finger thumb

beach!

Can you believe that on the very last day of August, we went to the beach for the first time this summer! Oh summer, how did you go so fast? I'm such a homebody, and I find that packing up the kids and remembering all the stuff they need and might need and then driving for half an hour is not my idea of a good time. But when I realized yesterday that August was nearly done I decided that we'd get to the beach at least once, no matter what. So we did.

And boy, was it ever worth it! Look at those baby toes, all wet and gravel-y. 

It was the New Baby's first time at the beach ever, and my Mom wasted no time in getting him down to the waters edge and dipping his feet in.   He did not seem entirely impressed with the whole idea at first, and there were many grimaces and much hand waving. The water was on the cool side. 

But then he changed his mind and decided that this beach place had a lot to offer.

Sand, water, blankets, birds, avocados, Grangran; so many of his favourite things were there.

There was also some swinging through the air, which is a favourite game. I know he doesn't exactly look thrilled in this picture, but really, he was just between smiles. The rest of the time there was lots of laughing and happy baby trills. I've got to tell you, I LOVE the babbling he does these days. It sounds like something between a small tropical bird and R2D2. So sweet. 

Though as much as the New Baby enjoyed the beach, the Little Dude relished it even more. He knows this beach after all, and was happy to see the well remembered view, fountain, and awesome play equipment. (Pirate ship! Little hand operated diggers! Giant round swings! Heaven) And his lovely cousin was along too. She of the constant attentiveness, and endless patience. Oh what a wonderful playmate she is for him. And big as he is, (and slim as she is), she still willingly hoists his three-year-old self up onto her hip whenever he needs a leg up.

But no matter all the wonderful diversions of the playground, there is still one thing that a beach has that can't be matched for fun and excitement...

 Yep. Chasing Seagulls. 

Oh the glee on this little boys face as he runs after them. And they are so nervy and tame and fat from eating french fries and discarded ice cream cones that they complacently waddle ahead of him, not quite flying away, in the most enticing fashion. 

But even with his cousin's help they still managed to elude him. No matter, the fun is in the chasing, not the catching. 

After wading and digging and running and playing we had a picnic dinner at the end of the day. And while the grown ups were packing up (and hosing down the messy baby) the Little Dude and his cousin went down to the water's edge to wash their hands or rinse their feet or something. And at that moment, L.D. decided it was finally time to actually swim. 

He got his shirt off, and in the last little bit of late afternoon sunlight, gave himself a thorough dunking. (Don't worry, Grangran was close at hand)

And the little boy who was somewhat reluctant to get into the water for his pool side swimming lessons transformed into a crazy fish boy right before our eyes. 

He splashed, and thrashed about, and did everything but actually swim! It was hilarious. Maybe its the energy burst he often gets at the end of the day, or maybe just the fact that he could always feel the bottom of the lake, and so wasn't put off by that un-grounded feeling of the swimming pool, but this kid just couldn't get enough of being in the water. We finally had to practically drag him, shivering and blue lipped out of the water. "Aren't you cold?" I asked him. "It's fresh!", he said, a perfect imitation of his cold-water loving Grandpapa. Hubs finally slung him up over his shoulder and carried him off the beach so that we could get him toweled off and into some dry clothes.

We may have to go back again tomorrow. 

I'm in a book! plus also: book giveaway

Books take a long time to go from planning to production, so I've known this was coming for a while now, but somehow, I never quite believe it until I have it in my own hot little hands. And here it is. Push Stitchery: 30 Artists Explore the Boundaries of Stitched Art. It hasn't officially been released yet, but you can pre-order it on Amazon. Or, keep reading to see how you can win an advance copy. 

It was curated by the amazing Jamie Chalmers, aka Mr. X Stitch. It contains work from artists who use the stitching or embroidery as their medium, from all over the world. It was not only very exciting to be included, but also really great to see the work of other artists of whom I was not aware. There is some truly mind blowing stuff in here. 

