Swim Lessons 2019

I think this is our eighth straight year doing some kind of swim lessons through the ARC.

Here are links from 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017.

Leah didn't get to participate, so she found other ways to entertain herself at the side of the pool:

A different day, a different purple outfit, and still not looking too happy about not being able to swim:

I gave her my phone & she took this photo of her own feet:

One day she found this yellow rope. She looks like she's not sure if she's getting away with something or not. 

Alright, last one of Leah (who wasn't even signed up - in my defense, she was closer and easier to photograph). Next year she'll be 3 and able to do the first regular level (without parents in the water).  

Jumping in! I thought James might work on diving, but he didn't want to ask the teacher. 

 Amelie jumping in!

James doesn't have much interest in taking pictures, so I just grab what I can get.

This is a pretty quintessential James look, though.

My goodness, we have a lot of different swimsuits.

Waiting a bit to go into Hickman High School pool.

Amelie didn't much want to take a picture, either!

For some reason, James went through about 4-5 teachers during his class. For several of the days, the kid of one of my friends who has babysat for us before, was his instructor. "Amelie is going to be so jealous," he said. When he told her afterward, she responded that it "was so unfair."

Amelie's teacher was absolutely fantastic - and the same for the whole 2 weeks.

Amelie is good at making friends.

This other girl had the same pink swim shirt.

They both passed their levels! Amelie will move up to the Stingrays.

And James will move up to the Sea Turtles. (Classes are, in order: Parent & Child, Starfish, Clownfish, Bluefish, Sea Turtles, Stingrays, Dolphins, Sharks.)

As a post-script, this happened while swimming, and during the two-week class, but not while we were actually at swim lessons. Amelie was swimming underwater with her eyes closed and ran into the edge/wall of the lazy river at the ARC and got a big goose egg and alarmed the lifeguards and other bystanders (who were telling me to take her to the ER). The bottom right is immediately after it happened (and I texted her Papaw and uncle). It did swell up to about the size of a baseball but went down with lots of ice and ibuprofen. I have a memory of swimming into the side of the pool while swimming underwater with my eyes closed at the Dexter pool, though I'm not sure if I got the fancy black (and blue and purple and yellow and green) eye to go with it.

Leah says

 Things Leah has said so far this morning:

“I need one… two… five… eight Band-Aids!”

Then, to her brother and sister, “You guys, I got Band-Aids!”

“Mommy, I need meat!”

And when I told her the sausage was too hot, she said, “I blow on it.”

I took the kids to the dollar movie the other day, and sprung for a root beer for them to share. Leah looks over at me and says loudly, “I like this tea!”

We have been doing swim lessons for the bigger kids, and Leah and I have to sit by the side of pool. She says that she needs her “Kim suit” and that goggles are “Kim glasses.”

She sings the ABCs, but not in order! She’ll just throw random letters out there to the tune of the song.

She slung purse over her shoulder, came to find me, and said, “Mama, I’m going work!” Never mind that she was otherwise completely naked at the time.

She’s also started saying, “Mama, I need see my kids,” when Amelie and James are somewhere with the door shut and she wants in.

She likes for me to sing “Ba Ba Black Sheep.” I was changing the line to “and one for the little girl who lives down the lane,” but now she insists “big girl!”

Bonus James Says:

“Mom, where’s the tape?”
Me: Drawer above the trash can.
On his way back through the living room, “Thanks, mom.” Then, “Do you basically know where everything is?”

Random Summer Photos

An assortment of random photos - these are selfies James took when playing with my phone.

 James and Leah are waiting (not very patiently) for Amelie to get out of her piano lesson. Look at Leah's hair! It's huge!

We've been going to the free morning movie at the theater close to our house this summer. The kids are big fans - though it turns out not to be free when they talk me into buying concessions.

Climbing at the park: 

Here's Leah tootling around in her new swimsuit and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle flip flops (both birthday presents from Nana Jana).

Showing off James's Mario & Luigi slippers.

