Evenings at the pool

Paul & I have regular "date nights". Instead of a long date once a week, we take two mini-dates (usually 6-8pm). Paul gets to wind down after work and we are still home in time to read stories and put the kids to bed. It's good for us, but we have found evenings at the pool with kids to be just as fun (if not more fun) this summer. Especially now that Noah has improved his swimming so much he doesn't require that constant hands-on attention in the big pool.

Wednesday was our date night and it was hot. Paul wanted to go for a swim. As we were pulling in, he commented it feels weird without the kids and wished they were there. I did too. So I called our sitter and told her to get them dressed and drop them off after dinner :) It still gave us an hour to ourselves swimming, but we were happy to have see them when they showed up. Noah learned to jump in reaching out to Paul from a young age and he gets the whistle blown at him by lifeguards for not jumping feet sometimes. Tuesday he finally got it after swimming with a friend and seeing him do cannonballs. Now he goes feet first, but mostly does cannonballs. Paul was excited to watch that.

Elliot goes underwater all the time (when he gets wild and falls or something) and it doesn't faze him. But, yesterday he purposefully dunked his head under the water and started smiling and clapping. When I told him what a good job/big boy he was and made a fuss, he did it over and over repeatedly. WOW! Noah just started that a couple of months ago and here my 18 month old is already doing it. Such a big boy!

We started out in the big pool and after awhile they were ready to play with toys in the baby pool (no toys allowed in big pool). These are in the baby pool:

These are the colors...

As much as Noah picks on, messes with, pushes and pulls his little brother, he is pretty protective of him, and always worries when Elliot gets really hurt. This video doesn't capture an Elliot injury, but it does capture the song that Noah usually sings to him when he wants him to calm down, and Noah trying to brush those curls out.

Elliot's 18 month appointment

I can't believe Elliot is a year and half already! It is such a fun and busy age. He had a good appointment and is doing really well. He's not really talking yet, but he is really starting to imitate sounds and try to say words more. He is also signing more. He passed all the questions on the little survey I had to fill out on things he should be doing at 18 months.

He had two shots (Monday morning) and I was surprised to see a pretty bad reaction to one that night after his bath. He had a huge circular hard/swollen/red area that was warm to the touch. It was about 2x3". I called and they said it was from the tetanus and it's a fairly common reaction. I had to outline it with a pen and if it was worse in the morning have them look at it. Well it was worse in the morning. I took him in and even though it had "grown" it appeared it was just rotating. The edge on the side that didn't grow was starting to get splotchy. It wasn't infected and they said the good news is his immune system was really doing it's job reacting to the vaccine. And he won't need this one again. I had to watch it for 12 hours and give him motrin as needed. By last night it was not any worse. This morning it's faded a lot and more splotchy.

Stats:
Height - 33" (70%)
Weight - 27 1/2 lbs (75%)

Just a sweet headshot

He loves riding on the back of the bike.

Hanging with the big kids watching a movie eating popcorn. We had a little "sleepunder" a couple of weeks ago with Hudson & Addison. They went home about 9:30pm to sleep in their own beds after a fun late night at our house

Ear Tubes for Elliot

Elliot had his ear tube surgery on Wednesday. It went very well, as I expected it would. We got there about 6:30 and he was a happy camper. He is always an early riser and likes to play before eating anyway, so he was in a good mood. He was not too happy with me when I took him out of the cozy coupe car because it was time to go back for surgery. He did cry when I handed him over to the OR nurse which was sad :( But, they said he'd be out within a minute. He must have been. I left him with her at 7:29. By 7:40, his doctor came out to tell us it went great and they'd get us as soon as he was awake. About 20 minutes later the volunteer escorted us to the back. I was anxious that he'd be crying for me. Wrong. He was happy in the nurses arms eating teddy grahams and drinking apple juice. I never even gave him tylenol. He had to have "indoor, supervised play" for 24 hours, but he was SO fine. It was like nothing ever happened.

Glad it's over with and thrilled I don't have to deal with ear infections every time he gets a cold. He may actually still get them, but if he does the tubes will allow the infection to drain out and I already have ear drops on hand to treat it with for a few days without going to the doctor. Yay!

