Stella gets the Pink Wristband!

 Swimming wristband triumph!
At the YMCA your lil ones have to take a test to get a wristband to determine what they can do in the pool. If they don't have a wristband, you have to be within arms reach at all times. To get a blue wristband, which allows the kids to not be within an arms reach of a parent, your kid must do a 10 second front float and then flip over to do a 10 second back float. Both L&S got the blues in 2015. However, they still cannot be by themselves in water above their armpits.
Its been a long arduous process to get up to the next level. The pink wristband. This color pretty much allows your kid to go in any pool, any depth, on the water slides etc.
This test entails jumping into the "deep end" treading water for 30 seconds, then going into a front float for 10 seconds, and then back to treading water for 10. And while not technically part of the test, the LF still made her swim a half length of the pool. It may not seem like much but let me tell ya, trying to get a 6 year comfortable with treading water when they can't touch can be daunting. My girls can pretty much do anything as long as they know they can drop those toes and hit the bottom.

With that being said, it was pretty fantastic when, at their last swimming lesson for the winter term, Stella just kicked it out. She was like.... I need to get down that water slide, I can pass this test!! And she did. Great motivation for her twin to get moving too:) Good job Stella!

Lucy gets a Virtue Shout Out!

Lucy got a virtue shout out at her school for Fortitude (which is a pretty cool deal for the kids)!

Lucy and Stella are in first grade this year. Their school uses the classical model of education. Part of this model includes the kids learning about (and hopefully displaying) some core virtues. The virtues they focus on in K-5 include:

• Justice (respect, friendship, kindness, generosity, fairness)
  Justice means treating others with respect and taking responsibility for their well-being; fairness.
• Temperance (order, courtesy, self-control, patience, obedience)
  Temperance is about mastering ourselves for the sake of the happiness of those around us. It is about acting the right way at the right time.
• Prudence (honesty, wisdom, integrity, gratitude, humility, care)
  Prudence is about having sound judgment and making sound choices. It is about being thoughtful.
• Fortitude (courage, optimism, perseverance, good citizenship, loyalty)
  Fortitude means having the courage to face challenges and obstacles; persevering when things get tough.

A teacher or staff member that notices a student (or scholar as they are affectionately called in-house) will give them a "virtue shout-out". Their name goes on a list in the School of Grammar (lower school, elementary) hallway and they are recognized in a monthly virtue assembly. Out of 500ish kids in the their school maybe 20-25 will get a shout out each month.

In addition the virtue assembly is hosted by a grade every month- and this month, it was first grade. So both the girls sang with their classes songs about temperance. Stella's class sang about some sloppy goops who don't have table manners and Lucy's class sang about some mischievous kittens. Lucy is quite the socialite and entertainer (during class time), so we were proud of her when she received this acknowledgement of some virtuous behavior in a challenging situation! She had her named called and was asked to stand in front of the entire lower school along with all us parent people. Good job Luciana!

Another MN State Park summer fun day: Afton & Frontenac!

Yesterday, Saturday, was a scorcher. With temps in the mid-nineties, it was no time to be without air conditioning... and guess what? We were/are without air conditioning. Our system blew. So instead of attempting to organize garage sale stuff while 'hoping' the whole fam remained chipper whilst hanging out inside our house at a (cooler than outside but still) 87 degrees, we decided to hit the road.

We packed food and swimsuits and off we went! We decided to check out Afton State Park first since they have a swimming beach. We arrived and learned there would be a bit of a hike down to the swimming area, which was fine, but naturally we had a lot of stuff... plus a stroller. This actually worked in our favor since we ended up throwing everything in the stroller and carrying little G.  It's a good thing to know if you haven't been there, that there is this walk, and if you have anything that you do not want to carry down the stairs, you have to take the bike route to the beach... and this is a bit longer, probably 0.8 miles instead of 0.5 miles (for the hiking/stair route).

Right before we got to the beach itself, we saw the hike-in campground and also a gorgeous picnic area overlooking the St. Croix River. There is a fishing dock here along with a bunch of picnic tables, grills, and a couple of fire rings.

The beach is awesome. It is lined with trees and is mostly shady, the water was perfectly cool, and the kids had a blast. It seemed to get deepish fast, so we just had the girls stay close to the shoreline. If you walk down the beach to where it turns there are also a couple fire rings right on the beach. 