Google made this comparison photo for me - these were taken exactly a year apart - Leah at one and a little bit and then at two and a little bit.

And finally, this one's really random - and not even a summer picture - but here's a comparison photo about 4.5 years apart - Amelie and James are 4 and 2 years old on the left and 8 and 6 years old on the right:

Stephens Lake

I took the kiddos to Stephen's Lake (more of a pond, really, but still a very nice free public area). Here's Amelie doing her thing:

James picking Leah up.

She started to slip!

They really went all in for the beach experience. (They rinsed off before they got into the car!)

James likes to go out absolutely as far as possible (where he can still touch).

 Leah stays closer to shore. There are minnows over by the plants.

 Poor James was the only one who got sunburned (despite also being the only one who I put sunscreen on twice! He must have rubbed it off of his face).

It went away pretty quickly.

Drumming

Sam brought his snare in and the kids of course wanted to play it.

Blurry photos - Look at James's face!

And Leah's face! She likes to play the cajon, too, and sing along - I'll try to post a picture of that as well (it's not nearly as noisy).

Little Gymmers

I used to take Amelie and James to Little Gymmers at the ARC all the time, but this was Leah's first trip. (I found this link to a trip when James was small.)

They have a lot of riding toys:

A new attraction that they've added is a bouncy house:

Videos of the same old thing:

Doctor Visit

Amelie had her 9 year well-child check, which I also dragged James and Leah to, and so I only got this one picture:

Amelie is now 4 feet, one inch tall (6th percentile) and weighs 59 pounds (31st percentile). She just finished up third grade at Ridgeway Elementary and will move on to Unit C in the fall. She was reading this magazine while Dr. Swofford was trying to ask her questions. Then I had to take James out in the hall to scold him about playing with the medical equipment and when I came back in, she'd finally looked up from the book and they were chatting about school.

They didn't give us a milestones checklist the way they used to when she was a littler kid, but I found these online and they seem to be accurate:

• Experience a growth spurt. Your child may get significantly taller and gain more weight. 
• Able to persist in physical activity to reach a goal, such as when playing a game or completing a challenge.
• May act unreasonable or rude when things don’t go as planned, but is as able to recognize behavior and apologize.
• Communicates needs and wants in socially appropriate ways.
• Works cooperatively toward shared goals
• Consistently recognizes the views of other people
• Increased attention span but interests may change rapidly.
• Learning there is a middle ground—things aren’t all right or all wrong.
• Exhibit interests in collections and hobbies.

Amelie is still reading her long fantasy book series, and pretty much anything that she can get her hands on. I did see her with Harry Potter last night. She likes to collect things and has a vast amount of knowledge stored up about all of the various Pokemon and Bakugon and dragons in her books. She made up a game today and made the pieces and board out of paper and taught me how to play it.

Birthday Interview

With some coaxing, Amelie agreed to do the birthday interview again this year. 

1. How old are you? 9
2. What is your favorite color? Turquoise (no surprise there)
3. What is your favorite toy? My Kindle (I really thought she was going to say Bakugon - which is kind of like a strange combination of a transformer and a Pokemon that Amelie recently got all of the neighborhood kids playing with.)
4. What is your favorite game? Merge Dragons
5. What is your favorite song? Hmmmm. "Old Town Road." There is a debate going on about whether it is a country song or a pop song. 
6. What is your favorite animal? Fox
7. What is your favorite book? I don't actually .. Nnewts
8. What is your favorite movie? Isle of Dogs
9. What is your favorite TV show? The Dragon Prince
10. What is your favorite thing to eat? Udon noodles
11. Where is your favorite place to go? Grandma Mary's
12. Who is your best friend? Kaitlin
13. What is something you learned last year? That male platypuses have poisonous spurs on their back legs.
14. What is something you'll learn now that you're 9? I know that there is a unit on the Oregon Trail in Unit C, so, that. 
15. What is your favorite part of school? All-school picnic on the second-to-last day of school, which is tomorrow. What is your favorite special? Media Center.
16. Who is your favorite teacher? Ms. Malloy
17. What is hard for you to do? Spell
18. What is your favorite thing to do? Flower weave 
19. What is your favorite thing to do with friends? Sleepovers
20. What do you like about Me (Mama)? You? (pause) That you're more strict on James than Dad. 
21. What do you like about Dad? That he is very kind. 
22. What do you like about James? Hmm. He's my friend when no one else is around (sometimes). 
23. What do you like about Leah? (laughs) There are a few options for this one. I'm going to do the silly one: That she  is a Hattie attracter (laughs) 
24. What do you like about yourself?  Please skip this one. Really? You can't think of anything you like about yourself? No. 
25. What do you want to be when you grow up? Veterinarian. 