For example, the book kicks off with Cayce Zavaglia. I had never seen her work before and it is, without a doubt, epic.She is some kind of crazy crewel embroidery virtuoso. Yeah. That's embroidery. 

Also mind blowing is Severija Incirauskaite-Kriauneviciene (to whom I must appoligise because I cannot find half the punctuation marks on my keyboard that her name requires)
She is from Lithuania, and ya'll that is a car hood that she has embroidered on. A CAR!

Seriously. Amazing. 

Also Diem Chau's work is gorgeous. She is from Vietnam and the U.S. These delicate embroideries are done on organza and then stretched (I think) over porcelain dishware. Just lovely. 

These awesome quilts were done by Jimmy McBride, also American though according to his interview he "work(s) for an intergalactic shipping company, and I've got a lot of time on my hands. The views out my window provide an amazing inspiration for the quilts that I make." I really like that he's creating a narrative within which his work exists. 

I love his use of plaid fabric in this one.

Also there's this lady. Oh, that's me. 

Anyhow, I have an extra copy of this book to give away. If you are interested in winning it, just leave a comment and I will use a random number generator to choose the winning comment. Just for fun, you can make it a comment about textile based art you've seen recently, or maybe which sort of stitching you prefer to do. Or if you don't stitch at all, tell me about what kind of stitching you'd like to try if you could.

ps: I'll pay for the book shipping if you live in the continental North America, but if you are anywhere else, I'm afraid you'll have to pony up to have it shipped yourself.  I'll keep the comments open until, lets see, Wednesday night at 9:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time.

And the winner is commenter number 8, Annie! Congratulations lady. I'll be contacting you via e-mail for your mailing address so I can get the book out to you soon. Thanks to all of you for commenting and for your kind congratulations. You rock. 

messy

We're enjoying our adventures in Baby Led Weaning these days. Though I think it may be a little messier than the traditional methods.  Not that we mind. Here's the Baby finishing up a dinner of avocado wedges, cooked carrot spears, roasted sweet potato quarters and a hard cooked egg yolk. 

Why the spoon you may ask? (since infant lead weaning is, theoretically about giving them grab-able hand sized food and letting them feed themselves) Well first of all, we give him the spoon because HE FREAKIN' LOVES IT! He adores that little wooden spoon. It is just the right size and texture for gnawing on apparently. And secondly, there are some foods that I'd like him to have that just aren't pick-up-able. Like grains. Rice is very hard to self feed for an infant. And quinoa. I love quinoa and its an amazing super-food, so we eat it quite often. In this instance I cooked it up and mashed it with some cooked carrot. Then I give him spoonfuls of it and he holds the spoon himself and eats it...

...Or should I say, shoves it into his mouth with manic glee, chews on the spoon, spits half of it out and rubs it into his eyebrows. Because that's more accurate.

Either way, he really enjoys eating. And has a remarkable attention span for it, despite the fact that his is only 5 and 29/30ths old. (tomorrow is his half year birthday! Woohooo, 6 months old!) He sits in his high chair and 'eats' for the entire time we have dinner. Usually about a half an hour. Much longer than his three year old brother is interested in sitting still for. And then often he'll continue to sit in the high chair, messing around with the left overs while I tidy up the kitchen. Its very handy. 

Its always funny when I take him out of his highchair though, and we discover how much food has found its way down around the sides of him. He usually has a lap full of partially chewed food bits, a gross melange of crumbled egg yolk and mushed avocado etc. One wonders how much he's actually ingested. 

He topped it all off with a half a banana for dessert. He went at it with the zeal of a monkey-vampire. As you might expect, we go straight for a bath after this. I'm always amazed by where I'll find just a smidgen more of sweet potato (behind his ear) or a few grains of quinoa (up his nose). Thank goodness for q-tips. 

Dickens (with four M's and a silent Q)

Busy day today, lots going on, making, baking, my sister's birthday party, kids were cute etc. But I don't have anything along those lines to post tonight because when the day is that full I tend to need to just shut down and relax in the evening. Also in a day that busy I forget to take photos, and you know I hate to blog without a picture. 

