swim

Ah, Winter Break

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This being Claire’s first Christmas in elementary school,  she is enjoying her first extended break in a long time.  Molly’s pre-school is only closed for a couple of days for the holidays, but Claire has about two weeks off.  Here are some of the ways that Claire has kept herself busy while off of school…

She spent the first couple of days in Corpus Christi with he Grammy and Grandaddy.  Claire was very excited to take the trip down there without the me and Kit (Grammy and Grandaddy picked her up in Austin and drove her down there).  Not having been there for the visit, I can’t say much about it, but Claire appears to have had a very good time baking, playing, reading, and entertaining guests.  I think Claire did not want to come back home, and when Grammy returned home after Christmas, she said she really felt like something was missing (Claire).  It was odd having Molly to ourselves without Claire at home.  It was quiet around the house, and it reminded us of the old days when Claire was a toddler before we had Molly.

Heading out to Corpus

Claire spent the next week here at home with a sitter.  Claire and Cassie got along well, although Cassie seemed quiet and only spoke about three words the whole week (yes, I am exaggerating, but not by much).  Claire and Cassie spent the mornings working on art projects, including making necklaces and bracelets from some bead sets she had received for her birthday back in November.  The two were as quiet as a mouse downstairs while I worked in my office upstairs.  They never so much as turned on the TV.

Every afternoon at 1:00, Claire had a one-on-one swimming lesson.  Claire had just started to really swim at the very end of the summer this year, and then all the pubic pools shut down for the summer (while it was still over 100 degrees outside).  This week was a chance to keep Claire a little bit practiced on swimming without waiting until next summer.  Claire ended the week swimming way better than she ever has before, swimming 15 feet out and 15 back by herself.  Claire also practiced “falling” (jumping) into the pool and getting herself safely to shore as well as diving under water to pick up rings from the bottom of the pool.  It was amazing what five half-hour lessons with Hannah Jo did for Claire’s swimming skills (and confidence).  As a side note, once or twice, I took Claire out for lunch at Taco Cabana before swimming, and she learned to love flautas after I convinced her to just try one.

Swim lessons

After swimming, Cassie normally took Claire to Pease Park for a couple of hours.  I would drop them off, and they would walk back home.  Claire apparently made different friends with each trip to the park and invented some pretty crazy games. The weather was absolutely perfect every day this week, right around 70 degrees and sunny.  There was no sun screen, bug spray, or heart exhaustion to worry about when venturing to the park.  You could just stay out there all day and never break a sweat or get a chill.  After getting back from the park, Claire was pretty wiped out and would sit in her bedroom with Cassie and read books for an hour or so before Cassie took off.

It almost sounds like a perfect day to me… swimming, the park, Mexican food, hanging out.  I would personally trade the arts and crafts for some computer games (Battlefield 3, anyone?), but I would even make necklaces if that were a required part of the package.  We wanted to get Claire some rest for her holiday break, but we might be wearing her out with all this fun!

Last Day of Daycare

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Claire finished her daycare career today.  On Monday, she moves on to kindergarten at elementary school!

It has been sort of a sad end to daycare, as her friends have gradually slipped away one after another week by week over the course of the summer.  We will keep up with some of the old friends as much as possible, but Claire knows things will not be the same again, and it understandably makes her a little uneasy.

Anyways, Claire’s final day in daycare was a half-day that revolved around the completion of her swimming class.  She had to swim across the width of the deep 9-foot deep pool, as opposed to the shallow 4-foot pool they normally use.  Thanks largely to this swimming course, Claire is able to swim a little bit now, but she chose to cross the deep pool with the aid of a foam “noodle”.  Using the noodle, she swam so quickly and confidently I would not have guessed it was even her from a couple of months ago.  She got to the other side and received her gold medal for completion of the course.  She was really proud and beaming with a huge smile.

We then headed back to the school to sign Claire out for the last time and pick up Molly, who was finishing lunch.  Molly is moving up the the Little Lambs class down the hall from her old classroom, with the same friends as before.  So she is a little bit in her sister’s shadow today, but even moving down the hall is a big change too.

Claire’s last sign out

Due to their changing lunch situations (Claire buying lunch at school for $2.15 — yes! — and Molly outgrowing her tiny old lunch box), we are also retiring the trusty old Wizard of Oz lunch boxes that have clanged their way through the halls of daycare the last year or so.  Here is a picture in memorial.

The well-worn lunch boxes of the last year

Claire Goes for a Swim

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Just a few months ago, Claire’s swimming skills had plateaued, falling somewhat short of actually swimming.  She was starting to dislike her indoor YMCA swim lessons and actively campaigned against going to the YMCA each Saturday morning.  She did not like her goggles.  She was even starting to get a little more scared of the water, and resisted getting in.  So we gave swimming a break for a while.

