last week of swim lessons

Whitney with the necklace she made with all the beads.  She was pretty impressed with herself that she made that with all the beads and got it to hold.  The beads are from three different sets, so the holes aren't exactly the right size for all of them.  It is rather hard to get the ring to hold.  She liked how big of a necklace it was, too.

Tucker feeding Meow Meow a treat at his table

Tucker playing splash and eating a fake tomato at the same time

Whitney playing splash

This week was a quieter week.  I decided my goal was to work on inside stuff and take frequent play breaks with Tucker and Whitney during my indoor projects.  It has actually been very rewarding and made the days very fun.

I worked on our 72 hour kits, rotating food and clothes and making sure it has stuff for wet and cold weather.  Not together yet, but closer to what we would most likely need in this climate.  I also started moving stuff around in our closets to prep for room switch ups.  I'm hoping to convince Jim that the downstairs should be his man cave/office area and his office should be Whitney's room.  I think he's convinced, but there's a bunch of organizing to do to move storage and stuff so he feels like he's got his own space.  It was a fairly productive week and fun, too.  Tucker and Whitney have been playing really well lately and I had a blast laughing at the games they came up with.  Here are several.  Read on only if you are grandma....

This week was the last week of swim lessons.  I think Whitney is glad, just so she doesn't have to take a shower.  That is her biggest beef of going to swim lessons.  She gets wet, freezes on the walk out and then freezes in the pool.  Then she gets out of the pool and freezes all the way back to a lukewarm shower because everyone is in there rinsing off.  I have to admit.  That is the part I hate about swim lessons the most.  Getting them all showered and such.  Not to mention they still aren't particularly fond of getting their face all splashed on in a shower.  But because of swim lessons, they've invented a few games.

They invented "splash" a whole bunch, multiple areas of the house.  I think their favorite part of swim lessons is getting in the pool by jumping in.  They call this jumping in " splash".  They do this off their bed, off the couch, off the jumping bed, and my favorite, into a box filled with mostly deflated balloons from their birthday.  When they did the one in the box, they would wait for the other to help them out of the pool (box).

I've also heard them singing Insy Winsy Spider at the top of their lungs.  This is what their swim teacher does when she wants them to scoot along the wall of the pool.  They also tell each other to "blow their bubbles", something else their instructor says a lot.  Whitney likes being a yellow fish in her yellow ocean.  She practices "floating on her back" or "swimming on her stomach" on her bed, which has yellow sheets.

In one of the video posts, there is a video of them reading the Diego book.  This is one of Tucker's favorites.  Today I was eating lunch and taking even longer than Whitney to eat.  Tucker finished eating a long time before and wanted me to read his Diego book to him so he could push the numbers on his phone.  Whitney Mommy was super cute and told Tucker she would read to him.  He totally accepted it.  He gave her the book and they went in the other room while Whitney said the parts of book and then he would push the numbers.

On the day I made bread, Whitney helped me mix and stir.  I use really hot water in my bread to keep the dough warm enough by the time I add everything else.  Whitney is very well aware of this.  As she was mixing the flour and water together, Tucker got wind of it and wanted to skip to the eating a small portion of the dough right then.  Whitney said to him: "Don't eat it Tucker.  It's too hot.  I'll stir it fast so it cools down for you" and proceeded to mix it up rather rapidly. 

She also often checks for any scratches on me or Tucker, notes them, and gives them kisses.

Another Whitney mommy thing that happens often is this:  when Whitney's tummy is full and she still has food on her plate, she hands the plate to me and tells me that Baby Brother's tummy is still hungry and he can have her food.  If she doesn't have any food on her plate, she clears the table of her dishes and puts them on the counter.

She also tells Tucker what he's supposed to eat.  Today in the car on the way home from church they were making their food requests for lunch.  Tucker kept asking to eat fish crackers for lunch.  I was kind of ignoring all the requests until Whitney said to Tucker "No Tucker.  Mommy said no fish crackers for lunch today"  I said no such thing, but she knows that I generally try to get them to eat real food or something other than their snack food requests.  Today Tucker won. 

After church I'm rarely in the mood to be picky about what they eat.  I'm hungry, they've been contained and usually well behaved for three hours and I'm totally fine with whatever they want.  Whitney picked up on that and asked for grilled cheese sandwich.  Hey Mom.  Where do you think she got that trait?  Me or Jeremy?  Just kidding.

