Swim Lessons Week 1

This brave boy just finished his first week of swim lessons. I could not have hoped for a better reaction from him, and am so proud of the way he's tried his best and battled through his fear this week. Here's a run down of the first four lessons:

Day 1: Huston let me put his swim suit on him and spray him with sunscreen without a fuss. He didntt cry at all, but in the car ride on the way to his lessons I hear him taking big, deep, loud breaths in the backseat, as he tries to calm his nerves. It just made my heart melt hearing him try to be brave. In a completely answered prayer, he got a sweet, young teacher named Miss Madeline who is perfect for him. I dropped him off (you're only allowed to watch the last five minutes of the lesson) and when I came back to observe I could see that she was pouring water over his head while he made a fishy face to practice holding his breath. You could tell he didn't like it, but he wasn't freaking out. It was absolutely amazing to me considering that he cries and screams if a drop of water so much as approaches his face during bath time. Miss Madeline said he was really fearful of the water, but that he was obedient and did everything she asked him to do. Hooray!

Day 2: Huston was calm on the way to his lesson and let me drop him off just fine. When I came back for the last five minutes and watched from around the corner, I could hear him crying "I want my mommy! I want my mommy!" and I thought for sure he was just done for the day and wasn't going to cooperate anymore. But then Miss Madeline held him and talked to him quietly, and the next thing I knew, he was putting his face in the water again, just like she asked. I was so incredibly proud of him for obeying her even though he was scared! I got to see him float on his back while she supported his head and practice his kicking a little, too. When I picked him up, he told me, "I told Miss Madeline I love her and she said she loves me too." I think the process of having to trust her with one of his biggest fears has made him really bond with her. That, and the fact that he just really likes sweet, pretty, young teachers! He wore his goggles during his lessons for the first time, and I was talking to him about how great it was that goggles keep water out of our eyes, and he said, "Yeah...but it still gets in my mouth!" Guess he's still working on holding his breath!

Day 3: Huston threw quite the fit about swimming lessons in the morning (I think he was confused and thought he was going to see Mimi and Grandpa in the morning and not have swim lessons, and when I explained that swim lessons were in the morning and he was going to see Mimi and Grandpa at night, he went to pieces). After he quit screaming, we prayed together and talked about how God wants us to tell him when we're scared and that it's okay to be scared and how God will always take care of us. His lip was quivering when I dropped him off, but he took Miss Madeline's hand and away they went. The last five minutes I saw him make "rocket hands" (hands clasped together over head) and then Miss Madeline would grab his hands while he kept his head in the water and kicked for five seconds. She said she had to hold his head down the first few times to get him to keep it in the water, but then he started doing it by himself. It seemed like such amazing progress for a boy who was so scared of getting even a drop of water on his face!

Day 4: He did great again! This time he made his rocket hands, kept his face in the water and kicked, but Miss Madeline didn't hold on to him at all - he just kicked all by himself. You could tell he was pretty freaked out to not be holding on to anything, because he could hardly remember to kick, but I was still so proud. He also practice floating on his back without Miss Madeline holding his head, and even though he didn't like it, he did it! She said he did really good, and I just couldn't be any prouder of him. It has truly been amazing to see him overcoming his fears and battling through in obedience and determination.

Here's a random picture of little sister, clutching flowers she collected while we waited for Huston to finish his swim lessons the first day.

And here's Huston, sporting the ouchie he got from wearing his swim goggles around the house on Monday, and then falling and having them cut into his skin. Poor guy!

Summer Activities So Far...

Here's a quick run down of our summer activities thus far. Memorial Day weekend (before school was out for me) we took the kids to the zoo. Huston loved playing with the phones in the MOLA and seemed more interested in the zoo than he ever had been before. Arden's enthusiasm probably helped excite him a little more.

Arden particularly loved the aquariums and did everything she could to climb through the glass so she could get to where the fish and turtles were. You can see her puckering her mouth like a fish in the picture below. That girl really, really, really loves animals.

We got to feed some of the birds, too, which she really liked. Not sure why she's making this face, but I like it.