Things have really turned around this summer.  Claire has started to enjoy swimming again, thanks in large part to swim lessons with her friends at summer camp.  And today for the first time, she actually swam all by herself.  It happened during a weekend visit to Houston to see her grandparents.  Claire love’s their community pool, which has a 3-foot shallow end, the perfect depth for Claire to take some chances but still touch the bottom in a pinch.   We went swimming four times in under 48 hours, at Claire’s repeated request.  We calculated that Claire spent roughly one third of her waking hours that weekend in the pool.  We are very grateful for sunscreen!

Anyways, Claire was so happy and proud when she swam all by herself.  Here is some documentation of the big milestone, including videos of both her underwater style and her dog paddle style.

Besides the solo swimming, Claire is also enjoying her goggles now.  She loves putting her face in the water at the 9-foot deep end, in particular, to look down to see just how deep it is.  That is a far cry from the scared girl who wanted to sit out swimming class at the YMCA just a few months ago.

Shower Time

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Inspired by her after-swim rinse in the shower at Deep Eddy Pool this morning, Claire has decided that she is a big fan of showering.  So much so, in fact, that she asked if she could take a shower instead of a bath for bedtime tonight.  I had actually wondered at what age Claire would want to switch from baths to showers, and I supposed it would be somewhere around ten years old, but now she has that beat by half.

This is a major change for Claire, who in the past could hardly stand any water on her head or face.  And now she is making major leaps in the area — literally.  At Deep Eddy today, Claire enjoyed repeatedly jumping into the pool, with water splashing around and sometimes over her face and head.  This was followed by said shower in the surprisingly fresh and clean, open-air public changing room (featuring a courtyard of tropical plants).

What may have helped pushed Claire over is her twice-weekly swim lessons at summer camp.  Learning to swim with her long-time friends seems to be helping her develop a new boldness with water in general.

Anyways, Claire went ahead and took her first real shower tonight, the whole nine yards, including a shampoo.  She did not have any help from me except getting the water running at the right temperature, and some help with the shampoo. The only mishap was when she accidentally swallowed a little bit of shampoo, but she quickly recovered by spitting it out and rinsing with fresh water.

As a side note, Claire is always a little lawyer at bedtime, and a rather capable one at that.  Her goal is to push off getting ready for bed as long as possible.  Tonight after announcing she would take a shower instead of a bath, Claire asked if she could have a few extra minutes to play since we wouldn’t have to wait for the bath to fill up.  Well played, Claire…well played.

Molly’s First Swim

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Molly had her first ever dip in a pool today.  Somehow we never took her swimming last summer, or to the kids’ indoor pool at the YMCA over the winter. But today, water finally beckoned.  We wanted to get away from the house while the painters finished up outside, and we opted for a swim in lieu of the Art City Austin festival, which for Kit was definitely a case of putting the kids’ interests ahead of her own (not so much for me).

Suits and smiles

Molly’s first swim was a good one, on a warm day, but not too hot, at Deep Eddy Pool.  The really great thing about Deep Eddy, besides being spring-fed, non-chlorinated, and apparently the oldest public swimming pool in Texas, is that is has a really big, really shallow, shallow end.  The shallowest point is only 9 inches deep, which is good for small waders like Molly.

At first, Molly did not know what to make of the pool.  When we first tried to lower her body into the pool, she quickly lifted her feet and legs out of the rather cold spring water.  She did this a few more times, not crying or getting upset, but really just not caring to get her feet so cold and wet all of the sudden.  Why would anyone want to do that?  But after Kit “slurshed” Molly’s feet through the water in a fun way, Molly started to get it, and within a few minutes she was splashing and squealing with delight.  Pretty soon Molly was literally trying to throw herself head-first into the water.  Now this is what we were expecting!  She did get away from me once or twice and ended up successfully throwing herself head-first into the shallow water, coughing up a mouth full of water when I pulled her out, but that did not stop the fun (not for very long, anyways).  Molly even used some of her new words while splashing around, namely “more” and “happy”.

We promise Claire had fun too, just not while taking this picture.
It meant stopping freeze tag.

It was also a fun outing for Claire, and it was her first swim in a while (she had burned out on those indoors YMCA swimming lessons months ago) and her first visit to Deep Eddy as well.  Claire liked the shallow water and opted to play “freeze tag” most of the time, with me as well as with some friends she met in the pool.

It was a good way to start out Molly’s swimming career and the summer season.  Now if Deep Eddy would only bring back the diving horses, zip line, and Ferris wheel, we could have spent all day.

Howdy, Austin

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At long last, we have moved to Austin!

Not long ago, Kit’s job search from Dallas was not going so well.  We were afraid Kit would be unemployed, and we would be forced to move to Richardson for the lower rent, where Kit would be a stay-at-home mom with a hard earned but unused MD and PhD.  Or we would move somewhere random and presumably cold (Duluth or Scranton come to mind) just to find a place that would hire her.  The job market out there is tough now, even for doctors!

But here we are moving to Austin, of all places, where Kit has landed a sweet job thanks to her friend Chrissy from the residency days. Chrissy recommended Kit to her group in Austin, and by some small miracle (actually a big miracle to us), they hired her.  We always had our eye on moving to Austin or San Antonio, but we never really thought it would work out.  But here we are with a good job lined up for Kit. We are very lucky indeed.