It was apparently supposed to rain so we packed up after a few hours so we didn't get caught in it on the hike back up to the parking lot. We succeeded and then continued to drive across to the Wisconsin side of the river to find a place for a snack or who knew? We drove through Prescott, WI which seemed to have some cute places to eat, but continued on to Diamond Bluff. We found this great overlook at Freedom Park with awesome views over the river and some bald eagle sightings to boot! We actually had one circling us so frequently that I asked Dave to snatch up little G because i started thinking this eagle was planning something, ha!!

Finally, since the storm never actually showed, we continued the drive to Frontenac State Park which was only 10 minutes south of Red Wing. I have driven past the entrance to this park so many times and never gave it a second look. It is gorgeous. We drove in right at sunset and saw some amazing views of the Mississippi and Lake Pepin. We also drove through the campsite loops and it looks like a neat place to camp. They have drive-in and also cart-in options.

It was a great "surprise adventure" day and we decided to officially join the MN State Park passport club! We have visited 3 parks in the last week, now only 72 more parks/stamps to go!

Summer Fun, Fort Snelling MN State Park

The girls are on their first real summer vacation this year- or maybe its more about me, since this is the first summer that I have had to truly re-acclimate myself to having them around the majority of the day!!
I guess I took for granted the 7 hours they were at school 5x a week for the last 9 months in Kindergarten!
Its been a little nutso over the last week with all 3 ladies in the house and me still trying to pretend I work part-time from home, ha!

Anyway, L&S are in a 2 hour park program every morning this week (through our awesome new hometown- Mendota Heights), which has helped ease me into the new status quo for the summertime.

Before I get into our Fort Snelling adventure, I have to throw in this quick anecdote. After their morning camp fun, I let the girls play for a bit on the playground. S proceeded to trip over something and face planted (and bounced) off some playground equipment that led to a bloody nose etc. I threw the gang in the car and proceeded to the local Subway to hopefully grab ice for her nose (since I wasn't sure what the bruising situation was going to be like). There were a couple of Mendota Heights cops sitting outside enjoying their lunch. I figured instead of hauling all 3 inside I would ask one of our lovely public servants if they wouldn't mind asking someone inside to fill a ziploc bag I had with some ice for S's injury. They were more than happy to oblige. And then the other cop came to my car to take a look at her to make sure she was OK; he stayed with us for quite some time informing me of my options in case I was worried, such as taking her to urgent care OR (since I lived in Mendota Heights), I could just give the police precinct a buzz and they would send someone over to check her out at our house...! It struck me just how different a place we live in now! Especially considering, even after we called 911 during the riots in Bmore, no one came! There's no place like (our new) home!!!

So... after that heartwarming interaction we stopped home, packed a lunch and hit Fort Snelling State Park which is literally minutes from our home. This was the first time back for me in over 10 years. I had all 3 girls and there was a threat of rain, but that's all it was. It was windy, but gorgeous...and virtually no one was around.

View or Summit Lake beach and picnic area

A little windy and chilly @first; Greta sleeping

We stopped at the swimming beach area which is a little hidden slice of paradise. The space is huge. Its on Snelling Lake, the water is beautifully clean and refreshing, there is a small playground and TONS of space to picnic and grill.  There are restrooms, a changing room building, and you can rent canoes. One thing that's maybe not for everyone, but we loved, were the planes. You could watch plane after plane come in to land at MSP airport.  It was really quite entertaining. Though it looks cloudy and dreary in these pics, it cleared up minutes after, but even in the clouds it was beautiful. We are not playing in mud, the sand was just wet:)

The girls and I played in the water and sand and L found a baby turtle which was so cute!!  But eventually we had to move on since G kept trying to grab the tiny thing and put it in her mouth! There was also what appeared to be a "Goose Family Day Out" of sorts, we counted 5 pairs of adult geese and almost 50 goslings all in one big group.We drove around the park and saw a quail (?) and a few deer along with a lot of neat dragonflies. I am so glad we spontaneously decided to check out this fabulous park today- we will be back!

Daddy and Daughter Dance and a great Fundraising idea!

The girls' school has this wonderful fundraising method that takes the place of selling candy and
wrapping paper. It's called Great Gatherings. Maybe this is something everyone has heard of with school age children, but this was a first for me!

