School's out for summer!!

Summer is here at long last and so are the summer holidays. It has taken me a full week to recover from the physical and mental exhaustion of the end of year assessments and fashion show. It has taken the kids a week to forgive me for the past month of neglect. Luckily the massive heat wave that stuck Ireland this past weekend was a great distraction and way to forget everything that had gone before.

Myself and the kids spent the long weekend in county Clare. The weather was actually reminding me of California...no clouds in the sky, no breeze and just really hot. As May was a cool month here we felt quite overwhelemed by the sudden onslaught of hotness. James coming down with a very high fever in the middle of it didn't help things. We actually thought he had heat stroke until we noticed little bumps and the doctor told us it was Chicken Pox.

Lots of big things are afoot as we will be moving house this summer and James will start school in September. He finished in his Montessori and there were a few tears when he left by both himself and his favorite minder, Emma. We got our first progress report where Emma and Cindy told us that they reckon James would be an artist as he is "very creative" and he loves drawing and all the arts and crafts. They were amazed by his interest in words and said they would truely miss his fabulous stories and sense of humor. They also said he is very clever and when shown something he would meticulously carry it out himself on first attempt. And apparently he is very polite. So all around a glowing report. Needless to say I was delighted with all they had to report.

And so on to Lily...Well she has made great strides since the last posting. She has moved from crawling, to walking with assistance, to standing confidently unassisted, to walking for up to eight steps unassisted. So the bets are on, will she walk before she is 11 months old? Less than two weeks to go and everyone has a different opinion. Personally I think it will be another 3 or 4 weeks. Lily decided to make things hard for me on the run up to the fashion show. She started by waking between 5am and 5:30am for the 10 days previous to the show. She then got a tummy bug and was vomiting two nights before the show and she cut her 7th tooth with much struggle the day after the show. She also said goodbye to the lovely Patricia who has been minding her since I went back to work. The saddest part about it was saying goodbye to her son Lorcan. He is a little sweetheart and is really attached to her and was heartbroken and crying when we said goodbye. She was lucky to have such a lovely boy to play with.