Anyhow, I relaxed and treated myself tonight by watching the final episodes in the televised BBC version of Little Dorrit. Dude, it was soooo good. I love me some period drama. Not the overly smarmy ones, but some good, real, gritty ones with good acting and excellent design. So Little Dorrit rang all my bells.  

I watched a televised version of Nicholas Nickelby awhile back that has me on this Dickens kick. Now I just really want to go back to school and study his whole oeuvre. His stuff is great. I don't know why I never read it in school. Dense, amazing characters, and often darkly funny. But man, they are looooong, which makes them hard to get through when you have about a half an hour a day for reading, broken down into 10 minute segments, even if you are a voracious reader. I'd like to set myself the goal of reading through all his works but its probably not practical for me right now. Someday.

But I do intend to go to the library tomorrow and get ahold of a copy of Little Dorrit. I know the pacing will be different from a miniseries, but I'm so excited now to learn more about the characters that just this little peek into their world has made me very interested in. (ugh, that was an awkward sentence, but I'm really too lazy/tired to change it.) Its so funny, but Hubs watched them all with me, and in between episodes, we'd find ourselves talking about the characters as the day went by. Wondering what they'd do next, trying to puzzle out their motives and such. It was really fun. The last time we found ourselves talking about the characters in a TV show this much was when we watched Six Feet Under. I still wonder what those characters are doing sometimes. (Oh Ruth, are you happy....?)

Anyhow, suffice it to say I reccomend this version of Little Dorrit. The acting was amazing. I have new actor crushes on many of them due to their brilliant performances. (especially Matthew MacFayden as Arthur Clennam and Eddie Marsan as Pancks) (Also, [second parentheses, eep, now we know its late at night] I now want to have lots of cats so I can name them after Dickens characters. Specifically one called Smyke and one called Pancks) Oh, and I want to go around Venice in period costume, preferably with a corset and leg o' mutton sleeves. 

Yeah, I'll probably have to settle for just reading the book. Maybe I could do it in a canoe on my parent's pond. Canoe... gondola... its not that much of a stretch. 

skwoosh

As you know by now, I love thrifting. And now that I have kids there is a whole new category of things to shop for at the second hand store. Indeed, I had one of those, "hunh, I guess I really am a mom now" moments the other day when I came home from the local thrift and emptied my bag to discover that I hadn't bought anything for myself, just stuff for the kids. Well. I never thought I'd be the kind of person who does that. But there it is. I had a bag full of kids books, kids clothes and random toys. I always check out the books, because I love books and so does L.D. and its such a good way to stockpile for a rainy and/or cranky day when you just might need fresh books. I also have started to pick up toys for that purpose. Though heaven knows, this kids does not need more toys. Where have all these toys that fill our house come from? I'm pretty sure I didn't purchase even half of them! But even though we have lots, there are a few things I always buy when I see them in second-hand stores. (because they are expensive of difficult to find new) 

1. Wooden toys. (very expensive new, and so nice to play with)

2. Wooden blocks. (because you can never have too many)

3. Vintage Fisher Price, especially Little People.

4. Large good quality puzzles. (He loves doing puzzles and it getting quite good at them)

5. Tractors and Diggers (because he loves them)

6. Toys from my childhood (because I'm a sentimental fool) 

And a couple of weeks ago I found one that fit into the later category, and then tucked it away in the closet to wait for the right moment to bust it out. And today was that moment. After breakfast, as I was helping him get dressed, I said to the Little Dude, "Lets hurry and get your daytime clothes on, because I have a surprise for you." This is a phrase he loves to hear, and never fails to answer with "What's dat surprise called?" He is absolutely consistent with this reply, even though I've told him that the point of a surprise is that you don't know what its called. But I just said, "you'll see" and went and pulled this out of this closet. 

Do you remember this? Its the Play-Doh Fun Factory. Which Hubs and I both fondly remember playing with. It cost me $1.50, and came with almost two of everything which makes it lots of fun for playing with together. 

