Swim lessons

Erik had swim lessons tonight.  The instructor has been having the kids put float noodles at their waists and swim the short length of the pool, sometimes on their stomachs and sometimes on their backs.  Today she had them basically race back and forth several times.  Joe and I were very proud of Erik.  He was persistent, didn't get frustrated when he wasn't the fastest and listened well to the instructions.  When he was swimming forward, he often had his head up out of the water and was more doggy paddling, but when he put his face in the water and actually scooped with his hands he was swimming pretty fast!  Then on his back, he popped his head up every few seconds to make sure he wasn't about to crash into the wall, but again when he was actually swimming, he was really fast.

His albatross has always been jumping into the pool.  He doesn't have a lot of trust.  Today, the instructor had them swim along the side to the deep end, get out and form two lines.  Then she had them jump in two at a time and swim the short length of the pool in races at the deep end!  The final task was to jump off the starting block at the deep end and swim to the shallow end.  She held his hand while he jumped in, but Erik actually jumped in and swam the whole length of the pool.  That's easily the farthest he's ever swam before.  He was very proud of himself.  The video is sideways but it's fun to see him go for it. 

President's Day

 We went to the playground on Monday.  Adin's cheesy grin.

 Erik is working very hard to climb onto a playhouse.

 The plows leave a nice sledding hill when they plow the parking lot.  The school left some sliders on the playground, so we did a little sledding.

 Erik found a football, so we tossed that around too.  I think the blur in the corner is Erik tossing the ball at me.

 He's almost made it to the top.

 Adin loved being surprised at the window. 

aaand he made it!

Read!

Erik and Adin are in fun stages of literacy right now.  Adin is a voracious reader.  Today at the dentist, he sat with a book and read Richard Scarry while I had my teeth cleaned.   Tonight he sat in bed and read for 30 minutes after bedtime and really only put down the book and turned off the light under extreme duress. 

Erik is learning to read at a more normal rate, and is slowed a little right now by being in Spanish Immersion school, where he won't have English reading instruction for a couple more years.  However, he is becoming more and more adept at decoding words.  I love when he reads me a simple picture book.  Adin comes and sits on one side of Erik and listens to the book, too.  It's very sweet.  I coach him a little on the odder vowel combinations, and on putting a little dramatic flair into his reading. 

Scholastic Books had a great poster:
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy books, and that's kind of the same thing.

Adin goes to Chipotle

I took Adin to the YMCA today.  He has swim lessons on Saturday mornings.  I'm trying to take him to the pool on Fridays to remind him of what he worked on the week before, so that Saturday goes slightly smoother.  We sort of took turns being the teacher.  I would have him work for about five minutes and then he got to tell me what to do for a minute.   He had the last turn being teacher, before open swim ended.  As we climbed out of the pool, I said, "Thanks for the swim lesson.  You're a good teacher."  And he said  back to me, " Thank you for the lesson.  You are a good teacher, too."  I thought that was very sweet of him to think of saying.

When we were ready to leave, we went across the street to Chipotle for lunch.  As usual, Adin read everything around him, menus, drink cups, etc.  He asked me questions about the funny stuff on the cup and why the restaurant was called Chipotle.  Adin's meal came with a mini bag of tortilla chips.  As he ate, he said, "I know why they named it the Chip part, it's because you can eat chips here.  But I don't know why they named it -otle."  (pronounced OAT-lay). 

He cracks me up.