weekend, as usual

[mamajoan]

Another fun weekend at the cottage. A couple of Isaac's preschool friends came out and all the kids had a blast, even though one of them had fractured her wrist the day before and was in a cast. So her dad was pretty paranoid about the cast getting wet in the lake, or about her hurting it with all the rough-housing that the kids were doing. But we all still managed to have plenty of fun, and mom and I even managed a few minutes of actual conversation with the dad -- albeit it was pretty much all about parenting and kids, heh, but that's life.

I'm really hoping we can get a few more kids out to the cottage next weekend and maybe the next few weekends to come, before the weather turns too cold. Isaac has fun out there when it's just him and Ruthie, but he does/would have SO much more fun with other kids his age too.

It's funny to observe how different Isaac and Ruthie are about some things too. For basically the entire summer we've been working on Isaac to get more comfortable in the water and not freak out when it comes near his face, and so forth. He's finally now at the point where he'll get all the way into the water willingly, and sometimes will even submerge his entire body, except for his head. And he has shown some tentative beginnings of willingness to think about maybe giving consideration to the idea of maybe trying to put his head/face in the water. We've been gently encouraging him and so forth. So on Saturday, it was a VERY hot humid sticky day, and we finally all get to the cottage all sweaty and hot, and we all immediately go and get into the lake to cool off. And Ruthie immediately wades out until the water is chest-high on her, and starts sticking her face into it!! LOL!! She was trying to drink the lake water, or who knows what, but she thought it was hilarious and kept doing it over and over. It was so funny. My mom kept saying "it's like night and day." It took SO long at first to get Isaac to even put his feet in the water, let alone walk into it and splash around and have fun. Whereas Ruthie just had to take one look, and now will plunge on in without any hesitation. We really have to watch her very closely when she's in there, because she's fearless! So interesting how different two kids can be.

There are two main things that suck about coming back from the cottage on Sunday night; one is that the traffic on the major highway tends to be pretty heavy, and the other is that it tends to be really hard to find a parking place on our street. Yesterday, both kids fell asleep in the car, so there I am at 9pm pulling up to our house with a carful of stuff to unload, two sleeping kids, and no place to park. So it went something like this --

pull up car next to house, put on flashers, unload stuff onto porch
find house key, unlock door, run inside to pop milk into fridge
finish unloading stuff from car onto porch
get back in car, turn off flashers, drive around, find parking space about 2 blocks away
park car
get out of car, put on sling, unfold stroller
wake baby, put baby in sling
drive stroller around to other side of car
wake preschooler (barely), haul him out of car, deposit him in stroller
lock car
push stroller to house, discover that both kids have returned to sleep
park stroller in front of house, leave baby in sling, transfer bags of stuff from porch to inside
put baby on bed, wriggle out of sling, remove her shoes -- miraculously baby remains asleep
go back outside, haul preschooler out of stroller, carry him to his bed, remove his shoes -- he remains asleep
go back outside, fold up stroller and stash it on porch, close door
collapse!

Fun times, people. Anyway, uh, so that's my weekend. whee.

Comments

[lizardjee.livejournal.com]

it sounds like you had a great time. i hear you on the returning home thing. at least i conned mia into helping me unload the car from camping this time.

[victoriacatlady.livejournal.com]

The returning-home part sounds miserable. The rest of it, of course, is all good -- you may wind up with the cottage becoming a summer outing place for all the kids you know!

This is probably a stupid question/suggestion, and maybe I've even mentioned it before (please excuse if so), but have you tried getting Isaac to put his hands in the water and then rub them over his face? Would that help at all?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

He has no trouble washing his face or other such controlled activities. It's the unpredictable nature of swimming (and bathing) that scares him. When you swim, water can come splashing into your face from any direction at any time. As opposed to washing your face, when you're pretty much in control of the water.