The idea is that teachers/ parents/ families of the kids that attend the school offer a "gathering" and set a price to attend. The host donates their time and any financial outlay for the event. All the proceeds then go to the school. Gatherings include anything from a group hike, kite-boarding lessons,  to mother- daughter tea, wine & canvas, beer & brats, and sushi & sake evenings (this last one we just hosted!) Some are adults only, some kids only, and some are for the entire fam.

In November, there was a big bash for parents only. You bought tickets for $25 and got your pick of whatever food you wanted from 4 food trucks and the opportunity to sign up for a Great Gathering or ten of them. This is such a great idea for providing creative opportunities for families to get to know one another and to decrease any financial outlay for the school in order to raise funds.

One of the Great Gatherings we signed up for was the Daddy Daughter Dance. It was for K-3rd graders and their Dad (or any other special male guest, i.e. Grandpa or Uncle). L & S had so much fun getting ready for their big night. We borrowed some fancy dresses from cousin Luna and curled their hair and even put on some colored lip gloss and eye shadow, fancy!!  It was a bit of a battle to convince them not to wear their dress-up 'high heels' (I won in the end). They had a blast making special tiaras and wands, eating fabulous cupcakes, drinking pink lemonade and of course, lots and lots of dancing.

Dad and Grandpa were fantastic dates! I couldn't help but volunteer for the event so I could take pictures:)

The Kindergarten Decision Part II: Charter school lotteries

Now that the decision was made to send the summer baby twins at 5 as opposed to 6 we had to start thinking about schools. 

We applied to our number one choice school. It was a desirable charter school. We had one twin accepted and one was placed on the wait list, she was number 130. Here are the details:

We weren't sure exactly where we would be living after the big move back to Minnesota from Maryland, so we had to explore several options for kindergarten. We knew that, in general, the public schools in St. Paul and surrounding areas were pretty good so we nixed the idea of private school pretty quickly. After all, one of the reasons we moved back to this area was for the schools!

So we applied to the St. Paul public school system using my parents address and then I started exploring a variety of charter school options; this way, it ultimately wouldn't matter  where we moved. There are quite a few out there! I narrowed it down to a few immersion schools and a couple schools that are based on the classical form of education.

Now, let's talk about charter schools. It's good to know that a popular charter school will use a lottery when determining which children receive spots in any given year and grade. This is generally a random procedure unless you have more than one child. In this case you receive sibling preference. This normally occurs when an older child is already attending the school and then their younger sibling enrolls. The younger sibling will be bumped to the top of the list due to this preference. This is required by law for Minnesota charter schools.

So if one child is already enrolled and the sibling wants to get in, no problem. But would if both the siblings are enrolling the at the same time? What is not specified in the law, is is what qualifies as 'enrolled'.

In the case of a popular charter school with many more applicants that they can accept, we learned that some parents of older children sent in applications for them (with no intention of them actually attending) along with their younger sibling (who they did want to have go to that school) just so the kindergartners would get an extra chance of getting in.

Since this happened (I can't imagine all too many times), the policy at a small number of charter schools was changed to dictate that sibling preference does not come into play unless the sibling referred to is actually attending the school; meaning, if they just receive a spot and say they are attending, this does not count. They must actually attend the first day of class. So the way the school defines enrolled is physically present. Now I don't totally disagree with this methodology, especially if families appear to be working the system.

Here is my problem with this scenario. This policy is the same at these schools for twins. I do understand the attempt here at preventing families to misuse the system to get one of their kids into their desired school. The system works fine for families who currently have older siblings attending, then the younger one pretty much gets in. But because of a handful of scenarios where parents decided they had intentions for one of their children to get in and wanted to use their other kids as a booster, this policy was set.

So back to my problem. I have twins. I chose my number one charter school, which happened to be the number one school for many other folks. We applied; one got in and one was on the wait list...she was 130 on the wait list to be exact. I called, I was told that due to the policy we had to wait until the first day of school after the other twin showed up. I fought this. There was even a special policy that stated that families with twins, where one was in and one not, would have to wait until the first day of school for sibling preference because they want to make sure that we were attending. First off, how many parents of twins would send their twins to different schools? I can't imagine this number being significant. For us, it was especially stressful since the school was dictating our general location in the twin cities metro. I fought it and I lost. I found out that there were 2 other sets of twins in kindergarten that were in the exact same position we were. None of us were happy.