Before we could start playing with it we had to make some playdough. I must admit that I really don't like the Play-Doh brand stuff that you buy in the store. It smells gross and feels waxy and the colours are lurid. They actually call it Play-Doh Compound, which is kind of, er, suspect as well. Plus I have no idea what sort of evil they put in it to keep it from spoiling or drying out for a ridiculously long time. Probably the same stuff they put in McDonald's fries. Anyhow, my mom used to always make playdough for us, so I did the same. Found a good recipe at Mommy Footprint (good site in general). And that was all part of the fun, and the Little Dude loves to measure and scoop and stir too. And since this was not a edible food recipe, he was allowed to put his hands in the bowl and make a lovely mess. He really enjoyed measuring the flour. He happily ran his hands through it telling me over and over again, "Its soft! Feel it mommy, it SOFT!"

So the playdough came out really well, nice and soft, good malleability. And really non-stop fun for most of the day. He played with it before lunch, after lunch (and would have been during lunch too if he'd had his way) after nap, and then we cleaned it up just prior to dinner. He really wanted to play with it again after dinner, but we went for a family walk instead and he was ok with that, since we promised we'd play with playdough again tomorrow.   Anyhow, back to the Fun Factory. They still make these, so you don't have to buy them second hand, if you can't find one. L.D. LOVED it. You stick the dough into the back of the machine, press down on the handle and voila! Dough extrudes out though the shape you've chosen in the most pleasing manner. Both Hubs and I enjoyed playing with it at various times of the day, along with L.D. And Hubs now has big plans to make fresh pasta with it (well see...).

But I think L.D's favourite part of the whole thing was that... ...it came with a knife! And a rolling pin! Both of which were great fun to use. Though the knife was the best. Knives are his favourite implement these days. Followed closely by screwdrivers and "cute little needle-nose pliers". He looooves to use a knife. He's only allowed wooden or dull ones, but very much enjoys hacking away at things in any case. And having complete independance and great success in this circumstance was a big hit. Because playdough is very easy to cut. Much easier than bread. Or fabric for that matter. Both of which he's tried.

So we squished and skwooshed and molded and extruded. And coiled and chopped. And made snakes and worms and snails and storm clouds. And pretended it was food and pretended it was trees. And carefully made things and set them aside in a pile ("that's my collection", he said) and then happily destroyed it all and made it over again. 

It was so much fun. It made our fingers taste salty. We'll definitely do it again tomorrow. 

an infestation

Do you notice anything odd in this picture?

How about this one? Look closely. Well, I tell you what you don't see. Those aren't stray volleyballs forgotten on the edge of the lawn. 

They are puffballs! The crazy, otherworldly, giant mushroom. I know that nature is generally kind of incredible and awe inspiring, but you know how it is, you get used to the area that you live in and are not really impressed by the things you see around you all the time. But then you go somewhere else and are amazed by the most mundane things, only because they are not familiar to you. I always have this with visitors from BC, who get excited to see our common Blue Jays, whereas we get all impressed when we are in BC and see Stellar Jays. Its relative rarity in action. 

But I am always, always impressed by puffballs. Even though we see them every year. They just seem so... alien somehow, so unusually large.  Here's the Little Dude's hand, to give you an idea of scale. And these were two of the smaller ones. The others are even bigger. 

We had dinner guests drive in from Toronto last night, and we had to drag them out in the back yard to see the puffballs. And then we picked one and brought it inside to dissect and wonder at. And even fry up and eat. Our guests humored us and went ahead and had some too. They are quite edible. But as with any mushroom or fungus, do be cautious and look at a good guide to make sure you have an actual puffball. Though they really are the most distinctive mushroom, and I'm not worried at all about eating them because they could hardly be confused with anything else. There is really only one, giant, globular, white, un-gilled and unstemmed mushroom and that is the puffball. But really, go look here if you are concerned.   The Little Dude really likes to go and visit these, if for no other reason than that he is allowed to smack them like they are drums. They make a very pleasing thump. They are nature's nerf ball. There are so many of them that we're definitely going to let at least one go to spore and then go and throw it onto the road just to see it go "PUFF!" just like we did when we were kids. 

