BabyK's blog: Spring Break!

One of the activities that has kept our family busy for the past several weekends is swim lessons for our kids. We enrolled Colin into Novice I lessons, which basically is about familiarizing him with the water - but the big step is that he needs to get into the pool without his parents! This step took several sessions to get him into the pool (at least more than the top step of the pool) with his teacher and without many tears and stress. He now goes somewhat grudgingly, without the tears, and manages to make it through the lesson, but I wouldn't yet say that he enjoys his lessons yet. Hopefully he'll at least pick up a few swimming skills throughout the summer :) Piper is enrolled in the 'mommy and me' swim lessons. She doesn't mind the water, mostly trying to eat the water whenever she gets close enough. She's now to the point where she will relax enough to kick her legs while we swim her around and we've started 'dunking' her under water. She doesn't mind too much, though she does come up like you've tried to drown her!

Piper is at such a happy stage; how is she 11 months old already?!. She's really interested in walking (with our help) and gets upset if she can't get to what she wants. She may bypass crawling before walking, as she can easily get from sitting onto her hands and knees, but then lowers herself onto her stomach rather than moving her knees forward. She still mostly gets around by scooting on her bottom or launching herself from sitting onto her stomach and rolling, but her frustration at these motions is definitely becoming greater. She's also starting to show a bit more personality. When she has something she likes, and her brother takes it from her, she screeches her injustice and puts out her pout pout lip. She's really into clapping, shaking her head no-no, and has learned to drink from a straw cup! I think that we'll be weaning her soon now that she gets enough fluids and of course there is nothing wrong with her appetite. Colin often comments "Piper eats everything doesn't she?", and she does. There really isn't much that she doesn't eat and she gets really upset if she sees anyone eating and she doesn't get any - which also extends into the pretend play that her brother might do (no actual food anywhere). Perhaps if she actually starts moving around a bit more, she might lose some of her girth :)

Thunder thighs

Yay! (Clapping)

Sooo big!

We also took a trip to Palm Springs, CA last weekend. My parents have a time share down there, so we went down to share some time with them and with Kate. The drive is around 8 hrs and the kids really did very well both ways. Colin now enjoys his 'screen time' during the drive which helps so much! While we were there, we went on a hike which really personified Palm Springs, as it contains several stands of palm trees near each spring in the valley. Some of the springs were hot springs, and most of the water didn't extend much past the palms, but it was a fun hike!

Grandpa and Piper

Working on balance

Cool dude

Hiking with Grandma

Stand of palms (did I mention it was HOT outside?)

We also went to a zoo/botanical garden one day. Colin and Auntie Katie rode a camel! Colin still talks about it, but mostly about how big the camel was and how long of a neck he had. He also really enjoyed the model train display that they had there and would have watched it for a long while had it not been so hot outside ;) Otherwise, we spend some quality time in/around the pool and had some fun visiting with family.