Noah cracking me up lately

Today we lost power after a tree in the backyard of a neighbor landed on an electrical line (for several hours). I had to call Paul at work to figure out how to get the garage door open since the opener wouldn't work. Noah still asks me why a million times about everything:
N- "How did you open the door without power?"
M - "Daddy told me how to do it"
N - "Why did Daddy know how to do it?"
M - "because he is good at fixing things"
N - "Why is daddy good at fixing things?"
M - "Because he's smart"
N - "Oh. Why are you not smart, mommy?"

And this morning I was snacking on baby carrots & trying to get him to share with me: "Mom, we don't like carrots. Only bunnies like carrots."

Paul was recently playing soccer with him and had a couple of bad kicks. Noah asked him, "Why are you no good at this game, daddy?"

I came up from the basement after working out all sweaty. Even though I was only down there an hour, Noah runs to me excited and gives me a hug. Then he pulled back kind of disgusted, "Mom, why are you hot and sweaty?"

The delivery is just as funny, as the things he says. Wish I could capture his curiosity and innocence in writing.

Two fish...

This is Elliot's second summer at the pool. Last year, he couldn't move around on his own, but that didn't stop him from splashing around. Even then we knew he didn't have any fear of the water.

This winter, when he was about a year old, we took him to the YMCA, which sported a zero-enty pool. Thinking he might have fun splashing around the shallow part while Noah played in the deeper part, we turned him loose. He immediately crawled into the water at lightning speed and kept going until his whole body was underwater, including his head. We were so shocked we just stared at him for a few seconds before we pulled him out. I expected tears, coughing up water, etc, but he was just mad we picked him up out of the water. We put him down again, and he did the same thing. The zero-entry pool may have been fun for him, but it was more work than either of us expected, protecting him from himself.

Pretty soon he was wading out as far as he could go and jumping up and down. By the time the pool opened this summer, he was ready to go. Our pool has a zero-entry baby pool that goes up to two feet in depth, and a larger zero-entry pool that is five feet in depth. He is equally at home in both, at either end.

At not quite 18 months old, he can actually do a swimming stroke, kicking his legs and crawling his arms. And he's learned to hold his breath while underwater. And he's crazy fearless.

Going into the pool. He has had many, many wilder entries.


Spinning around in the water


Jumping int he baby pool. The second entry isn't all that unusual.


Splashing in the fountains.


It was the end of the day, so we didn't quite capture it, but he will often just run right up to us in the deep end and jump in, whether we're ready to catch him or not. I'm tempted not to catch him once, and see what happens. I wouldn't be totally surprised if he came up and swam back to the side. I think he loved climbing out of the pool just as much.

One fish...

Noah has always loved the water. From the time he was little baby he loved the bath - it was practically impossible to get him out - and ever since he discovered pools, he has loved jumping in and splashing. But until recently, he's always been very timid about getting in over his head.

We signed him up for swim lessons at the YMCA in mid-May, and he lasted less than one lesson as he decided the pool was crowded with too many kids for him to be letting some stranger try to pull him away from the safety of the side of the pool. We had been swimming quite a few times over the winter (it's an indoor pool) and by this point, I had been trying everything to get him to at least put his face in the water and blow bubbles, without success.

We tried signing him up for private lessons to avoid the crowd. He had one lesson with his teacher, and then a break of a few weeks. In those few weeks, he suddenly started putting his face in the water and something must have clicked. His water skills started improving very quickly, and it was amazing to both of us how good he got at swimming in such a short time.

His tricks include swimming under water finding sunken objects (eyes open the whole time), swimming on his back and swimming nearly 20 yards in the deeper part of the pool without stopping. The only time he ever gets bothered by anything is when he gets water up his nose.

These videos don't capture it all, but do show quite a bit of what he can do. And you can imagine who is watching all this, and is thinking he can do just what big brother is doing. We'll have another post soon on "Two fish..."

Racing daddy across the pool


Swimming like a madman. Sometimes he just turns on the speed and hauls ass.


Nice form


under water


Noah diving for sunglasses


Noah swimming on his back


Noah jumping. He can jump in under water and come up by himself, but he doesn't like to do it in the deep end without me there to catch him.