We ate a couple of slices of one today too, fried it up and then folded the whole giant slice into an omelet with some cheese. It was quite good. They aren't overly flavourful; mostly they just taste like what you cook them in (butter!) and the texture of the omelet and the mushroom was oddly similar. But still, I always like to eat something I've had no hand in growing and foraged for myself. Makes me feel like a pioneer. But without all the hardship and never ending manual labour. So in a good way. 

onetwothreefour!

Look who I finished making today:  Can you guess who he is? Does the post's title give you a hint?

Here's a shot that should give you a clue.
That's right, its Joey Ramone!

When I first saw this pattern in the Stitch and Bitch Nation book, I knew that one day I'd knit this doll. My very oldest childhood friend is a huge Ramones fan. At his wedding two years ago he even had the string quartet play covers of their hits as the pre-service music and as they signed the register. I'm telling you, you have not lived till you've heard "I Wanna be Sedated" played by a two violins, a viola and a cello. Anyhow, when I saw this pattern I knew that if he ever had a baby, I'd be knitting this doll for him. And now he and his wife are expecting their first child in September. So I had to bust out the knitting needles and get 'er done.

I don't make knitted toys that often. Don't get me wrong, I love the way they look but there are a lot of fiddley little details, and I find they are a lot of work. But I really wanted to make this one. The directions for the actual knitting pattern were quite good, but the description of how to put it together and do all the crucial finishing touches were really not very helpful. For example "Attach strands of yarn to head for hair.", doesn't really give you much to go on. Its about as helpful as a sack of hammers.
Luckily, my local library had just added Hilary Lang's Wee Wonderful book to their collection. (she also has a blog) And the timing could not be better. It is a great resource for all things related to making soft toys. As she so rightly puts it, most of good toy/doll making is in the stuffing and the final touches of face and hair. I really wanted this one to look, you know, Ramone-y, so I was happy for the good advice. (btw, its really hard to stuff a toy and still make it look skinny.)
And even though there are no knitted dolls, it still had great directions for how to make yarn hair and attach it to a dolls head. And there are some supercute patterns in that book too! I've put a couple of them on my someday to-do list.   Despite the fact that I didn't find the finishing instructions helpful, I did like all the details the designer incorporated into the doll. For example, these shoes are awesome. 

The Little Dude was pretty interested in the process of putting this together. As I showed the dolls finished hair to Hubs, L.D. inquired "is dat a girl or a woman doll?" "It's a boy doll," I replied, "sometimes boys have long hair too." He thought about it for a minute, and then got down on the floor and put himself into downward dog position, so his head was hanging down and said, "My hair can be long to, when I point down like this. See?" And he bounced he shook his head around to fell his curls bounce. 

Here he is, channeling his inner Ramone. I didn't even style him for this picture. He often requests his sunglasses after nap time, when everything in the world seems too bright. And he just happened to be wearing that stripey shirt. Even though I'd tried to steer him towards something short sleeved. He insisted that he had to wear this one, insisting urgently, "I need a stripey shirt because today is stripey t-shirt day!" Indeed. 

drooler

After a slightly disturbed night, we woke to discover that the Baby had cut his second tooth. He wasn't up all night crying, but there were a few moments of restlessness that had me wondering what was going on. So, another new tooth explains it quite adequately. He's teething in ernest now, with red rash-y cheeks and non-stop drooling. I decided we needed some supplies. 

So I turned these:  

Into these:

They are the equivalent of a baby neck kerchief, and are great for keeping that steady dribble of drool from soaking the front of the poor Baby's shirt. Its basically a pattern from a Lotta Jansdottir pattern, but I've changed it a bit in that her pattern calls for one layer with hemmed edges, whereas I prefer to make mine out of two layers, stitched right sides together, turned right side out, and pressed and edge stitched. It makes them much more absorbent. I use repurpsed t-shirts for the back (nice and soft and stretchy) and men's shirts or old sheet fabric for the fronts. 

