Today I started my week by traumatizing Lily - but it’s in her best interests. We started swim lessons today with Morgan Swim School. She did fairly well, considering everything. She cried for about 20 minutes of the 30 minute lesson, which they said was normal. However, by the time I came back to pick her up, she was doing some guided swimming underwater and was letting her instructor pull her on her back around the pool. She was also very excited and intrigued by her new red goggles . . . so we tried to focus on that as opposed to the trauma of being left alone in a swimming pool with a complete stranger.

We had a great weekend with Uncle Sal, Aunt Paula and Auntie Ana. Lily enjoyed all of the attention and Arden decided to sit up this weekend for the first time and show off her skill to the family. We think she’ll be crawling soon - she is trying very hard to propel herself and she will succeed shortly. Yesterday we started the day off at the park and then headed to the pool after the afternoon naps. It was a quiet and mellow 4th, but much needed after all the days of activities - including nearly smoking the house out while Uncle Sal and Aunt Ana made chiles rellenos. We have quite the sensitive smoke detectors and Ana was scorching the skin on the outside of the chiles. It was pretty hilarious. The “Najera Tacos” were a big hit once we got Chef Sal to stop obsessing about the need to put radishes on everyone’s tacos . . . he’s a trip.

Sara has made a monster out of me. An organizing monster, that is. Once I saw how nice our office and the playroom looked, I decided to organize the master bathroom. That wasn’t enough. Last night I worked on my closet for close to 2 1/2 hours messing around with everything, donating clothes, throwing out old shoes, and organizing by skirt, shirt, color and season. I’m a maniac. The linen closet is next . . . I highly recommend her services to anyone in Richmond. Or anyone in the US who can afford to pay her travel expenses. She rocks.

June 23, 2005

Arden has yet to crawl, but she’s getting there. Her new trick is to get on her hands and knees and rock herself back and forth - sometimes she even manages to move herself forward by sheer momentum. She thinks she’s the bomb when she does it, and the rocking is usually followed by lots of giggling and screeching.

Lily loves her new school and has been spending plenty of the time in the pool there. She starts official swim lessons the first week of July and according to the instructors there, she’ll be swimming underwater by the end of the second week. O-kay! I’m looking forward to that so I am not constantly worrying about her drowning.

She’s a trip these days. Actually, they both are. Lily usually puts herself to sleep by talking to herself. This includes lengthy repetitions of all the key phrases she has heard during the day, including comments from my mother, like: “Lily, big girls go on the potty. If you can’t make peepee on the potty, you’ll be wearing diapers forever. Lily, don’t make your poochie in your pants - call Grammy and Grammy will put you on the potty.” Or the other day, obviously from something she heard in school: “Andrew, no pushing or shoving! Put your walking feet on - we don’t run by the pool. Don’t tear the pages out of the books!” It’s just hilarious to hear her talking about all the things we said to her during the day. And also frightening how much she recalls.

I’ve been working a lot and trying to recover from my surgery. It’s taking longer than I had thought, especially after going to my last visit with the doctor and finding out that technically I shouldn’t be lifting any more than 15 pounds for 8 WEEKS!!! Hello! No one told me that prior to surgery. Note to readers: Arden weighs 15 pounds, 3 ounces . . . and that’s without being strapped to the infant carrier, which I swear weighs 10 pounds without anything in it. I’m just going to lift what I think I can handle and deal with it. Either that, or starve both children so that I get them below the 15 pound limit!

Look, my friend Sara got married a couple of weeks ago! Isn’t she hot? So is Tim.

I’m back from surgery. Aside from the massive bruising and lumpiness on my body, it’s harder to tell I had children now. Not that I don’t wear those particular scars with pride. It was the stretchmarks that were killing me.

During my recovery haze, Lily hung out with me on the couch as much as her two-year old personality would allow. One of her favorite phrases from bad reality tv, repeated at a loud decibel: “Where are all you Bee-Otches?!?!?” (Slang for “bitches). Nice. Arden’s starting to talk, though her speech is all vowels and babbling. Still, she seems to think we can understand her and emphatically says “babababbababa” over and over again while making eye contact. The other day she said “YOBA!” and Lily thought that was hilarious. We don’t know what it means, but it sounds cool.

Lily seems to be doing well at her new school. She’s making new friends and soon the pool will be open. She can’t wait for that. She may end up not loving the pool as much as she did last year since I’ve enrolled her in swim lessons and the director of the program said that they generally cry and pitch a fit for the first few lessons . . . but after 6 lessons, they swim. It’s hard to imagine Lily swimming under the water and holding her breath, but this particular schools says they can learn to do it even younger. I just don’t have it in me to sign Arden up yet!

I figured I’d better post today since next week I’m having some surgery and will be drugged up and not allowed to operate the internet, let alone machinery.

We got back from the Asheboro Zoo on Sunday and I’m posting some pictures. We had a blast seeing Susan and Eddie and their two children. Too bad we all don’t live closer to each other . . . We also really enjoyed seeing Aunt Dana and Uncle Richard. Arden especially misses them since for once in her life, people paid more attention to her than Lily (Lily was a little out of it after going to the emergency room Friday night with a fever over 105, and only wanted her mommy and daddy). Arden is probably wishing we would have left her down there!

Anyway, things have been busy between trying to buy another company (the deal fell through Monday night), determining whether or not to go full time at work, dealing with sick children, and worrying about my impending surgery and how I’m going to get through 4 weeks without lifting anything heavier than a milk jug (uh, Arden weighs more than a milk jug . . . ).

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a 1000 words, so that’s about all I can do at the moment.

The first picture is of Lily at the zoo - the second is of Arden and her new habit - sucking on chins!!! She particularly liked Aunt Dana’s. It must have been yummy.