Growing WarriorsJust your typical family…

We are unschooling…..

SWIMMING.

That’s right – no lessons. Swimming via the sink or swim methods…..

And the results?

Amazing!

Both Allison and Meredith have had probably about 6 months worth of swim lessons back in CO..Allison could swim, sorta, and Meredith could also swim sorta, but had a problem with sinking. Meredith was a pro at swimming underwater last year though. All through the winter I kept saying that I needed to get the girls in swim lessons so they could swim more proficiently by the time summer rolled around. I just couldn’t find a swim lesson that worked for us. Lessons for Meredith’s age group seemed to be during the day, but Allison’s age group lessons were at night or the weekend, and I really didn’t want an evening or weekend activity to schlep the girls to and from…so I never really got them into lessons. I thought about hiring someone to come out to the house and give lessons for a few week as soon as we opened the pool, but have since decided that we won’t do that. When I was a kid, I got a bit of swimming lessons (a couple of weeks? – Marti….care to comment? How long did your mom give us lessons??? I only barely remember it) when we first got our swimming pool, but the rest I learned by actually SWIMMING. My girls have already had months and months and months of lessons and still could barely swim.

So we open the pool, and it gets cold…no swimming. For weeks and weeks. Finally it is hot enough to swim, and swim we do. We have been swimming daily. The first time we got in the pool it seemed as though neither girl remembered a thing about swimming. Both of them ran to get their floaties on. The next day, Allison went at it solo, no floaty, and remembered a bit how to swim, still hung close to the edge. By the 3rd or 4th day, Allison was able to swim short distances, but not all the way across the pool….and now, Allison is swimming like a fish. Underwater, above water, treading water. I predict by the end of the summer she will be diving to the bottom to get those diving sticks the girls throw in each and every time we get in the pool (even though they just sit on the bottom of the pool until I get them out). I predict she will be able to swim the length of the pool (I think she can swim the width now), and will be able to do somersaults underwater. In other words, I suspect that by the end of summer she will be doing everything I did as a kid. Meredith is still hesitant to get rid of her floaty, but she is at least back to the skill level she was at last year, with swimming under water, etc. I’m going to give her a week or two, and then, if it hasn’t happened on its own, I will start suggesting that she practice at least a little bit without the floaty each time she is in the pool.

Now here is the AMAZING part.

Remember baby Lydia? Not even two years old yet? The first day in the pool, she hung to me, having a grand time, but hanging on me. The next day, she was content to hold onto my fingers and kick and swim and played in her boat a bit. Flash forward to yesterday and now she is actually swimming. Granted she does have some floaties in her swimsuit, but they only help keep her afloat slightly, they won’t keep her upright (so she can tip over into the water, or flip over on her back, etc. It isn’t a baby raft type of floaty that you sit in). That child now REFUSES any offers of assistance, and she kicks and moves her arms, she can turn around, she can move forward, she can spin in a circle. She is swimming! We can be out in the pool for 3 hours and she will swim that entire time, refusing help the entire time. I am going to try to get her a vest like the girls have (only smaller), where you have the ability to gradually remove panels so the child learns to rely less and less on the floaty in the suit and more on her own abilities….I predict that by the end of the summer, she will be able to swim like a fish with NO floaties as well….at the tender age of barely two. She already hates the floaties, and putting on her swimsuit today resulted in major tantruming because she wanted some suit that she found in a box somewhere that was too big and didn’t have floaty compartments.

Ok, I know I have mentioned periodically how fussy my family is to feed. Well lately the girls have been surprising me. We joined a CSA so we get fresh farm produce every week. YUM. Well all of the sudden my girls, even Allison, started enjoying salads! Salads! And I have been hearing much less “YUCKS” from Allison (she was the worst!). Well the other day I checked out some vegetarian cookbooks from the library, and one of them had some smoothie recipes that included such oddities as kale. Hmm.. well I had some kale, so we gave it a try. I didn’t mention the kale to the girls, but Allison noticed the teeny tiny green flecks. I told her it was kale, and even showed her the kale, and said that this cookbook suggested it, what did she think? Her resonse? “yum! Kale!” Wow. I’m gonna put kale in all our smoothies from now on Plus this book also suggested nutritional yeast and other add ins like wheat germ, etc. So guess what? LOL.