Here's a few random pictures of a game Clarke invented with the kids called "Arden in a Basket." It consisted of Arden climbing into this basket, Clarke picking her up and carrying her to wherever Huston told him, and Arden screaming when she got put down (unless they put her on the kitchen counter, which she liked). Unfortunately, Mommy put an end to this game because I really liked that basket and was afraid they were going to break it. (Side note: notice the ugly backsplash and countertops in our kitchen? They're now gone! We got new granite counters and a nice, clean white subway tile backsplash in its place. I'll post pictures, if we can ever get around to putting the new hardware on our cabinets).

Here's a random shot of my sticker-loving girl covering her favorite stuffed animal with stickers. It's hard to resist giving her a sheet of stickers when she calls for "Gickers! Gickers!" (Aren't her curls so delicious? I just love running my fingers through them and twirling the curls around).

We have taken the kids swimming once so far at the pool in our neighborhood. They had a really good time, though you can't tell at all from this picture where they look completely bored and annoyed.

One day while we were just hanging out at home, we got out the coloring books and colors and the kids entertained themselves for quite some time. Huston ended up standing the colors on end and pretending they were some kind of rocket ships, while Arden carefully and meticulously colored every little shape on the page. Such a difference between boys and girls!

Last week I got to meet some friends at the children's museum for the first time this whole year, and it was really fun. Arden is a great lover of rubber ducks, and grabbed about 6 of them when she saw them in the water tables outside, causing some other offended children to yell, "Hey, I want some, too." I got her down to about 3, which she happily carried around the rest of the time we were outside.

Huston loved putting this little paper cups inside the tube of air and watching them blow up and fall down. Look at that precious face of his! He's such a little boy now.

I tried to take a cute picture of the two of them together on this ABC bench, but they were not cooperative. Huston did try to kiss Arden for me, but it just ended up looking like he's smelling her armpit or something.

And one final random picture of a very happy girl playing with chalk outside. You should have heard her scream when I made her come back inside. She really knows how to throw a tantrum! But she's worth it.

Summer!

It is officially summer vacation and I could not be happier! My year teaching has taught me a lot (hopefully I'll have time to do a post or so on it soon), but I am beyond happy to be back home with my kiddos. While they're taking a nap and I'm trying the self-cleaning feature on my oven (which has filled the house with a thick fog of smoke - is that normal?) I thought I'd post these pictures from Huston's Mother's Day tea at his preschool. These are the faces he made instead of singing the songs all the other kids were singing.

He cracked me up the other day as he was running around with no shirt on. He held Bear Bear up to his chest and said, "Look, Mommy, I'm giving Bear Bear milk!" Now he's done this before, but this time he pointed to his bare chest and said, "See, these are my ankles. This one has chocolate milk and this one has milk for Bear Bear." What a silly little man!

Yesterday

Here are a few random pictures from yesterday. Arden was wearing this dress and had pigtails in her hair. I could just eat her up, she looks so adorable.

Here's the little princess with her big brother. They're such a couple of goof balls.

We went to the park in the afternoon and then out to lunch. Arden looooooves swinging. She'll let us push her for forever, whereas Huston freaked out every time we ever tried to put him in a swing, and still doesn't like to be pushed on them.

Here's Huston moping around when we first got to the park. He just walked around with his head hanging down and wouldn't play with anything. I cannot figure him out sometimes.

Once we found this bridge, he perked up and had a blast bouncing Arden up and down on it while she said "whoa!" over and over.

I haven't posted much about Arden lately, so I'll tack a few things on to the end. Today she has been singing her ABC's, or really EFG's. She says "e, f, g" over and over in a sing songy voice. It's so cute! She has been loving "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" on TV (along with Huston) and when she wants to watch it she'll say "mouse, mouse" and bring me the remote. She dances for the theme song, and at the end there's a song that says "Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog," and she dances and kind of says "dog, dog" while she does. One day Mickey Mouse got turned off and she brought me the remote and said, "oh no, mouse, tv, 'ere go?, mouse, oh no." She is such a talker and has an amazing vocabulary.

She has said a few short sentences recently. We were trying to figure out what she wanted the other day, and Clarke pointed to something and said "That?" and she replied, "Not that." She can string words together like, "Please milk" and loves to say "Bye Bye" when people leave. This week I said, "Do you want to snuggle with mommy?" and she reached up and said " 'nuggle," and then buried her head in my chest and snuggled. It was sooo sweet.