Even though we are happy to move here, Claire had to leave behind some great school friends (Katherine from her Dallas preschool was her best friend!) plus a great baby sitter who we only used once before we left.  Claire of course has a new bedroom that is smaller than her old one in Dallas, but it actually works better for her age.  She will be starting up at her new preschool soon, which we were also extremely lucky to get her into.  Many of our other preschool choices were unorganized and chaotic, and one seemed to be run by a teenage girl in a swimsuit with no shoes.  But by another miracle and some good timing, we got Claire into an excellent day care which normally has a two year waiting list.

So far to Claire, Austin has meant a lot of fun, especially in the water.  In the first weekend alone, we went swimming or splashing on three different occasions: Barton Springs, the splash fountain at Auditorium Shores, and Chrissy’s backyard for the Fourth of July.  You just can’t help but run out and get wet around here, especially with a little kid and temperatures over 100 degrees most days.

Now the real adventure begins as Kit settles into her new job, Claire settles into her new school, I move back to full-time working at home, and we all prepare for the new baby.  These are huge life transitions, and they will bring challenges for us all.  But for now, it looks like we have things on the right track.

Green Is Not My Best Color

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Driving home from today’s swim lesson, traffic slowed to a crawl as police closed lanes and directed traffic. Just as I started to become irritated, the sight of a lady walking down the sidewalk with a crazy green hat and green-and-white striped stockings changed my mood. It was a Saint Patrick’s Day parade! Crowds of green-clad pedestrians were funneling their way down Greenville Avenue towards the apparent parade site. I started daydreaming about going to the parade. The parade route past the old brick cottages of Lower Greenville, coupled with the cool damp weather, seemed perfect for an Irish celebration.

Then Claire chimed in her thoughts…

She wondered why everyone was wearing silly green hats. I explained that it was for Saint Patrick’s Day. She should wear green to school on Tuesday, since everyone was going to be wearing green for Saint Patrick’s day. She took some exception to this idea. “Green is not my best color. I like pink! Pink is my favorite color! I don’t like green,” she explained. I told her she could wear green and pink. “No! I want to wear pink. That’s the only way to do it.” I said that’s alright, and just in case she was confused, I went on to explain that Saint Patrick was not me, her dad. He was a guy in Ireland a long time ago. Yep, old Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. What a guy. They like to celebrate him every year. Claire was not impressed, replying, “I do not want to wear green, and I do not want to go Patricking!” I loved that, the idea of “going Patricking.”

Anyways, I guess Saint Patrick’s Day is not really for three-year-olds (not even for rather Irish ones).

Candy Time Out

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Claire has scored more than her share of candy lately. First, Valentines Day was a jackpot. She came home with a white paper bag full of candy (and accompanying valentines cards) compliments of her 16 classmates. I think I was those only parent who just sent Valentines cards and no candy. I figured I was doing other parents a service by giving them one less piece of candy to deal with. I can see now that this is an uphill fight, and maybe I was just being uptight about the whole thing. Next year, it’s Fun Dip for everyone!

The following day was a birthday party for her friend and classmate Georgia. As luck would have it, the party was right after Claire’s swim class, a couple of doors down. So Claire topped off her 40 minutes of swimming (well, crying) with another 45 minutes of running and jumping and rolling around. Then came the pizza and juice boxes, after which sadly, Claire could not eat all of the birthday cake put in front of her. To top it off, they sent her home with a party bag full of candy to add to her Valentines collection.

We dealt with this candy glut by giving Claire one piece of candy each morning and one piece each evening (Kit did some of her own “helping” as well). One night after Claire had already enjoyed her candy allotment for the day, she started asking for more candy. She was being very sweet about it, actually. But I said no, she already had her candy for the day. She asked again nicely, and I said no again. Then she sighed a slow “oookaaay” and carried the white candy bag over to her “timeout” corner, where we normally send her for two minutes if she misbehaves (like hockey). She left the bag on the floor there and walked back to me. I asked her why she left the bag there, and she explained that the candy was having a timeout. That nearly killed me. I almost gave her a piece of candy right there on the spot just for being so cute. (But sadly, I did not.)

Last Day of Pool

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Today the Garden Hills Pool, our favorite summer weekend hangout, closed for the year. Forget about Labor Day; this is the real end of summer.

The last half hour of operation every year, the pool hosts a dog swim. People bring their dogs and let them go nuts in the pool before they drain it. Kit and I had wanted to check this out for the last couple of years, but we never managed to actually get over there. Since today was our last chance ever to see this, we finally made it, and I am glad we did. The weather was perfect, finally not too hot, and a bunch of wet dogs were running around and swimming and barking. And a bunch of wet kids were doing the same thing (minus the barking, fortunately). It made me want to jump in too! But this was just a quick visit in the evening, and we did not bring our bathing suits. Anyways, it was a fine way to close out the summer.