And dinner tonight….I made chicken, corn, beans, soup and fruit smoothies (I will share the recipe in a minute – I promise). Allison does not like soup. Never has. This soup is a zucchini soup, so I really didn’t expect Meredith to like it either..she likes soup with noodles shaped like Dora’s head. Anyway, Meredith ate TWO bowls of this soup, and I didn’t even fix a bowl for Allison, knowing that she won’t eat soup. But she actually requested a bowl…a bowl of zucchini soup….GREEN soup, and ate the whole thing, saying “that was good soup!” And Allison got seconds of her chicken too! AND baby Lydia, who hasn’t been very cooperative at meal time, ate almost all of her dinner as well.. The smoothies…vanished. Not drop left. I bet if I had offered, I could have found takers for licking out the blender…..I found this recipe in one of the cookbooks. HUGE hit. HUGE. So simple.

3 cups watermelon, seeds removed
8-10 frozen strawberries
cup or so of plain yogurt (we didn’t have any, so we used a container of raspberry yogurt).

Pulverize in your blender! It was, according to the girls, the best smoothie ever. They wanted more, but I was drinking the rest, and didn’t want to share, so they were told that it was gone. Whines and begging and pleading did not persuade me to give up my smoothie….but we will make this one again and again…next time I’m adding kale and yeast

I have been watching shows like “Honey, We’re Killing the Kids” and “Jaime’s School Lunch Project” and they are sorta freaking me out Baby steps….but my kids will know what asparagus is if ever confronted by one on the streets.

Another Meredithism – Remember I mentioned we were going to Worlds of Fun today? Well this morning when the girls hopped in our bed, Meredith asked Daddy (as she does every Sat and Sun when she sees he is still in the bed) if he was staying home today. He replied that he wasn’t. She asked if he was going to work, and he said he was going to Worlds of Fun today. She said, “Really? We’re going to Worlds of Fun too, maybe we’ll see you there!”

Have any of you heard me complain about how my working cuts into family time…..well there ya go. Right from the mouths of babes.

I can’t believe I almost forgot to post this. Tonight Eric picked up Wendy’s for dinner. Meredith’s kid’s meal came with a bacon cheeseburger rather than a plain one, so it had tomatoes and lettuce and mayo on it. She took off the tomatoes and lettuce but didn’t know what to do about the mayo. She really didn’t want mayo, so she came to complain to her Daddy because he got it for her. He told her that he didn’t order it with Mayo, Wendy’s just made it that way, and she should call them up to complain! So he has her get the phone, and he pretends to look up the Wendy’s number while actually dialing his own cell phone. He hands Meredith the phone when it was ringing and he went into the other room to answer it. OMG it was SO cute!

Meredith – hello?
Eric- Hello, this is Wendy’s
Meredith – I am Meredith
Eric – Hello Meredith, what can we do for you?
Meredith – you put mayonnaise on my burger
Eric – we did?
Meredith – yes, and I don’t like mayonnaise
Eric – did you order mayonnaise?
Meredith – no, my daddy just ordered a cheeseburger
Eric – We’re sorry about that. What do you want us to do about it, Meredith?
Meredith – I don’t want you to ever do it again!
Eric – Ok, next time we won’t put mayonnaise on your burger.
Meredith – right. Next time don’t put mayonnaise on my cheeseburger.
Eric – we won’t. We promise.
Meredith – Thank you! Good bye.

Hangs up the phone and looking all proud tells us that they promised they wouldn’t do it again and went and ate her cheeseburger

remember the earlier pics of the pool boy? See the pool? Well today we actually USED it!!!! Whoo hooo…..We opened it up about a month ago, and the day that we opened it the cold weather and the rain came. The rain stopped about a week ago, and it has gradually been getting warmer. Yesterday was warm enough, but the water was like ice. Today….we spent 2.5 hours in it!!!! Lovely.

