Sitting and Siblings

Getting close to sitting up!!



So Andrew's passed the five month mark (5 months, 1 week and 3 days based on the blog sidebar).  Here's what life's like with this little guy these days:

• Still so cheerful, loves his big siblings and they love him.
• He loves to give "kisses" (and has for a few weeks).  Of course, they are the wet, open-mouth kind but we all love them anyways.  The kids sometimes refer to them as "baby slime".
• He is SO DISTRACTABLE while nursing.  If I speak or someone speaks to me he'll pull off and stare at me wide-eyed, he'll try to turn his head this way and that while still latched on, he will pop on and off during the feeding, he'll pull off just to give me a giant grin, and he's doing this new thing that I don't know what it is but he'll try to turn his head to bury it in my arm... while still latched on of course (ouch!).  He also tries to claw his face (ie. rub his eyes) when he's tired, so I do this "dance" with my free hand - hold his hand to keep him from clawing, pop my finger in his mouth to release suction when he's pulling away, put my hand on the back of his head to keep him from pulling away, repeat, repeat, repeat.  It can be exhausting!
• He's totally interested in food!  And because I just have too much going on in life right now (bouncing between two houses plus swim lessons this particular week), I'm not ready to start with the baby food purees.  So... we've just been letting him try different fruits and veggies that we happen to be eating.  He was going to town gumming and sucking on an apple slice last night and pitched a fit when Brian accidentally held it too far away from his mouth.  He's also tried pears, cucumber and clementine segments (which incidentally are too small/slippery for me to hold with my fingers against the suction he can produce, so I'm going to call that too much of a choking hazard and not try it again for a while).  
• Naptime and nighttime sleeping is TERRIBLE these days.  I take almost all responsibility because of how messed up his sleeping schedule is most days, but it still is pretty (VERY) frustrating. 
• He's rolling from front to back and now more often from back to front.  He's grabbing toys that are near him and is scooting (on his belly) around in circles and backwards. He's starting to dislike his rumble seat because he's not sitting up enough!

Learning to Swim

When we put an offer on our new house, I was ready to sign the kids up for private swimming lessons the very next day.  But then we decided we might want to do a program with church friends that taught swimming 4 days a week for 6ish weeks at the beginning of summer.  Then I realized that the program was going to be too big of a commitment while we were also trying to get things done on the new house.  So we finally signed them up for a week of private lessons with a recommended local instructor, who actually taught Brian lessons back in the day (yes, he must be pretty old by now, but we got recommendations from current parents for him).  Unfortunately the first availability in his "beginners" class wasn't until next week.  So what to do for the month between us closing on the house and swim lessons?  Well, check out some books for reference and teach them myself, that's what!

Every day that the big kids and I swim in the pool, they were both expected to have a "swimming lesson" with Mommy.  This involved taking off their life jackets, which I knew from experience that alone would be strongly resisted by Nathan.  But I was firm and started by requiring them to doggy paddle (with me supporting them) across the width of the pool.  Then we also started working on jumping into the pool by themselves, using a kickboard to do their part of their 1 or 2 laps, swimming on their backs and (for Nathan) walking across the pool in the shallow end without holding onto the edge (the water level is right about at his mouth and he was pretty petrified the first time I asked him to do it).  As expected, they grew more and more confident with their skills every day they were in the water, and went from pouting about and resisting their lessons (Nathan) to asking to do more laps then what I was requiring of them.

One of our neighbors is a family that goes to church with us and we've managed to have them over once to swim in our pool, though Nathan begs every day for them to come over again we've just been having scheduling issues.  But it was so great for my kids to watch even just once how they played so confidently in the water.  The older sister (9) and Nathan's same-age buddy can both swim on their own and all three of the kids were fearless off the diving board.  After seeing her friends go off the diving board, Sarah was ready to try it that day herself, though at the beginning she wanted someone to be swimming right there to "catch" her when she jumped into the water.  I got a video of Sarah going off the diving board, and after pondering a few days (and I suspect watching the video of his sister go off the diving board), Nathan reported to me one day on the drive to our new house "I'm going to go off the diving board LOTS today!"  And he did, without any hesitation.  And then again and again and again...  So this first video is a compilation of the kids having a blast going off the diving board.