She says "bank" for her blanket, milk, drink, eat, bite, please, thanks, bye bye, ball, dog, duck, mouse, shoe, 'ere go?, no no, tv, up, book, hot, more, night night, diaper, pee pee, poo poo, sleeping, shhh, baby, bug, oh no, kiss, snuggle, see, look, off, toes, eyes, nose, head, boo boo, chip, cookie, and probably a lot I can't think of right now.

We have to keep an eye on Arden to keep her out of trouble - much more than we ever did with Huston. Last week she opened up one of my spices and spilled oregano all over the floor. Yesterday alone she absconded with different illicit objects three times to her favorite hiding places (behind our bed, and inside Huston's closet). Once I discovered her trying to play with a bag of coins, once tucked into Huston's closet with a pen, writing on a tiny scrap of paper, and once Huston found her in his closet with a pair of scissors that she had retrieved from the dining room table after climbing up a chair. Thankfully he alerted us before any harm could be done, but it just about gave me a heart attack.

Lately she's been playing with her baby doll more and more, and she's been bringing diapers from her room to pretend to change it's diaper, and some of her clothes which she lays on top of the baby to pretend to change it's clothes. She even found the aspirator bulb and was trying to clean out the baby's nose.

There's my brain dump for today - now I don't feel so bad about not updating the blog in forever!

My Little Preschooler

Today was the best day. I took off from work to watch the kids while my mom is on vacation, and for the first time this entire year I got to take Huston to his preschool. Such a simple thing, but I can't tell you how much I looked forward to it and how happy it made me. He really loves his class and his teachers, and it was so sweet to walk him into his room and see him right at home there. When I picked him up, he wanted to show me all around the outside and run around and play and have a snack (aka the rest of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich from lunch) on the hill by his playground. This church is just one of the prettiest places in Fort Worth, I think. It's so beautiful. Arden had a great time running around, too, of course.

It just makes me so blissfully happy to be home with my children. I have missed it so much this year and I am so grateful for special days like today.

Up!

Huston has been obsessed with the movie Up! for weeks now. I won't tell you how often he watches it, or you might wonder about my parenting. It has been absolutely hilarious to watch him internalize and act out this movie. While other boys his age are pretending to be superheroes or characters from Toy Story or Cars, Huston is pretending to be Mr. Fredricksen, a 70+ year old man. Every stick he finds becomes his "cane" and he comments in a loud voice every time he sees an older person using a cane: "Look! They have a cane like Mr. Fredricksen!"

He has been pretending that his room is his house. He often invites me to come play there, but I always have to knock first. He likes to ignore my first knock, and then make a grumbling sound and answer my second knock just like Mr. Fredrickson does when Russell knocks on his door when the house is floating. Sometimes when I come to his "house" I have to jump into it because Huston informs me that his house is already floating.

One day Melinda told me (and I later experienced for myself) that she heard loud crashes coming from his room and found Huston throwing objects out into the hallway. He explained that he was throwing out the heavy things so that his house would float (just like in the movie, of course).

This weekend I had some clothes hanging up to dry and I kept walking past and finding one shirt on the floor. It is a shirt that ties in the back and has long strings. I finally figured out why it kept falling when I walked past and saw Huston grabbing the strings and saying that he was trying to hold his house down to keep it from floating away. As I walked away, he continued talking to himself, saying, "We can walk your house to the Falls, Bear Bear." (aka Paradise Falls, Mr. Fredricken's destination, for those not quite as familiar with Up!).

His creativity and quirkiness continue to amuse and amaze me. And, for the record, he thinks Toy Story is scary. Go figure.

Huston's Theories

Last weekend Clarke took Huston to run some errands. Huston kept spotting cars left and right that were like Mimi's car, like Mommy's car, like Aunt Emily's car, and like all the other cars that he knows and has recognized since he was tiny. After spotting a car like Mimi's, he asked, "Why do they just have a car like Mimi's?" Clarke offered some explanation and Huston said, "Or maybe they just think Mimi's cool and want to have a car like hers."

During their errand running they went to O'Reilly's for some new tail lights for Clarke's car. As they pulled up to the store a huge ball of flame erupted from some guy's car as he was working on it in the parking lot. Clarke pulled away to a safe distance until it was under control, and Huston asked, "Why is there fire coming out of that guy's car?" Clarke told him something about how the car was broken, but Huston had his own theories. He said, "Maybe he just likes fire," or, my favorite, "Maybe he just wants to cook some hot dogs."