Phoebe doesn't love "blends," so in addition to helping her figure out how to say /k/ we've also begun working on things like /sp/ and /sl/ and /st/ and things like that. I mean, there are several things she can't say properly (although properly is something she can say properly and she will tell you, "I tan't say dat properly), but those are the things we're targeting for now.
She loves puppies, so I've been using Dick and Jane books to give us plenty of opportunity to say the word "Spot," since that is the name of their puppy.
When we started on this particular project (just recently—we added it because she figured out /k/), she would always say, "Sot" instead of "spot." So we practiced saying "pot" and then "s" and then sssssss...pot and then put everything together.
"Sput," Phoebe said.
And I thought, "You know what? That's great! She's got the /sp/ and we can work on adding the vowel later."
I've heard about them plenty, but apparently my running form is so exquisite (lol) that I've never experienced them.
Until this week when my left shin started hurting something terrible.
I thought about my exercise routine and nothing really seemed off about it and I couldn't imagine that I would have developed shin splints from running the same way I always do (again—exquisite form...or something). So I decided to blame my trek across campus last week.
I went to campus because I needed to go do some work in the book room and look at some papers in the special collections library.
The walk from my office to the library is...quite the hike.
And I wore a new pair of shoes that honestly had my feet quite miserable by the end—a mile to the library, a mile back from the library, and then walking to and from the car added another mile to the day.
Clearly I had been doing some overcompensating as I was walking.
Or something.
Whatever the case, by Sunday afternoon my left shin—specifically—was killing me. Did my right shin hurt as well? I imagined that perhaps it did because my feet were still a little sore from their three-miles-in-new-shoes adventure on campus earlier. I spent a little time discretely massaging them while watching Benjamin's swim meet.
And then I skipped my run on Monday because...my shins were still sore.
But Monday was a bit of a crazy day because I accompanied Rachel to the doctor in the morning and then took Benjamin to the middle school in the afternoon (to see about how to perhaps get on the middle school swim team) and...I wore pants...so I didn't spend a lot of time looking at my legs (and didn't have a lot of time to look at my legs anyway).
Benjamin was awfully excited for the county swim meet this afternoon. I was both surprised—and not surprised—to look over and see his meet suit underneath his church clothes...
After a somewhat terrible night (with Phoebe and rogue fire alarms and other adventures), we got up bright and early to head to Georgia Tech for Zoë's session of the county swim meet. Their facility is phenomenal—it probably helps that it was built specifically for the Olympics in 1996. So it was just fun to be there, even though our kids didn't quite end up making it in any individual events. Zoë was 56th in breaststroke (24.96, but 50th place—the cutoff for county—was only 24.49 and these kids didn't drop to 23.84 seconds until 44th place, so Zoë was really quite close making it!). As the fastest breaststroker on our team, though, she was pulled into the medley relay. She also swam on the freestyle relay.
As you can see, the kids did well at their swim meets this week!
Benjamin had a whole fistful of blue (first place) ribbons:
Coach Heidi approached me about the possibility of him swimming on the high school team, which he's super excited about! He wouldn't be a star swimmer (to start out with; he'd probably be in the slowest lane), but he's showing a lot of potential and she'd love to have him when he graduates from middle school. He'll be heading to the county meet on the freestyle relay.
Our final meet was tonight and it was a little...touch and go in the beginning. A thunder storm rolled in just as we were setting up so we spent the next 1.5+ hours waiting it out. We got our meet started at 6:30 pm and the officiants really moved through things quickly!
On Tuesday the kids spent all afternoon in the neighbour's kiddie pool. This picture is just Phoebe...because at this moment all the other kids were sitting in front of the fans (they hauled up from our house) in the garage, dripping wet. That must have felt good!
It was a scorcher today, but as hot as it was, tomorrow is supposed to be hotter!
Poor Rachel and Miriam are off to YW camp, where they'll have to suffer through the heat all week (their cabin has electricity, so they've each packed a fan and have a few more items to help keep cool).
The rest of us only had to suffer for a few hours at the swim meet this evening. Everybody was dripping—either from having just climbed out of the pool or from sweating to death on the sidelines—but we had a really great meet!
It was such a busy day between morning practice and Benjamin's woodworking camp in the afternoon. I changed into my blue shorts but somehow forgot to change into my white top (which I have to wear as a stroke and turn official) until I was walking out the door and Alexander said, "Oh, cool! You can wear navy blue and purple to judge now?"
No—I cannot! Good thing he said something! I had time to go back and change before heading to the pool. Andrew picked Benjamin up from his woodworking camp and brought him straight to the pool...it was chaotic.
But so good!
I worked with Alexander on his backstroke last Friday. I haven't been working with the kids as much this summer—in part because Rachel and Miriam haven't been around to help with Phoebe, who is still pretty hands-on in the pool, and in part because I've had bronchitis (have I mentioned that?)—but on Friday I did pull Alexander aside and we worked on getting his arms windmilling up-up-up into the air and down straight behind his head before pulling through the water.
And just look at how high his arm is, whizzing by his head just perfectly:
The kids had some tough events, swimming longer and harder sequences, so they were pretty exhausted (which meant they didn't always break their speed records in their regular events), but overall they did just great!
Alexander walked away with several speed breakers for his backstroke, 25 free, and 50 free—he is making great progress! His freestyle relay came in 6th...of 6...but since they had Alexander (7) and Atlas (6) swimming up with the 9/10 year olds...I think they about got what they paid for.
