Proud Mommy Moment

I'm still smiling and it's been almost 24 hours.  Monday night was the first night of our new swimming class without parent involvement.  I have been so nervous about how the girls would do.  While they've loved the last year of swimming they don't always like to go under water - often they yell or growl (roar??)as they come up from the water.  They also don't like to jump into the water.  They sit down and scoot in.  Well last night's class was a total change.  It was just Emily & Ellery and teacher Amy who has been our teacher for the last year.  As I watched them I was teary eyed for the entire 30 minutes. The girls jumped in the water, went under repeatedly, swam to the edge, dove for gumby & pokey dolls, swam with arm floaties, swam on the motor boat floaters all while yelling "look at me mommy!!!".  They wore their goggles the entire time which I think made them much more willing to go under water.  It was amazing.  I'm so proud of them.  We all can't wait to go back to class next Monday.

Behind Closed Doors

Silence and toddlers are not always a great mix.  On one of Grammy Linda's daycare Wednesdays she thought the girls were taking a nap but then started to hear strange noises.  When she went to open the door this is what she found.

Mattresses on the floor, beds stripped, and dress-up clothes strewn everywhere 

Got to love pirate-princess-fairies

Turns out the girls just wanted to do a little rearranging while they try on clothes.  These girls are in love with dressing up.  They can layer like no other.  I sometimes wonder if the goal is to put on as many pieces of dress up as possible.  They will often have multiple tops, and skirts, and accessories.  Less is not more in this case!

Little Swimmers

For the last year we've been taking the girls swimming on Sunday's at Children of the Sea swim school. The place is awesome and we have a lot of fun during lessons. Until age 3 the classes are parent/tot so since Andy and I are always in the pool we never get pictures, but finally we have a few. The girls have two weeks left of this session and then they graduate up to classes without parent involvement EEK. I'm nervous for that but I think the girls will do great. They are little fishes!!   During the course of the year we've had some rough times where they didn't want to swim but we just kept at it and now I think they actually enjoy it.  We also used to trade off each girl every week so they got the chance to swim with both Andy and I but recently we've been swimming with the same E and it's actually working better.  Andy swims with Emily and I swim with Ellery.

We need to add another activity for the weekends. I'm thinking of gymnastics....does anyone have any places you would recommend in Tigard or SW?  I've realized that now that the girls are 3 we've ventured into the no parent involvement necessary category....and that sounds great...I think.  I've always had these visions of sipping my latte while watching the girls lessons  and chatting with the other moms, but now that we're actually at that point I'm not sure I'm ready to let go.  ;)

 Andy and Ellery getting ready to swim

Emily walking the plank

Em in blue and Ellery in white floaties swimming!  Ellery is all by herself!  Took us almost a year to get to this point!!

Both girls showing that we don't need to hold on

Me & Em

View of the pool from the observation deck.