Here's the link to last year. 

Dog!

We got a dog!

Exciting news! We picked a dog out from the Puppies for Parole program and waited and waited for him to graduate. Here is the picture we had from the program website. Sam and I were calling him "majestic dog" when we were deciding. James really wanted us to get a boy dog.

I picked him up a little over a week ago from Tipton correctional facility. He enjoyed the car ride back to Columbia immensely, but he was just a little shy to warm up to us.

After great debate and some run-off voting, the kids settled on the name "Spark," because his picture looked a little like the character from this graphic novel: 

Though as you can see, the Sparks in the book is not a dog but rather a dog robot suit controlled by two cats.

Here's a photo of the first day we had him - he's been getting one or two walks a day.

He's a little bigger than I thought he would be - maybe 80 pounds. We'll find out at the vet next week.

The website said that he was a mix between a golden retriever and an Anatolian Shepherd dog, which I suppose would explain the size and his somewhat curly tail. He points at small mammals, too, which as far as I know neither retrievers nor shepherds usually do, so there's likely something else mixed in.

He likes to chew and fetch sticks, and has been absolutely wonderful with the kids. He also walks nicely on the leash without pulling, can sit and lie down, came already house trained, and doesn't bark much at all - though he valiantly defended us from the trash collector, recycling truck, and school bus today.

He is amazing with Leah, who took to bossing him around immediately.

What a good boy!

Mother’s Day

James brought home a Mother’s Day worksheet he had filled out in kindergarten. This is what he said about me:

My mom’s name is Cristl

Mom’s favorite color dark pink
Mom’s favorite food cheese
Mom’s favorite car minivan
Mom’s favorite drink tea
Mom’s favorite flower tulip

My mom likes to sleep, likes to read, likes to plant, likes to exercise, likes to eat, likes to cuddle

My mom taught me to walk (he wrote something else first and erased it, but I can’t tell what it is)

My favorite thing to do with mom cuddle

Amelie did this in kindergarten, too:1https://babybuffaloe.blogspot.com/2015/05/mothers-day-book.html?m=1

Library

Here are James and Leah waiting (again!) for Amelie to come out of a library program:

It looks like she thinks he might be reading something more interesting:

Bootheel

About two months ago, I realized that the photos from almost 200 older blog posts had gone missing. Imagine my shock and dismay! Despite Sam's reasoning that I "didn't have to recreate the blog," I was able to go back through my Google Photos and update all of the posts (and almost all of the photos - there were just a handful that I'm afraid are missing for good - less than 5 probably). Whew. I'm glad that's done with.

Now on to the regularly scheduled post:

I posted before about Leah's birthday cake in the bootheel. Here are the rest of the (remarkably few!) pictures from our trip to Bernie over Spring break:

Here's a video of the "ride that pony" game for all posterity:

This dress was Amelie's. Isn't it stylish?

Google created this artistic touch for me. I think it illustrates James's crankiness.

Also a good representation of the electronics use!

Of course, no visit would be complete without playing the game. Nana Jana has almost all of the high scores.

Look how thrilled James is. He must have won :)

Lawnmower fun:

Leah spent quite a lot of time out on the porch swing:

I guess it was windy - their hair is all blowing around.

I told them to lean in together: 

Visiting with Aunt Patti and Uncle Jeff: 

I guess we didn't get any pictures with Grandma Doris this time!