The Baranko Family: 8th Annual Baranko Summer Party

We had our 8th and probably final big summer pool party this past weekend in July. When we first started doing the party it was a wild and crazy college reunion with a bunch of married-no-kids couples. It morphed into something quite different, which was still fun, but now as we have made new friends and kept in touch with old friends the group seems very large and it has become hard to have a good visit with anybody. We have decided next year to do a series of smaller get togethers with our different groups of friends so as to have better quality time with them. So if you are reading this and don't get an invite to our annual summer party next year, you'll know why!

Anyway, back to this year. We had so many people and kids that we decided to hire a lifeguard for our own pool. Safety first! The party just flew by, seemingly over before it begun. A few friends stayed for the after-party which may have became even more fun than the actual party, as we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves more.

A few recent kid things to document:

- Claire only wants Matt to brush or take out her hair bands at night "Daddy do it!!" He is much gentler than I am, I tend to lose patience fast and just pull.

- Every night Claire says "Mommy lay with me for 5 minutes??" and will have a meltdown if I don't lay with her. Matt is not an acceptable substitute for this particular task at this phase. I have to lay on the special small pillow and then after my 5 minutes is up Claire throws it on the ground with a dramatic flair and directs me to shut her door behind me.

- Then Luke whispers in my ear so Claire won't hear "Then will you lay with me for 6 minutes??" A one upper! He says I'm warm:) While part of me wants to run to the freedom of life post-kid-bedtime, the other part of me knows these are fleeting moments of quiet time with my babies so I try to slow down and enjoy them, and I usually end up agreeing to laying with both of them.

- Claire's thumb sucking and hair twirling is really at a minimum, which is great, only made better by it being gone for good. She only does it now at night or when she's really upset or tired. Weaning her slowly, but surely.

- Luke is in a wildlife camp for 6 weeks this summer on Tues/Thursday mornings and has really been enjoying it, despite not knowing any kids in the class. We purposefully limited the kids' activities this summer so that Isolene and her group of playdate friends would have plenty of free time to go to the beach, swim in the pool, go to Six Flags, the various parks around town, the Botanic Gardens and Lamb's Farm. They are always up to something and it is all scheduled on the calendar.

- Claire has started a rock collection, much like her big brother's:) She finds rocks here and there in her adventures and brings them into her room proudly. They fight so much (seriously, SO MUCH!!!!) that it warms my heart when there are these moments of sibling admiration.

- Another example of that sibling admiration is that Claire learned Luke's Red Class final song "Roar" by Katy Perry and overtime we re-watch the video of Luke and his class singing it, which seems like a lot, she sings along to the words.

- Claire is really, really whiney. Sometimes I really think that is her only form of communication. We are trying all types of tricks to prevent it, but to no avail. The only hope I have is that when she's not with Luke the whining stops almost abruptly. They always seek out each other's company when we're all home, yet seem to dislike each other's behavior so much that I wonder why they do. They just fight and whine and cry! I had this idea that different gender kids would get along better than same gender siblings, but I can confidently debunk that myth.