Out with the Old

Having spent so many Christmases and New Year celebrations in the bitter cold (Denver, Chicago, Salt Lake City), this one has been nice. We have made it out to the pool pretty much every day and have made substantial breakthroughs in the kids' swimming ability. Claire was terrified of putting her face under the water and had grown accustomed to swimming all over the pool with a life jacket on. We encouraged the life jacket to give her confidence in the water, and have been trying to wean her off it. Just the other day, she went from floating around in her life jacket, to plugging her nose and jumping off the side of the pool, sometimes into my arms, and sometimes to go under all by herself... then she just paddles herself over to where she can touch to open her eyes. When she's getting extra brave, she puts her life jacket on again, and plunges into the deep end. What a difference a week has made for her.

As for Sam, he only recently gained full appreciation for his life jacket. He knew it would keep him afloat, but he couldn't quite figure out how to keep his head up so he wouldn't be sucking in water all day. To combat this, he swam with his life jacket AND a noodle (I'm sure all parents know what a noodle is). Once he saw Claire jumping into my arms, he ran right to where Claire was and he wanted me to take his arms before he would lean over the side. Ten minutes later, I had to hurry over to catch him because he was jumping off the side whether I was there or not. The life jacket buoyed him right back to the surface, he just turned, swam to the stairs, and did it all again. I have spent 2 hours in the last two days just catching kids as they jump off the side of the pool into the water. We are so proud. What a breakthrough.

Swimming so much does have its drawbacks though. We can hardly keep the swimsuits washed fast enough for as much time as we head in the back yard. We usually jump right in the shower after swimming and we had an incident this week. Let's check out your math skills: One two-year old boy full of energy + two wet little feetsies (not feces, although I'm sure I could come up with one of those stories as well) + tile floor = ???. If you guessed "0", you're wrong. If you guessed "blood spurting from nose and mouth", you're right. Chalk it up to the kid having too much energy and not being able to control himself. Sam had a rough day.

This week also had another momentous occasion to celebrate, and I'm not talking about the Dakar Rally (although I did go check out some of the racing machines... if you're not up on what's happened, the former Paris-Dakar Rally has been held in Argentina/Chile the last few years due to terrorist threats to the race in Northern Africa). I'm talking about the new year. We have heard that the city puts on a wonderful firework display and figured we would miss it since we're out in the suburbs. Well, the top floor of our house is a big playroom with windows on three sides. We saw pretty good firework shows out of all three windows at midnight. Unfortunately, just as on "Noche Buena" (Christmas Eve), the fireworks don't just go off at midnight, but they remain strong, loud, bright, and random throughout the night. So if the rest of 2011 is like the first night/morning, we are in for it.

So now we're in 2011, and as I'm writing this (from the top floor looking out over our backyard pool and the palm trees in the neighbors' backyards), I'm expecting great things. We've been strengthened by our faith and others around us during the difficult end to 2010. We have wonderful children that keep smiles on our faces, and great friends that keep our social schedule packed. We wish all a prosperous 2011.