Summer of ’16

Re-live our summer with us through pictures!

The Pueblo Zoo also held another first for us…our sweet Selah got stung by a bee for the very first time…TWICE! I know that’s not technically possible…we think it must have gotten stuck under her skort, tried to sting her once but didn’t get its stinger out and so it tried to sting her again. So two pokes, two welts, and one very sad (and angry!) little girl. I was standing about 2 feet away from her when she screamed and when I ran to her she angrily yelled, “A bee just STINGED me!!! HE STINGED ME!!!!!!!” So mad, so offended. As I was trying to comfort her, she screamed again a minute later and that’s when I started trying to rip her clothes off of her and this little (probably angry and scared!) bee flew out from under her skirt. 🙁 It was slightly traumatizing for a few minutes there but if you look at the picture of her sitting on the giant bunny on the right hand side of the zoo collage…that’s her about 15 minutes after it happened…so needless to say, she survived :).

One of my main goals this summer was to teach the kids to swim. Every Mama can probably relate to this, but I have just not been fully comfortable around water with the kids since they haven’t known how to swim. Selah is so fearless when it comes to things like the water that I’ve been particularly concerned about her. One time when she was 2 she jumped in the water without asking. She sank straight to the bottom and thankfully Brian was right there to pull her out. When we spoke very seriously to her about how she could never do that again, how she doesn’t know how to swim, etc., etc., she just burst into tears, shouting, “BUT WHYYYYYYY????!!!” So. You can see why it’s been a priority in my mind.

When I quickly realized that the cheap swim lessons weren’t going to do the job, I googled, “How can I teach my kids to swim?” I came across a video which at least helped point me in the right direction, since teaching a child to swim comes about as naturally to me as teaching someone to sky dive. But after watching the video, I went from saying, “I have no idea how to teach our kids to swim!!!” to being 100% confident I could do it myself, thanks to the nice man on the video telling me I could :).

That is…until I actually started TRYING to teach the kids to swim! HA!! The first step was simply getting them to take a deep breath to go under water. And every time I told them to take said deep breath and dunk their heads under the water, THEY BREATHED OUT. It was the most hilariously disfunctional scene you’ve ever witnessed… “Okay, kids! Take a big deep breath and go under water!” With huge smiles on their faces, they blew all the air out of their lungs, into my face, and dunked their heads under the water…gasping for air as they came up half a second later.

Sigh. Needless to say, I basically gave up and told Brian I had officially allotted him the task of teaching our children to swim. Well, it was only a matter of weeks until Brian and I (together) taught our kids to swim! What, what!!! Go us!!! I am seriously so proud of ourselves…we taught the children who couldn’t breath in before diving into the water…to swim :).

Both kids can swim from one of us to the wall; jump in and swim back to the wall; jump in and swim to one of us; and do a “starfish” (float on their back) for a long time. Elliott also just learned how to jump in, tread water, and get into a starfish position. So although they’re not QUITE ready for the Olympics 😉 I feel a whole lot better about them being around the water!!! Granted, they still aren’t very good at taking a breath before going under water 🙂 but at least we’re making progress!! In one of the videos you can see our relentlessly silly Selah trying to make the swim task more challenging by covering her goggled-eyes while swimming to Brian! HAHA!! That girl of ours!!! Enjoy some snippets from one of our swim days!

 

Adios, Summer!