Swimming update

Swim lessons have ended. Sigh, yet another sign that my favorite season is starting to wrap up. In case you were on the edge of your seat wondering how Jellybean and Peanut did in their second session of lessons, here's the update:

Peanut now goes under water! Not just her face in the water, but a full-on dunk down to the top of her head. The first time she did it, I feared she was drowning -- until she emerged with a big grin on her face. She still doesn't like to try to float on her stomach with her face in. But, her kicking is getting better and better, and she started backstroking with her arms on her own. I'm thrilled how far she has come.

Jellybean chose the very last lesson to decide to float. And she only did it once. I was happy with the number of lessons we had, until she had to go and do a new thing at the very end of the last lesson! Just one more lesson with a couple more floats, and she'd forget that she used to not be able to do that. I doubt she'll do it for L or me, but we'll keep trying when we go to the pool. The best thing from this session was the other little boy in her group. He kicked like the dickens, could get himself into a floating position, and was just the perfect example of confidence with skills in the water. Oh, I hope she remembers him!

All in all, I am nothing short of amazed that they went from afraid of water being above their necks to taking turns dunking their entire heads in the bath tub. Yea, summer!

Back to life, back to reality

We have returned and settled back in from our fabulous summer vacation “up north” (as they say in Michigan) on the Lake Michigan shore.

If you’ve never vacationed on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan, you should. As a non-native, I can say without bias that it is one of the prettiest places in the U.S. The lake seems as big as the ocean, just as blue, but without the salt.

If the beauty isn’t enough to convince you, maybe a philanthropic approach can. I can say this without bias as well: Michigan needs money desperately. Tourism is the third-largest industry in the state (who knew, right?), and as with many things in this recession, it is taking a bit of a hit.

That said, our vacation was really all about us. We brought in quite a few out-of-staters in the form of friends and family – doing our small part to increase the tourism base – and we had a great time. We went to one of the same places we ventured last year, and we hope to go back next year.

Jellybean and Peanut are becoming beach kids, which I think is so cool. Yet another feather in their caps as little Michiganders.

A little pair of shoes

Through almost 4 years of having children, there are very few THINGS of theirs that I have loved or cherished enough to want to keep for posterity. Blankets, little outfits and baby toys have all been adorable and fun, but I’m happy to pass them along to other new babies. The orange Crocs, however, have become somewhat of an icon for Peanut.

And not just for me – family members and friends have been talking about The Orange Crocs since Peanut donned them last summer. In fact, one of my neighbors just mentioned them the other day, as in, “I still think shoes don’t get any cuter than Peanut’s orange Crocs.”

The acquisition of The Orange Crocs is not the reason they have become iconic. I sent L on a spur-of-the-moment errand on a warm day in May to try to find some “Croc-offs” for Peanut. I wanted Croc-offs because I didn’t want to pay the full price for the real Crocs, when Peanut was still in that phase of outgrowing clothes every week. L came home with orange real Crocs, saying he couldn’t find any Croc-offs in her size (a plausible story). They were orange because that was the only pair there was.

When I saw The Orange Crocs for the first time, I reverted to pre-motherhood and actually did the high-pitched “awww, how cute!” That is how sweet they were. Little did I know at the time, The Orange Crocs would have that effect on every single person who saw them from then on.
Peanut also was uncharacteristically drawn to them. She had just turned 1, but that girl knew some influential shoes when she saw them. She insisted on wearing The Orange Crocs all the time, and she cried when we took them off.

The Orange Crocs went lots of places last summer: the backyard, countless parks, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, the pool. Peanut put a lot of miles on them. And everywhere she went, people talked to her about her shoes. She could barely say “shoes,” but she was lovin’ the attention hers brought. From old men to tween girls, people literally stopped in their tracks to say, “Look at her Crocs!” or “I love your shoes!” And we would hear the conversation continue as we passed on by, “Have you ever seen Crocs that little?” and “Those are the cutest Crocs I’ve ever seen.”

It was a sad day last fall when the weather got too cold for The Orange Crocs. I knew they wouldn’t fit her again, and I knew that no pair of Crocs, no matter how little, could ever compare to The Orange Crocs. They embodied the spirit that was my 1-year-old summertime Peanut.

I have put The Orange Crocs in a closet. I don’t know if I can bring myself to sell them at the garage sale I’m planning. In the meantime, this summer she is wearing purple hand-me-down Crocs from Jellybean. She loves the penguin Jibbitz she got for Christmas, and she still refuses to take them off, but that hasn’t stopped her from asking about The Orange Crocs.

The sun also rises

Spring and summer in Michigan are the best seasons. Nice weather, lots of sunshine, pretty foliage. At the peak of the summer, it stays light until 10 p.m. (!), which is fantastic if you don't have little kids who need to be asleep at a decent hour.

Two years ago in the spring when Jellybean was almost 2, out of the blue, she stopped going to sleep at bedtime. She stayed up and jabbered to herself, sometimes working herself into a hyper lather, necessitating that one of us calm her back down to sleep after an hour or so. L and I finally put together -- duh -- that the lighter evenings (it's light past 8 p.m already at this time of year) were contributing to her inability to fall asleep. So, we shifted her bedtime later and eventually found a balanced time that she would drift off. We were prepared for the same last year with her and shifted her bedtime accordingly as we saw the same pattern emerging, and it worked out fine.

Peanut was still unaffected last year, as she was still 9-10 months old and needed her baby beauty rest. But this year, Peanut is definitely noticing the lighter evenings. About 10 days ago, we put her down for bed, and she was not her automatic lights-out self. She started talking and singing and even screeching -- happily -- to herself. L and I didn't know what to do; despite the pleasant tone, we couldn't help but think something was wrong. See, she is "old faithful" when it comes to bedtime and naptimes (don't worry, it wasn't that way at all in the beginning). We put her in her crib, leave the room, and she's asleep instantly. Not so with the daylight evenings. We've had quite the concert at 7:30 for the past week; she mostly sings "Annie" songs, but whatever comes to mind apparently will do. We've pushed her back to 7:45-7:50 and have had more success (translation: fewer songs), but it looks like we'll be sliding even later as the summer progresses.

I've decided that the ever-changing kid's bedtime in the spring and summer is just another of the warm-weather rituals in Michigan, like getting out the patio furniture or putting on sunscreen. Now if I can just get myself to keep the same bedtime when it's light at 10 p.m.

Summer lovin'

I spent all day yesterday depressed because summer was over. I'm much more cheerful today, but that's because I worked hard to focus on all the good times we had this summer.

I was trying to figure out why this summer was so significant for me, and I realized that it was my first real summer in about 4 years: 2005 -- Jellybean was born; 2006 -- we moved our butts to Michigan; 2007 -- Peanut was born. I wasn't awake all night feeding a baby, and I wasn't unpacking everything we owned. A nice break!

Here are some of my favorite times this summer.