The baby has allergies

Adeleigh has a lot of ideas when it comes to her baby brother in utero, including -

He likes to jiggle.
The baby has allergies. And when his allergies make him cough, he covers his mouth with his arm. Smart boy.
He gets out of his crib and walks across his room. (His room = My uterus)
When she pokes my belly button, it makes him giggle.
She can hear him.
He wants out.

~~

I can't wait for the two of them to meet :)

Like a fishy

This week, Adeleigh started swimming lessons.
Here she is the day before her first class, 15 miles away from the swimming pool -

And here she is the day of, 15 feet away -

Her least favorite part of swim class is laying on her back, but she's getting more comfortable. My least favorite part of swim class are the last 2 minutes, when the teacher instructs us to submerge our children's heads under water. I was the only parent during the first class that didn't do as instructed. Call me ridiculous, but I feel cruel dunking my unsuspecting daughter's face in chlorine water. I don't even like dunking my own head under water. And I feel cruel enough during bath times when it gets in her eyes. I've consoled her on numerous occasions when this happens, or worse yet, when water accidentally gets up her nose. That is the equivalent to the end of the world.

Since I wasn't mentally prepared to have to purposefully do this, I told the teacher that I couldn't this time, but that I might consider it for the next class.

The next class, Phaeton joined us in the water. As the last 2 minutes approached, I took a deep breath and told Phaeton I really needed his help.
The teacher instructed us to submerge our little ones. All of the other seemingly stress-free parents joyfully dunked their children under the water once, some of them twice.
My blood pressure rose.
I told Adeleigh what we were going to do.
Then, her wonderful daddy went under water to show Adeleigh that it was okay. When he came up alive, she grew the biggest grin and giggled. Then we told her that next she was going to do it with Daddy. She took a deep breath with Phaeton and I dipped her under water and quickly pulled her up.
She was a little shocked, but still smiling. She wiped her eyes and we attempted it again....
She was a little shocked, and came up coughing. She clutched onto me, whining about the water in her eyes and I immediately started apologizing and heading toward the towels.
Phaeton reassured the both of us that it was okay and that I didn't need to apologize to her for what just happened. So although it's still my least favorite part of class, I suppose I am getting a little more comfortable. And so it seems that we are all learning a thing or two with these parent/tot swim lessons.
He was right. She was fine. And once her eyes were clear again, she felt very proud of herself for going under the water - twice. And I felt better for having let my guard down enough for these few moments and allowing her to do so.

So, we celebrated with our sunglasses on and enjoyed vanilla lavender milkshakes in Old Town -

Not all animals need heads

Recently, Adeleigh was given some hand-me-down Barbie dolls. We found them while unpacking the garage and decided to pull them out for play. They lasted about 5 minutes in their original condition until Adeleigh decided they needed something - - -

*Warning*
Image may not be suitable for girls who love their Barbie dolls completely intact -







Not only did she promptly rip both of their heads off, but she also calls them her "animals". And she still plays with them.




Some may find this disturbing.
But, Phaeton and I think we may have a budding feminist who doesn't appreciate inhuman representations of women. And now without their heads, their dimensions of height to body mass index are slightly more accurate.

The pink ones are for her

Today -

She spent the day in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard playing in the sun, sprinklers and slip 'n' slide with her cousin, Ashton.
We got a little sunburnt. Oops.
We celebrated her Aunt Amy's Birthday and ate way too many brownies.
(We might still be eating brownies.)
She napped for a whopping 30 minutes.
We questioned her ability to stay awake throughout dinner.

Within minutes, we watched her go from half-asleep to running around the restaurant in circles.

We drove home with all the windows down. She loves that.
We took a stroll around our block and watched 3 pre-fireworks shows put on by some of our new neighbors.
Then, she had us pretend we were walking through the jungle, looking for monkeys in the trees.
We questioned her ability to stay awake for the big show at the lake.
So, we decided to stay home and set up blankets by our upstairs windows.
We had an [almost] perfect view of the entire Lake Loveland fireworks show from our bedroom.
She decided that all of the pink fireworks and smiley face fireworks were made especially for her.
We decided that she was right :)
~

We only wish this was the view from our bedroom window...

And we only wish that we took this photo -
(Photo credit: Loveland Reporter-Herald July 4, 2013)

Happy 4th of July!!!