Life Lately / 9.1.23

A couple mornings ago I walked outside and it actually felt…ok? Like, I didn’t immediately break into a sweat? I have hope that the non-stop weeks of 100+ temperatures and 0% chance of rain might actually end soon. I even got my first pumpkin spice latte of the season, so that’s gotta be a sign of better things to come, right?

Since my last “life update,” we’ve hosted birthday parties for each kid. Emma’s was at the pool for the 3rd year in a row, and Charlotte chose to have hers at Urban Air. Both were a rousing success with a nice gaggle of girls in attendance.

Emma’s 11th birthday was the day after her party, and we celebrated with treats, games, and an outing to see the Barbie movie. Charlotte’s party was last Saturday, but her actual birthday is this weekend and she’s excited about that. (We’ve learned that Labor Day weekend isn’t great for kid bday parties.)

Both girls went back to school — Emma to 6th grade on a Monday, since she moved up to middle school, and Charlotte to 2nd grade the following day. It’s a little sad to not be taking them both to the same place, but I’ll get over it soon enough because being 4 grades apart means they’ll never be at the same school again! Jose and I have been peppering Emma with questions about middle school, and it sounds like she’s off to a great start and enjoying her classes and teachers and the increased independence.

I’m finding that our daily routine is both more and less complicated than in years past. One of the positive side effects of the covid years was that Jose and I had enough work flexibility to pick the girls up when school got out at 3:30, so that’s what we’d been doing since late 2020 — but that would have been a lot more difficult this year with two different pickup locations, one of which is several miles away.

So! We made the decision to send both girls to after-school at the same martial arts place where they spent most of the summer. Honestly I didn’t expect this to be an option for middle school, but I’m glad that it is! Both girls get picked up at their respective schools, and Jose or I just have to go get them at the end of the day. (And since they are still taking martial arts two days a week, that fits right in.)

The “more complicated” part is the morning drop offs. The car line at the middle school is pretty long — Jose and Emma need to be out the door by 7:15 at the latest to make it work. And that’s assuming that I take Charlotte to the elementary school. If/when one parent needs to do both drop-offs, I think we’ll need to leave more like 7:05-7:10 to make sure we can be far enough up in the car line to drop Emma off and then still get back to Charlotte’s school in time. Whew.

I can hear you asking — why don’t they ride the bus? An excellent question, and I would love it if they could! But we live close enough to the elementary school that there is no bus for our side of the neighborhood. And Emma is now in a magnet program, which means her middle school is not the one she would otherwise be zoned for. So the options for her are either 1) take her to her zoned school, where she could then catch a bus to her magnet school or 2) just take her to her magnet school.

What else? In addition to martial arts, both girls are trying a sport this fall. Emma is currently doing a 2-month trial with a year-round swim team. Since she’s already doing martial arts twice a week, we are doing swim practice the other two days. (And taking Friday off!) Charlotte asked to try soccer, so I signed her up for a league that several of her friends play in already. They have both practice and games on Saturdays, which is perfect from a scheduling perspective, and start play at the end of September. I’m looking forward to seeing how she likes it.

Bring on fall!