Things have been pretty much normal for the last couple months, which is to say: hectic. Julia finished up Kindergarten in June, and although she loved it, it’s safe to say that she’s not in line to win high honors for her demeanor and discipline this year. She remains, as always, Julia. She’s smart, funny, passionate and energetic. She’s also mischievous, sensitive, impulsive and a bit of a ham. Her first grade teacher isn’t going to know what hit him.

On the subject of school, as you can see in the picture above, Joe has started busing over to Primary Plus, where he’ll be attending Junior K in the fall. We had planned to start sending him over there in August, so that he’d be comfortable and acclimated by the start of the school year, but decided to move it up a month for social reasons.

Because the class in front of him at preschool was a little on the large side, Joe and some classmates were held up in a younger kids’ classroom a bit longer than usual. Although this wasn’t ideal, it was perfectly OK: Joe loved his teachers, Ms. Pat and Ms. Raven, and a lot of his friends were in the same boat. The only real downside was that two of his best buddies, Mason and Joshua, had already moved up.

When summer came, things opened up a bit. Kids in the Pre-K room moved up and out to summer camps and other big-kid destinations, and spaces freed up in Room D, the class ahead of Joe’s. This allowed the administrators to move a bunch of kids from Joe’s classroom, Room C, up to Room D, and a new batch of kids into Room C from the first preschool class, Room A.

So far, so good. However, in order to minimize disruption for both the teachers and the students, the administrators decided to keep the kids who are moving over to Junior K this fall in their current classrooms: that way, they won’t have to make two transitions in the space of a few months. Unfortunately, this left Joe and a few other kids in a bit of a strange place. Children who were six months younger than Joe were being promoted ahead of him, and new kids that were significantly younger than him—two-and-a-half years old, as compared to Joe at age four—were moving into his class. This didn’t seem like a great arrangement, so we decided to move Joe over to Primary Plus this month instead of waiting.

Having turned four, of course, Joe was due for an annual checkup last month. He’s still tracking more or less in the middle of the normal range in terms of height and weight, so we’ve got no concerns on those fronts. A couple of shots were on the agenda for this appointment, and Joe was a trooper, as usual. He insisted on sitting on Julie’s lap, but didn’t scream or make a scene: he handled the first shot without making a sound and merely exclaimed, “Ouch!” after the second. Then he asked for a lollipop.

We have lots of pictures and videos lined up: baseball, Joe’s big show, day trips and other summer fun. With luck, we’ll get around to posting them over the next few weeks.