Check one for the olden days

For the purposes of this post anything pre internet counts as the olden days. You know, back in the day of pagers and Blockbuster video stores. Well actually back even further than that. Back to time of Atari and Saturday morning cartoons, good ones like The Smurfs, not the current shows that are so lame that kids would rather throw toys at each other than watch for five minutes.

I'm told that back in the olden days Patrick and his siblings learned to swim through age old practice of sink or swim. Literally. Just grab the kid by the shoulders and fling that little sucker into the pool. With luck instinct will kick in before they swallow too much water. And if they don't come up after a bit, you jump in, pull them out, give em' a couple of minutes to shake it off and repeat. Nowadays that kind of parenting technique will get you a visit from CPS but for people our age, and I use the term "our" generously, because Patrick you know you're much older than me, learning to swim was much less complicated and definitely less expensive.

Fast forward roughly thirty years and what you get are $75 per child swim lessons.  And that's the cheapest rate. I have friends that have paid several hundred dollars of month to get in a frigid pool with their screaming six months old for 30 minutes twice a week. Which is fine and all when the kid actually gets in the pool, at least you can feel like something positive is happening, not so when your delicate offspring decides the temperature of the water does not resemble his warm bath water in the least and for that reason declines your generous offer of swim lessons.

When that happens you are left with a couple of options.

One is to give the child space and time to get accustomed to the idea of swimming in cold water which is awesome if you're the type that doesn't give a lick about how much each precious minute of instruction is costing you, that person is not me.

The other option is to smile brightly at all the onlooking parents, who are at that very moment feeling smug because all their kids are in the pool learning to blow bubbles, and under your breath attempt to bribe, threaten, trick,plead, or shame the non cooperative swimmer back into the water.

I alternated between those strategies today and neither worked.

What would be more effective but highly frowned upon would be to state in the most loving way possible "We paid for you to be in class and so heaven help me you will stay in the water until class is over, damn it' and then toss the child back into the water. This is what I did mentally. Over and over and over.  My strategy for tomorrow is to begin the day by saying "Today is swim. You will get in the water." I plan to say it with so much conviction and enthusiasm that my reluctant swimmer will surmise he has no other choice but to get in the water.

You WILL get in the water.

YOU will get in the water.

You will get in the WATER.

You will GET IN the water.

Parents from the olden days, go ahead and laugh.

Just a couple of things 5.28.11

1) If our house were on fire the first thing I'd grab, after the kids and Patrick of course, would be our pictures and home movies. I actually have all our pictures backed up in multiple places but I'm always paranoid that our computer will crash, the two online hosting sites will lose our pics and our digital hard copies will be corrupted, all simultaneously. I stopped printing out hard copies a couple of years ago because I realized that I'd soon be out of physical space to store all our photos, not to mention the cost of printing a couple hundred pics a month, but even so all those memories are like my treasures. All that rambling was just to set the stage for just how depressed I was that the DVD camera footage we captured of Sophia's graduation was corrupted.

Of course as bad luck goes the first couple of boring minutes,  Pre-k director talking, boy scouts doing color guard or some such thing, is recorded flawlessly. Enter Sophia and her class on stage and the sound goes off and the picture continuously skips. All the way through the end. Damn it! It's not that often that I want to cry and break things, namely one DVD camera which has been a pain in my rear since the first home movie, but because it was an expensive gift I kept my rage intact. That was yesterday. I'm still bugged about it today. And likely will be for some time.  I hope the dvd camera escapes my wrath but I'm not promising anything.

2. Sweet Claire, while still very easy, is becoming slightly more difficult to hold and make content. She is the most curious baby we've had and is constantly looking for things to grab out of my hand or off the table. Most times she has a hard time focusing on nursing because she is too distracted by anything and everything that is going on around her and in the absence of a outside distraction she continuously reaches up her chubby little arms and pulls at my nose, chin and cheeks. I have a feeling that while she might not be as raucous as the other three she will be giving us reason to pull more child safety locks and maybe even a few toddler gates.

Three things 5.27.11

1. School's out for summer! Sophia wrapped up her first year of school with a super cute graduation presentation, the likes of which only preschoolers can pull off. It was bitter sweet for her as she is really going to miss Ms.Kelly and all the friends she made this year. I'm just thrilled that her first experience with school was a positive one. Now on to kindergarten where the real work, and standardized testing begins!

2. After graduation we attended a birthday party where I made the startling revelation that Peter Piper, Chuckie Cheese and the like were mistakenly omitted from Dante's Inferno. I'm thinking maybe the 5th circle of hell is an appropriate location.

3. Last night while preparing our DVD camera for the graduation I came across footage of the boys from just six months ago and they seemed like babies. Could they have really warped into insane, defiant three year olds so quickly? I'm saying it know for the record...three year old twin boys are hard!!