Zoë got 4th place in her IM, 5th place in the 50 yard free, and 3rd in breast stroke. Her medley relay got 3rd (and her freestyle was DQ'd). Benjamin got 4th place in his IM, 3rd in his 50 yard free, and 6th in his 50 yard backstroke. His medley relay came in 3rd and his freestyle medley came in 2nd.
I swear we were at the pool for at least six hours today, between swim practice and recreational swimming. It was hot this afternoon, so we went to the pool and friends kept coming and wouldn't stop coming (to loosely quote Smash Mouth), which made it rather hard for us to make an exit. At one point we had about a dozen kids from swim team at the pool (most of the homeschoolers, too).
They played Wax Museum, Go/Go/Go/Stop, What Time is it Mr. Shark, Sharks and Minnows, Refrigerator, and all kinds of things. Sometimes my kids were among the youngest there—and Benjamin and Zoë were particularly delighted when some older (more teenager-y) friends ordered a pizza, had it delivered at the pool, and then offered a slice when they realized they wouldn't finish. Other times Benjamin was the oldest one there and was delighted that he was the uncatchable one during Sharks and Minnows (because that wasn't the case when the older swimmers were at the pool).
Phoebe got bored of it just being me and her in the shallow end and requested to play in the deep end. She has never done this before. She likes to stay where she can touch if she needs to (if only on her tippy-tippy toes) and we've had to coax and encourage her to believe that her swimming skills are the same in any depth of water (if you can swim in 4 feet of water you can swim in 10 feet of water...or 40 feet of water...or whatever). She hasn't yet willingly gone to the deep end this summer, but today she did.
The kids were having a diving contest and she decided she wanted to participate.
"Sure, you can go off the diving board..." I told her, though I didn't believe she would.
She has always chickened out before (or has needed a lot of assistance to make it off the end of the board—like, having me lower her down while someone catches her at the bottom). Not today!
Today she walked right out there and jumped in the pool. She pulled herself up to a floating position on the surface of the water and started swimming to me like a champ!
And then proceeded to do it about a dozen more times!
Here's a video Benjamin took (while the teenagers were eating pizza, and before pizza was offered to Benjamin):
She did great today!
And then she was moved to play in the 3 feet zone with the kids when they were playing Wax Museum and things instead of staying in the 2.5 feet zone where she's played the past few years.
Soon she won't need me in the pool at all! What will I do without a baby to play with at the pool?!
I'll have to start...swimming laps again...or something...
The kids were worried about what Fun Friday would look like after our cancelled swim meet last night. No ribbons! No speed breaker splash-the-coach privileges! Would they even give out "swimmer of the week" awards?
Yes, they do! Because look who's the swimmer of the week—it's Alex! He was selected because he's always willing to help set up and take down lane lines.
As we suspected Zoë had quite a few ribbons waiting for her at Fun Friday this morning. Uncle Patrick asked if she had robbed the ribbon giver—but, no! These ribbons were all hard-earned!
Early this afternoon Benjamin opened his birthday presents (more on that later), but we also got fun packages for most of the other kids that I felt kind of bad giving to them, considering we're technically celebrating Benjamin...but there the packages were nonetheless.
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!)
The kids had their first swim meet of the season this afternoon. It was drizzling when we arrived and soon started a veritable downpour. The chairs that I brought got completely soaked. All the children's towels were drenched. Everything was soggy.
I had Andrew bring an extra canopy for the kids when he came. I should have brought one when we set out, but ran out of time to grab it. Next time we'll be better prepared. It would probably be good to set up the canopies when it's sunny outside as well, truth be told, so it's good we dug them out.
Here's Alexander doing his warm up (he's adjusting his goggles—you can see "A Heiss" on his back):
It has been so cold and rainy this week that they even cancelled swim practice for the youngest swimmers on the team yesterday. Zoë suffered through her session until she was told to get out of the pool to warm up before she went hypothermic (reminding me of my youth and being sent to the hot showers in the middle of practice...except that our current pool doesn't have a row of hot showers to retreat to).
It's not unusual to see some swimming regression in young children at the start of the swim season. Typically I've made my kids pass a little "swim test" before I unleash them in the pool, but with a season of competitive swimming under their belts, I wasn't too worried about Benjamin, Zoë, or Alexander this year. In fact, I told Benjamin that he's 100% in my worry-free zone (along with Rachel, Miriam, and honestly Zoë). Alexander was a bit of a grey zone for me, but he jumped in the pool and started swimming like a champ so I think he's fully confident.
Phoebe, on the other hand, who has been asking "When's it gonna be May?" and begging to go to the pool since the beginning of October (the pool closes at the end of September), was a little less confident when she dipped her toes into the chilly water earlier this month.
And then we had a spate of unseasonably cold weather that prevented us from going to the pool at all...so we've only been to the pool three times this month (maybe four)!
The first day Phoebe would hardly do anything. Yesterday she saw some of her little friends from co-op (who are a bit older than her) doing things like bobbing under water to look at each other and they invited her to join in their game...and she did! They'd count out—1, 2, 3!—and then all the little girls would go under water, blow some bubbles, and bounce back up to yammer about how good they all were at holding their breath. It was cute and really helped Phoebe feel brave again.
Today she declared that she "can swim now!"
And she's really doing pretty well—she even held a back float for a few seconds!
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