The other breakthrough came earlier this week when I realized that Nathan had started swimming with his head in the water (while wearing his life jacket).  He liked having his goggles on and being able to see under the water, and he especially liked to play a game where I would trail my foot in front of him and he would try to catch it and hang onto me.  So for his swim lesson on Tuesday I did something new and asked him to jump off the steps and swim to me "under water"... I was ready for him to just sink but HE DID IT!! I was so thrilled and made a huge deal about how proud I was of him and he was just beaming about his accomplishment!  He swam back to the steps and I challenged him to swim to me again after I took one giant step back, and he did it again!  Then he just wanted to swim back and forth from the steps to me over and over again (no breathing while swimming yet, so he's limited to how far he can make it on one breath).  The next day Sarah took a cue from her brother and started putting her face in the water while she was swimming around the pool (though she still uses a "marshmallow sandwich" on her back).  I am so proud of these kids for the big strides they've made over the past month!  Here is a video of the kids' swimming skills as of Wednesday of this week.


So I'm thrilled with the great progress they've made over the past few weeks.  And I think that because of their increased confidence and skills, they are going to learn even more next week from professional swim lessons then they would have at the beginning of the summer.  So swim on, my little fishies!!

Oh Yeah, And We Bought A House

On May 14th, Brian and I had our 10th wedding anniversary.  We left all three kids with Nana and Granddad and hit the town - well, dinner and a movie, which was a nice get-away for us.  Andrew did take a bottle, though he was quite fussy the whole evening.  Unfortunately Brian and I didn't get a picture together that night.

And then the next day was the anniversary present...



Actually, the timing just happened to work out that we closed on our house the day after our anniversary.  It was definitely a long a bumpy road towards home ownership.  I think I have a draft post documenting the journey somewhere...

The next day we headed over to the new house in the afternoon.  We had an inaugural swim in the pool - more swimming then this was done, just no pictures. 

We had our first meal in the house, picnic-style on the floor.  

Since then lots of work has been going on.  The guys busted out a fire place from the master bedroom.  (It was not structurally sound, so we would either have to reinforce the floor and repair or demo.  Since it severely limited furniture placement and also Brian and I could never envision us enjoying a fire in our bedroom, demo it was!)

Nathan was an incredible worker, helping clean up all the bricks and mortar that Brian tore up!  Sarah also helped some, but wasn't quite as single-minded in her work as her older brother!

 We finally got the "TV" rigged up at the new house to buy the adults a bit more time to work.  (This is the fireplace in the den, the one we actually plan on using.)

Thanks to Nana (though I helped a little), the main floor of the house has almost completely been repainted.  Then in the past few days we picked out the paint colors for the kids' rooms and painted those rooms with the kids' "help".  Nathan picked green for his room...

... and Sarah picked purple. 

We are replacing the carpets before we move in, which is the only reason the kids were allowed to help paint.  Even so, it was still quite a stressful experience trying to keep them from getting paint EVERYWHERE, though now that its done I can say I'm glad we let them help.  Nana commented that she was impressed with my patience with the kids... but I know she only thought so since she couldn't hear my internal monologue: "No!  Stop, stop, STOP! AHHH, PAINT EVERYWHERE! SET THE BRUSH DOWN AND PLEASE. JUST. LEAVE!!"

There's also been significant work going on in the garage - paneling pulled down, shelving demoed, and lots of electrical work has gone on in anticipation of new drywall going up tomorrow. 

So the major things we are waiting on before we move in is a new pool fence and new carpeting on the second floor.  Carpet goes in next week and the pool fence the week after that, so hopefully we will be moving in early July.  I guess that means I'm going to need to start packing sometime...