Fast forward: we go in on the first day and we got the call that afternoon that Lucy was accepted; moreover, all the sets of twins were in by the end of the first week. Naturally, this was great for everyone.  

However, I spent 7 months stressing out about it; Is Lucy going to get in? How long do I wait to see? Do I pull Stella if Lucy doesn't get in? Should I keep Stella there by herself and then be guaranteed a spot in 1st grade for Lucy? Where should Lucy go? If they go to different schools, what kind of logistical nightmare will that be? Do they have the same school breaks? Do we buy are house in the area closer to the charter school (that goes till 12th grade) or not?
I hope there may be something I can do to prevent this from happening again to another family, and I am working on it. I had initially found out that this school had set their own policies on sibling preference using their own definition of enrollment; they were not breaking any laws so the Dept of Education would have no place to intervene. There is a general sibling preference rule for all charter schools. I know this is a niche problem, but we'll see if we can make a change!

My solution? Well of course I would love the policy to be different for twins. If one gets in and you accept enrollment, the other one should get a spot, right? On the flip side, I do understand the problem here for charter schools. What if families are accepting spots at multiple schools? They have the potential of losing money; if a family accepts a spot and then doesn't show up, it may be a lot more difficult to fill that spot after school starts.

So how does a family say to a school "yes we are coming, and we really mean it!" One solution would be to have families place a deposit when they are accepting their spot and if they show up they get the deposit back, if they don't they lose it. The big problem with this is that it would never fly in a public charter school because it may alienate families who couldn't afford said deposit. I will keep brainstorming! Any ideas?

The Kindergarten Decision Part 1: Should I send my twins with summer birthdays at 5 or 6?

While these events happened last year, I never recorded the experience, so here it is!

The twins have summer birthdays. So we as parents got the 'joy' of making the decision on whether or not to send the girls to Kindergarten when they just turn 5 (so they would be the youngest) or when they just turned 6 (so they would be the oldest).

I battled with this decision. I battled for several years actually.

The thoughts running through my mind were things like:
If I send them at an early 5:

• Will they be intellectually ready?
• Will they be socially ready?
• Maybe I should keep them home for another year, why rush it?
• If I have the choice why would I make them be the youngest ones in their class? Isn't being older, cooler?
• All their friends will get their license first! 
• They will start college too early- won't I want them around for another year?
• Will they be immature? Small? 
• I won't have to pay for care
• They may progress faster and be more challenged

If I send them at an early 6: 

•  Will I be holding them back academically?
• Will they be bored?
• Will they just seem too old for their class?
• Will they be huge?
• I will get to have them around for another year, but I would have to pay for care
• They will be the 'cool' older kids, they will get their license first etc!

I read research on the topic, made pros and cons lists, and drove myself crazy. Then I decided that I should just decide. I decided they were going to go when they were 5. Now ironically, most of the research and public opinion out there is that if a parent is questioning their decision, that most folks never regret waiting. However, as a wise person once told me, sometimes you just have to go with your gut. My gut said 5. I then did the non-scholarly thing and sought out research to back up my decision... and not the other side of this internal argument.

Check out what Maria Konnikova had to say about it in The New Yorker, Youngest Kid, Smartest Kid : 

"While earlier studies have argued that redshirted (red-shirted meaning holding them back a year so the child is older and potentially bigger) children do better both socially and academically—citing data on school evaluations, leadership positions, and test scores—more recent analyses suggest that the opposite may well be the case: the youngest kids, who barely make the age cutoff but are enrolled anyway, ultimately end up on top—not their older classmates. When a group of economists followed Norwegian children born between 1962 and 1988, until the youngest turned eighteen, in 2006, they found that, at age eighteen, children who started school a year later had I.Q. scores that were significantly lower than their younger counterparts. Their earnings also suffered: through age thirty, men who started school later earned less." 

So since I ran with my decision to send them at an early 5 (knowing if it was an utter failure I could still sent them to Kindergarten again- albeit at a different school).

Furthermore, in February of last year, I found out that we "won" the lottery of for the Charter school of our choice (pretty scary odds with 40 spots available after sibling preference, and 400 applicants). So if I delayed the entrance into Kindergarten, the chance of us "winning" again may have been slim. This was Kindergarten decision Part I. The next challenge we confronted was that while we "won" a spot at this coveted school, we had only won ONE spot for the twins. Challenge/ Decision Part II will be posted next!