Whitney is also continues to be very consistent in asking Jeremy to wash his hands as soon as he walks in the door, so he doesn't get sick.  Jeremy is still humoring her.  I think it's working.  He hasn't been sick for the entire five weeks she's been doing it.  Hah!  Go Whitney mommy!!

As my stomach rapidly enlarges, Whitney has taken up snuggling with me sideways and rubbing my belly with her hand.  Tucker likes to point at it and say "Look!  There he is!  Baby Brother!"

One of the girls that babysits Tucker and Whitney a lot asked them what their new sibling's name is.  Whitney looked at her very seriously and said "Baby Brother".  She's right.  It's the only name we call him.  Let's just hope the ultrasound technician was right because switching over to baby sister would be a bit of a shock, but a fast adjustment for Whitney, I'm sure.

They are both getting pretty good at praying on their own.  The thing that melts my heart about Tucker is how he thinks of all these things he is grateful for, different every time, and he is very sincere about it.  The other day he said thank you for his bowl and spoon, along with Mommy and Whitney.  I have to agree.  I've never really thought about bowl and spoon, but I'm sure grateful for those things when it comes to eating cereal or soup.

I really tried to focus on taking play breaks with them while they were still playing nicely this week.  I think Whitney picked up on it.  By the end of the week Whitney started asking specifically how she wanted to play with me.  Her favorite request?  "Mommy, will you play pony with me?"  Tucker likes it too and usually joins in at some point, but we act out all sorts of live situations with ponies.  We played in the "pool" with ponies, making them splash to get in or taking a shower in the dollhouse in preparation for swim lessons.  Tucker usually joins in with the play and ends up hitting another pony, Mommy or Whitney.  This leads him to playing time out with the pony and putting pony in time out.  He also likes to use tank to "clean up" any "messes" his pony makes.  Whitney just makes them talk and talk and talk.

Tucker figured out how to put some necklaces inside the beads to make a shaker.  He likes to pretend he is giving us our vitamins, something he really does every morning for Whitney and I.  He also likes to pretend that it's salt and he, Whitney, or I am a cucumber to eat. 

Tucker loves to be a gentleman.  Whenever we go places that require opening a door, he runs ahead to open it for us.  He then proceeds to say that he is a gentleman and Whitney and I are ladies.  Sometimes he specifies that Mommy is a lady and Whitney is a dentist.  This frustrates Whitney a bit and she corrects him, but he is kind of right.  See another video post about that.

Another thing that Tucker is really good at is taking out the trash.  He can now do all sized trash cans and full ones, too.  Not heavy full ones, but full ones none the less.  He accomplished this task on Monday.  When he did it, he said to me "I'm strong enough, Mom!"  He also continues to be able to take the paper up to the neighbor's no problem.

Tucker figured out how to snap and zip up his pants this week.  It is a skill that he still needs practice with, along with buttoning, but he is getting it.  And I love it!! 

This week I had one of those moments all parents have about how our children mirror us.  We were walking up toward our house when Whitney started telling me about our apple tree.  It is surrounded in a fence so that it lives to adulthood due to the tame deer we have around here.  Whitney was describing our tree and said that it has a fence so that "the stupid deer don't eat our tree".  The exact way I often describe the deer and crows around here.  She used the word stupid as if it was such a normal word, so I had to explain to her it wasn't a kind word and that if she heard me saying it to say Mommy, no, no.  I fully expect to be corrected soon.

Wednesday was a rather pleasant day.  I don't know how warm it was, but it wasn't frigid out and it was misting only off and on.  Time to go to the playground.  I was only planning on stopping there for about 45 minutes or so after joy school to get some energy out, but they ended up playing almost two hours.  I was amazed.  Whitney hasn't wanted to be outside for such a long in a long time. 

They played make soup, make salt, look at mommy through "glasses",  and spider on the ropes.  They were also really cute in that that lifted each other up to reach the bar to hang on to.  Whitney found a few flowers in the grass and picked them, saying we needed to take them home and put them in water because looking at the flowers made her feel happy.  Stuff I often say about flowers.

We had a lot of fun together this week.