Zoë, the girl on fire! (and Alexander, the comic relief)

Well, Phoebe woke up around 3:00 in the morning today. 

When it became clear she wasn't going to go back to sleep I let her get up...but made her unload the dishwasher. And then we folded a load of napkins together (she was actually getting quite good at it by the end). And then we did a reading lesson. 

At some point she asked if she could go back to bed, but was unsuccessful at falling asleep. 

So we got up again and put in a load of laundry. 

And then the kids got up for swimming practice, so they all had breakfast together. I made Phoebe play on her own while I did some work and when the kids got home, I went down for a long nap. 

Phoebe...did not. 

She played in the basement with Alexander and Zoë. 

I left for the swim meet early with the kids (and still had to park on the street quite a distance from pool) and got them settled in "the bullpen" and checked in for my volunteer shift—I actually switched shifts with someone else. I was scheduled to be stroke and turn judge for the second half rather than the first half, but I just didn't know that I would have the stamina to make it through the second half (given my track record this week—cough, cough, wheeze, wheeze). 

Zoë sang the national anthem (as she has for every meet we've hosted for the past two years—I think she's up to five times now...but she'll probably sing next week as well, bringing her total to six). Considering she's also coming off a cold, I think she did well! That official was so nice (I'm not sure what his name is, but you can see that he tries to step in when Zoë lost her place in the song—and that wasn't the only nice thing he did today, either!)

Alexander considered singing with her, but the meet started immediately after she sang and Alexander's first race was event #4 so he wasn't sure he'd have time to find his spot in line. That was probably a good call on his part. 

I was at the deep end judging things and didn't get to see everyone else until the halfway point of the meet when I got off my shift—at around 8:30 pm. Everyone else meaning Daddy, Rachel, Phoebe and Grandpa (Miriam stayed home to rest and Benjamin was still at YM camp).

Here's sleepy Phoebe resting on Andrew's shoulders:

And here she is saying, "Mom!" while rubbing her hands up and down Andrew's face:

And here she is demanding that I take her:

Grandpa came by to watch the meet again—and what a meet it was! Zoë was on fire! And Alexander was...delightful! Here's Phoebe in Grandpa's arms:

Oh, and Here's Phoebe with a frog she caught. After the sun sets frogs start hopping to the pool in droves. There were frogs swimming around in the lanes and hopping all over the deck. 

After Phoebe caught this one I told her we should take it out to the grass to let it go away from all the stampeding feet on the deck.

She wasn't very happy about having to let the frog go (she wanted to keep it, of course).

But then she heard a couple of girls talking about how a kid had caught a frog and was showing it to them and how they were soooo grossed out by that. Phoebe got that little glint in her eye when she's about to do something impish. 

"Hey, dirls!" she called out. "Tum and wook at dis!"

The girls started approaching towards this apparent girly-girl with their guard down.

"Hehehe," Phoebe cackled to herself as she ran toward the girls with her...

"FROG!" they shrieked.

This child is something else. 

Here she is reluctantly releasing it into the mulch because I forgot that the other team's bullpen was set up on the lawn so there were too many people to safely release the frog there either. But there were some bushes nearby that it hopped under. I'm sure it's fine.

Like I said, Zoë had the best swim meet!

She got 2nd place in her 25 yd free, losing to another girl on her team. She was happy enough with that.

Then she did a medley and her breaststroke leg really put her team on the up and up. They got first place. 

Then she took twenty seconds off her 50 yd free and ended up coming in third overall. That was hard to tell because she had only swum that once last year and her time...wasn't great...so she was in the slowest heat. She skunked everyone, so we knew she did well...but it was hard to know how she measured up against the faster heats without seeing the actual results.

Then she did 25 yd breast and came in first just a second or two ahead of the girl beside her (first in her heat and first overall). It was incredible!

I was a breaststroker back in the day so I'm totally stoked to have somehow spawned another breaststroker. I asked Rachel, "Is this how football dads feel when their sons score a touchdown?" 

Seriously so awesome!

I haven't seen the results from her freestyle relay yet, but her group did awesome at that event as well.

I wish I could take her to Fun Friday tomorrow so I could see her get all excited about her ribbons...but I have a meeting...so Rachel's going to take her. 

Alexander is...still getting the hang of things. And that's okay. That's what we're here for! 

I worked on dives a lot with the kids this week and they both did some pretty excellent dives today. I...neglected...to work on flip turns with them. Man alive! Alexander was killing me—he had the whole pool area yelling at him. 

He swam the 25 yd free really, really well! How well? We will never know because when he got to the end of the pool he just stopped right before the wall. And he kind of bounced around looking at the wall from different angles, never touching it. 

He had skunked everyone in his heat—they were so far behind him! 

And there he was...not touching the wall.

Everyone was chanting, "TOUCH! THE! WALL! TOUCH! THE! WALL!"

And he just...wouldn't. And then...he finally did this little hop, touched the wall with his feet...and started taking off to the other end of the pool! 

The poor kid thought he was in his 50 yd free event—but he wasn't! So then everyone was trying to get him to stop swimming. 

His coach was almost tearing out her hair beside me at the deep end (where I was still judging), "WHAT IS HE DOING NOW?!"

"He must think this is his 50 free," I said, chuckling.

"Did he finally touch the wall down there?" she asked.

"Yes!" I said. 

"Then whatever...let him swim!" she laughed as she walked away. 

Then when it came time to actually swim his 50 free he did the same goofy how-do-I-turn-around dance before completing his second lap (even though I told him to just stretch and touch the wall with his hand). I asked him what he was doing and he said that "it just felt wrong" to touch the wall with his hands before turning around, but he couldn't figure out how to do a flip turn. 

So...we'll be practicing that tomorrow (probably not flip turns...but just turning in general).

To be fair, he still took about ten seconds off his previous record—his stroke has gotten so strong and streamlined (it's a thing of beauty)—but, man, that kid is lucky there are basically no rules in freestyle swimming because he was truly freestyling.

But he would have done so well if he had just smacked the dang deck!

Things'll click for him eventually...and until then we'll all enjoy ourselves!