I even used a bit of 'new' fabric, purchased at an actual fabric store. I must say though, the men's shirting fabric is my favourite. Whenever they have a half price day at the V.V. I pick a few up. I'm especially fond of Tommy Hilfiger shirts. Not that I'm all label conscious, but I find they really do have the nicest plaids and the best fabric quality. That orange and yellow flannel at the bottom is really the nicest I've ever felt. Its like butter. 

Same with the navy plaid at the bottom here. I do love a nice plaid.

And I love the way these look on the baby. Somewhere between hipster and farmer, which pretty much sums up the aesthetic of how I dress my boys. 

On a side note, its getting much harder to photograph the Baby these days. He's so active that I need really good light because he's contantly moving and in anything less that full sunlight his hands feet are almost always a blur of activity. Also, he can no longer 'ignore' the camera, and most pictures (as you can see) feature him reaching towards the lens. Despite the fact that he's never succeeded in getting his gummy little hands on my camera, he is very, very persistent. 

I need Hubs and the Little Dude on full 'entertainment' mode in order to get any picture that is halfway decent. And there is only so long that they can keep up their song and dance. Which is, literally, singing and dancing. I wish there was another camera shooting them while I was trying to get these shots, because they were really funny. 

And anyhow, its only a matter of time before L.D. wants to get in the picture too.   Ah, brothers! Now that's the shot I was looking for. Don't worry, we rescued the baby the second after this was taken. As you can see from the expression on his face he's getting less and less willing to passively take his brother's manhandling. And physically more capable of getting himself away. I can't wait to see their dynamic unfold.  

get down

We had this funny moment at swimming lessons this morning. For some reason, they have a small boom box on the deck that is tuned into a random top 40 station. As the Little Dude asked a wide variety of questions about life in general (What's that noise? Why is there no life guard in that chair?) and generally ignored the various requests of the nice instructor, a Katy Perry song started thumping out its poppy beats into the air. And he very subtly started to bob along with it. Which caused his instructor to finally crack a grin. "Are you dancing?" She asked. He looked at her and continued to dance but with the most deadpan expression on his face. 

It totally made me think of this video.

 

 I especially love the part with all the dancing robots at the end. Nothing like a robot party. 

swimming!

These early years of a child's life are full of so many milestones, first meals, first teeth, first steps etc. And today was no different. Today was the Little Dude's first swimming lesson.   Sometimes I feel a little bit like I parent in a vacuum, in the sense that I don't have any geographically close mom-friends with kids the same age as me. I have mom-friends who live far away, and mom-friends whose kids are different ages. But no close, talk to them everyday mom friends who would say things like "So have you signed up for swimming lessons yet?", thereby jogging my bad baby-brain memory into doing things like that. It just sort of occured to me the other day, that maybe L.D. should have swimming lessons, you know, since its summer and everything. So I looked up a phone number and called the pool, and wouldn't you know it, summer is pretty much over. I'd missed the boat on signing him up for classes, and there are apparently two whole levels that other little kids his age have already done! Not that I'm overly worried about it, but clearly I was a little behind the eight ball on this one. I felt kind of bummed that we'd missed the lessons and wouldn't be able to go again for a whole year, when the nice lady on the phone told me that there was one more session of private lessons available, and really, they are not much more expensive then the group lessons. So I jumped at the chance. "Which time slot would you like, 8 am or 5:30 pm?" Sheesh! Well I guess late signing up beggars can't be choosers. So we took the 8:00 am time slot. 