Got all nice and hot and sweaty garage sale shopping first – the kids were BEGGING for ice cold swimming pool water by the time we were done.. Boy if I were pregnant or if I had a baby, I would have SCORED today at the garage sales..Seemed like every sale we hit had tons of baby stuff. The girls did ok with their allowances. Allison got a couple of dollhouse type sets, one playground set, and one sweetstreets thing that had two buildings, a car and TONS of accessories (accessories are a good thing). Meredith got a Big Mouth game and a smaller furby. Lydia got this weird thing that I can’t really describe. This big stuffed glob with a huge pouch and some babies that come out of eggs, and the lady that sold it to us said if we put batteries in there, the big stuffed glob will sing and talk to her babies. Lydia fell in love with the glob babies, and it was only $1 and her sisters had other stuff, plus this lady was practically begging us to buy something…I felt bad for her, so now we have a mechanical glob with three glob babies that we are going to have to buy batteries in order to see what it does.. Meredith and Allison both got a few outfits, that were very cute, and I got a few piano books … Our neighborhood is having their sale today and tomorrow. We went to the sale in the neighborhood across the street thinking we would hit our neighborhood on the way home, but the girls whimped out on me and didn’t want to stop at any more garage sales (once they spent all their money, they seemed to stop having fun!)….so we came home…Maybe we can hit a few in our neighborhood tomorrow morning on our way to Worlds of Fun for Eric’s company picnic…jealous?

I did notice that Lydia seems to be coming out of her “I see another person, I am going to get really really mad and grab my mom while screaming NO at them” stage as she was actually talking to people that she’s never even met! And of course Meredith was talking to anyone and everyone, once she got the Furby, it had to go with us everywhere so she could show anybody she met what she had bought. Oh, and at one sale she actually told the lady, “I know I can’t talk really well, and you can’t understand me that good, but its ok because I go to speech therapy and I am getting better” – the lady didn’t have a CLUE as to what she said, lol.

Not the best parenting move ever….but funny. The other day I had fixed the kids lunch, and was cleaning the kitchen a bit while they ate. One of them asked me for a spoon. I teasingly said, “I”m not your slave, get it yourself!” – to which Allison asked what a slave was. I responded rather quickly by saying it is when a person thinks that they can own another person like property and they get to boss them around a lot…or something like that. I literally see the lightbulb go off over Allison’s head. Her face changes as though everything in the world all of the sudden makes sense, and she responds, “OOOOOHHHH, so WE’RE your slaves!!!!”

P5130005, originally uploaded by deannajo.

And yes, this yard is the reason we bought the house.

P11000671, originally uploaded by deannajo.

Last night Diesel the Dog wanted outside. I let him out where he bounded about the yard in obvious doggy-bliss. The weather was lovely, and I smiled as he bounced around sniffing and playing. A few minutes later I decide that he should probably come in. Its late.. So I go to the door and call him, he comes trotting towards me and I think to myself that he is so cute! THEN all of the sudden, out of nowhere, a bunny crosses the patio, and as though it were planned, Diesel reached down and GRABBED it in his mouth. Right in front of me! The smile fades from my face immediately. The rabbit cries out, and thrashes about in Diesel’s mouth, trying to get away. Diesel tightens his grip and gleefully runs off with it as I yell at him to drop it, fully knowing that it was too late. I run upstairs to get Eric, who comes out and tries to separate the dog from the bunny. The dog takes the (now) dead bunny and hides him, and proudly trots inside.

I am shocked. We told the girls about it this morning, because just as we expected, first thing he did was go and retrieve his dead bunny and hide it somewhere else. Didn’t want the girls to see him carrying around a dead bunny and be surprised by that. We don’t know where the bunny is now…Diesel knows, but he won’t tell us.

ETA – Eric has suggested that calling it a bunny rather than rabbit may not be helping any one of us accept what has happened.. I will admit, when Lydia was watching TV, the show Miffy came on…Miffy – cute little bunny – RUN FOR YOUR LIFE MIFFY!!!!!!

My baby turned seven yesterday! SEVEN! That seems so OLD….just a big kid age.

We had a lovely day, we woke up, Daddy fixed the girls pancakes, then we opened presents and next we had softball practice. After that we picked up Jess and went to Paradise Park for an afternoon of (expensive) fun. Everyone had a blast! Then off to Cheeseburger in Paradise for dinner, and we got back home around 9:30, quickly sang Happy Birthday, got a bit of cake, and then off to bed where everyone collapsed as soon as heads hit the pillows.

Pictures will follow at some point….