Today was busy. This morning, I sabotaged Alice with a swimming lesson with Brock, since Alice, who doesn’t know how to swim, has been getting increasingly bored at the pool. Alice screamed. her. guts. out. for 45 minutes straight. Brock did a great job with her, though, and if he lost his temper with her I never knew it. I did discover that when I sat up in the pavilion out of direct sight, Alice did a lot better. I told him before the lesson started that the trump card with Alice is to act like your feelings are hurt if you want her to do something and she won’t, and usually she’ll try to comfort you. So when she didn’t want to swim with him, he pouted, and she kicked over to him in her floatie. SABOTAGE. Poor thing kept crying for Mommy… so he let her swim over to me, and the Mean Mommy that I am, I gave her back to him. She was quite peeved with me and glowered at me over her celebratory ice cream at the end of the experience.
Her next lesson is tomorrow morning, but don’t tell her. Even though she’s WAY more stubborn than Helen in general, she’s not as scared. So she’ll probably learn to swim pretty quickly, and then we’ll ALL have a lot more fun at the pool. And she’s not holding a grudge against Brock — said bye to him as we were leaving for lunch, and then hi when we came back this afternoon. So that’s good.
After Phase One at the pool, we went to the pediatrician’s office to pick up the girls’ blue cards (required for child care or school, showing how current the kid is on vaccinations), then to Wendy’s to wait in line f.o.r.e.v.e.r. for lunch, and then up to the school where Helen will be going to Kindergarten. I had a huge packet of required paperwork to enroll her, and today was the first day the office has been open in 6 weeks. When we arrived at 12:52, there was a sign taped to the office door: “Closed for lunch. Back at 1:30.” Argh. So we ate our lunches in the air-conditioned vestibule, refilled our cups with water from the drinking fountain, and went out to play on the playground for the half hour until the office opened back up.
Then it was more waiting as more parents arrived at 1:30, and I got Helen’s paperwork all turned in. We were given a supply list, a school bus schedule (not sure if we’ll be putting her on the bus; depends on how close to the house it picks up), and we came back home. At 2:30 we went back over to the pool, and came home at 5:30.
Busy day. But I had a good time with the girls, and I think they had fun with me. Nice change of pace.
One response
Those are certainly the days to remember! They will too, maybe not specifically, but those warm thoughts of childhood will be filled with images of their mother indulging them at the pool, playground … and ice cream!