Birthdays and swimming

After countless scrapes, and band aids the weekend comes to a wrap.

Weekends are great as typically they are all ours.  By that I mean we don't have any family visits, lawyer stuff, appointments... that stuff.

The birthday party for our dear friend on Saturday was fantastic.  We were very concerned how the girls would behave for a birthday party for seniors.  Since the guest of honor just turned 90 there weren't any playmates that would be coming to the party.  We ran around (a lot) and played with balloons, but that was expected.  Both girls were not shy and actually were quite charming.  It wasn't until the last half hour that they needed to go outside and play.

After that party we went home to our second party of the day and went next door for a 45th birthday party.  Once again the girls were great.  There were very good again.  It was an excellent day.  This party did have kids and was outside and much (much) more chaotic.  Around 9:30 there was talk of sparklers so we scurried our two home and into bed.

Having success with birthday parties is a big deal.  They talk so much about birthdays and Sissy often says "when daddy gets money he is going to buy me a birthday cake".  She focuses so much on that and her birthday is in October so we didn't have any clue how she would react when these parties were for others.  They may actually pull some of the focus she has on her own birthday off!

Today we went over to a friends house to swim.  We still have situations that we don't know what their reaction will be and swimming was a concern.  What was nice is that the pool isn't too big, but it wasn't a tiny thing either.  We spent hours in the pool.  It took a little while for us to convince them to get in, but once we were in they soon followed.  Swimming in a life vest was a big fail, but by the end of the day we had Sissy mostly hanging on to a kickboard and not our necks.  Bug is not ready to be independent in the pool, but she definitely liked it.  We did manage to teach Sissy that she can pull herself out of the pool at the side which was a huge goal of mine.  I just don't want them to ever find themselves in trouble and not be able to help themselves at all.  It won't be us ever leaving them unattended by a pool, but they may not be with us forever and we need to prepare them for that.

Tomorrow is back to school (day care) and from this point forward we should really be able to start hitting our routine.  Six weeks.  We have accomplished so much in six weeks.