And I'll tell you what, we pretty much have the pool all to ourselves at 8 in the morning. Getting out the door was a bit tricky too. I take my hat off to all the two parent working families out there, because I know you all have to leave the house early every day, and much earlier than 7:55, which was when we had to leave (the pool is three minutes away from our house). Our normal routine in that the kids usually wake between 7 and 7:30, (and I like to encourage the 7:30 end of that window). Then we usually take our time waking up. L.D. likes to go upstairs and play while the Baby and I breastfeed. Then we get breakfast on, and eat in a pretty leisurely fashion, and then once breakfast is over L.D. plays again while I shower while the Baby chills out in his little chair in the bathroom. The when I'm done showering I'll get a load of laundry in the machine, and by then its 9:00 am, and time to put the Baby down for his first nap. But with the 8 am swimming lessons things are much different. We really have to bust a move to get out the door with swimming bag packed and breakfast consumed and a clean leaving-the-house-diaper on the Baby and everybody's teeth brushed. I am very impressed by all the working families I know who leave the house by 7:30 or even 6:00 am. You people must be very, very organized.  

Anyhow, this whole swimming lesson thing makes me very nostalgic, because since I (accidently) moved back to my home town we have our swimming lessons in the very same pool where I learned to swim.  Here I am, second from the left. The one with the shaggy blond mop top and the patriotic bathing suit. I wish I had a better picture of that bathing suit. My older sister and I both had one and it was the funniest thing, because it was red and blue with white maple leafs and somehow the white parts were less opaque than the red or blue parts and sun actually got through so when you took your suit off after a long day on the beach you'd have little maple leafs tanned onto your skin. I kind of wish I still had that suit. 

I think I'm four years old in these photos and apparently the pedagogical strategy of swim instructors was a little different back in the day, as it seems that they were literally throwing us into the pool. (that's me surfacing with the grimacing face)

Anyhow, its all very surreal to sit with my little boy at the edge of the same pool and listen to the instructor encouraging him to blow bubbles.   He took his time to warm up to the whole situation, but luckily I'd had the forethought to take him to the pool on Friday for family swim time, so it wasn't a totally alien situation. Even so, he was not entirely enthralled by the whole idea. He was happy to sit on the steps with me, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's not really a 'joiner'. The nice swimming instructor would say "All right, would you like to sit here on this frog?" and he'd say. "No." and then she'd say, "All right, lets pretend the water is paint and paint our bellies and arms, can you do that?" And he'd say. "No, I don't want to do that." No hysterics or crying or belligerence. He just calmly disinclined every invitation she made for the first 10 minutes or so. Things were exacerbated somewhat by the fact that right next door, on the other side of the privacy hedge there was some construction going on, and he could hear machines and he was pretty sure there was a digger there, or maybe a loader. Possibly a steam roller. Or a forklift. Maybe we should go check? He kept asking "what dat noise". Finally we promised him that if he went with the instructor and kicked his legs and blew bubbles, that we'd go and see the diggers after the lesson was over. Which seemed reasonable to him.
So he kicked. And bubbled. But he drew the line at floating on his back. No worries as we'll have plenty of time to work on that later. The instructor was very patient, and nice, but it was kind of funny, as one imagines that they are trained to praise the kids frequently in order to make this a positive event. However, the result was that she'd ask him to do something, like "Can you blow bubbles like a dolphin does?" and he'd look calmly at her and do.... nothing. And she'd say, "Awesome." Almost every request she made was punctuated by the same, ironically not very enthusiastic "Awesome." I said to Hubs later, "If he doesn't actually know what 'awesome' means, he's going to have a very odd definition of the word from her intonation and context. Basically, he'll think its something you say when you are unimpressed by someone's non-compliance."

But on the whole it was a pretty positive experience. He told me tonight after dinner that next time he is going to jump into the pool and make a big splash! I told him I'm sure he will (though I'll believe it when I see it). But it was nice to be there, at the pool in the cool light of morning, floating in the blue with my Little Dude.

 Just like these two! Another vintage family picture. That lady in the funky bikini is my Mom, and the little carrot top with her is my younger brother, known to some of my readers as Mr. Lemur Boy. Ah, how time flies.