone keeping score, I will pat myself on the back and agree (with myself) that I’ve done an amazing job playing catch-up with these pictures.

We’re almost current here! In the past two weeks, I’ve uploaded photos for August ‘08 through June ‘09 and redesigned the site.

Funny thing is that he just had his own little baby yesterday, so I don’t know when he’ll find the time to check in on us. But I’m committed to catching up and I’ve made another good run at it.

Here are some highlights:

1. Current header picture. As of Father’s Day 2009, that’s what the boys look like!
2. No more top navigation. Looking for the gallery? Check in the right hand side bar at the top. It’s still there. For now.
3. More pictures! Yep, I’ve now posted photos from August, September, October, November, December, February, March, April, and our recent remodel. Giddyup. What happened to January? We’re still looking for it.
4. More stories!

More of that bloggy goodness of hearing stories from our lives. Along with the October pictures, I shared a mini-documentary of Holden with his candy. Earlier this week, I shared a modern-day story from preschool: robot skeletons. Also if you only come here when there’s an email blast, you might have missed our very Berkeley Christmas. It’s not your fault. We realize this site has been dormant for a while.

5. Snazzy side bar. As an experiment we added the facebook fan page feed for Rookie Moms in the side bar. Cool, yes?

Did we accidentally remove anything that you loved? Let us know and we’ll try to fix it.

Milo feeds celery to the chicken. Or tries to.

Three of us on a holiday carousel; I'm a little bit frazzled in this pic

Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas. Santa brought our family Rock Band.
Happy Hannukah! We held our annual Pot Latke celebration — I think its the Sixth Annual but don’t quote me on it.

Enjoy the photos >

Holden is about to enter is final year of preschool at a place down the road from us. We love this place for encouraging kids to be kids and teaching lessons of respect and kindness. And we really love that it’s a half mile from our house with hours that extend to 11pm one night a month so we can have a date.

As the upperclassmen at preschool, Holden and his peers are allowed to suggest their own class name and vote on it. They learn a little about choosing their own destinies and democracy in the process. The class names have all been animals (albeit sometimes rather fanciful animals like Sparkly Rainbow Pandas)

He was a Dolphin last year and is a Giraffe this year.

The names from the other kids fit the other patterns pretty well (sea turtles, bobcats, bats, penguins) with some minor deviations (princess whales) until they got to Holden. His idea was the ROBOT SKELETONS.

A week later, the teachers checked back in with the kids to see if they wanted to keep their original ideas or change their minds.

Holden told his teacher Rose, “I have 8 ideas but I’d like to stick with Robot Skeletons.”

As a next step, the teachers found images to represent each of the choices. Here’s Holden’s approved Robot Skeleton mascot.

Robot Skeleton as preschool mascot

Some days, I swear it feels like all we do is sit on the couch exhausted after a day of working and parenting. Lame, right?

But when I look back at a year’s worth of pictures, I can see we’ve gone places (Hawaii, DC, parties) and done some things (trapeze, triathlon, remodel). Is that a good excuse for getting a year behind in my picture-posting: so I could appreciate my life more from a 30,000 foot view?

I would love it if Alec can find the time (but I don’t know where he would) to edit the great documentary of Holden’s first foray into Halloween candy.

You see, we live in Berkeley… so candy of any kind is not a given. And we’re kinda mean… so we eat all the candy after the boys go to bed. And furthermore, despite the fact that we’ve obtained one or more cute Halloween costumes each year, 2008 marked the very first time that Holden (and his lucky kid brother Milo) has ever been trick-or-treating.

Since he was pushing four and already pretty brilliant, we let him keep a fair amount of candy before we snuck it away for our own enjoyment. Here’s some preview footage of him indulging in a sloppy Snickers bar: