Ben can swim!

Aside from that first bath, during which he screamed the entire time, Ben has always loved water. He was one of those fearless two year olds going down the water slide by himself and jumping off the side of the pool. A few weeks ago Heath bought him a kick board, because he was showing interest in real swimming. He did great with it, kicking up a storm and moving himself across the pool. Last night he was zipping around and then all of a sudden he ditched the kick board and just... swam. Underwater. All by himself.

Our friend Katie was also at the pool and she said, "I can't believe he can swim!" We said, "We can't, either." The rest of the evening he wanted nothing to do with the kick board and he kept diving into the water and swimming. It was amazing watching him pick up such an important skill, seemingly all of a sudden.

But that's the tricky thing about parenting. It seems like it was just BAM! Suddenly he can swim. But this one is almost all Heath. He spent hours and hours with Ben at the pool, tirelessly catching him as he jumped from the side and moving back every so often, so Ben would have to put in a little more effort. Heath also would take Ben underwater and sometimes let him struggle for a second to get his own footing (which is something Heath is much better at than I am). It doesn't hurt that Ben's 3.5 feet tall, so he can easily stand up by himself in the three foot pool, but Heath helped him to not fear going under and to know how to move his body in the water.

So kudos to Heath on his parenting win!

It's summer!

Music and water

So, because of recent Life Events I've basically been ignoring this blog for a couple months. I kept thinking about posting, but then I'd think that my comeback post should be something really great, but that I didn't have the energy to write something really great, so I'd do it tomorrow. Well, we see how well that worked out, so I decided that I'm going to adopt the National Novel Writing Month philosophy: quantity over quality. I just need to write and hopefully it'll get better someday. With that in mind, I shall start by telling you about the fun day Ben and I had yesterday.

In the morning we went to a free children's concert called "Bring on the Drums." I wasn't sure how well Ben would sit for it, but I figured that if he was too antsy we could just escape to the nearby playground. He really surprised me. He sat on my lap almost the entire 45 minutes and was alternately dancing, clapping or swinging his feet with the music. It was really fun to see him enjoying it. My parents used to take me to the symphony and though I haven't been in a long time, I feel like it did help me gain an appreciation for the music. I hope I can instill the same in Ben.

It was a hot, sunny day, so after Ben's nap we headed to the pool. Our city has a wonderful pool facility. It was the first time we'd gone and it was awesome. There was a regular pool for older kids and adults and then they had three kid areas. One went to three feet deep and had some slides, one just had a bunch of sprinklers spraying water and the baby pool went to 18 inches deep and had a lot of toys. It was perfect for Ben. It came to about his waist and he could get around without me having to hold him the entire time. Plus, we saw several different friends who live in the area. I love the idea of just bumping into people you know around the neighborhood. The longer we live here the more I love it. Heath and I picked the perfect place to buy a house.

Fun in the water!

Pool Party

Yesterday afternoon Ben attended his first pool party. We hung out with our friends from the playgroup. The babies splashed in a wading pool while the moms lounged in the shade. Ben loved it. He even did a little "swimming." The water in the pool was low enough that he could lay on his stomach and he crawled around a bit. He even put his face in the water! Hopefully this means that someday he'll make a lot of money as an Olympic gold medalist and buy us a mansion. :)

Ben the Traveler

Whew! Ben had a weekend full of firsts. His first time at a museum, an aquarium and an Ikea! He also went swimming for the first time. It was a busy Memorial Day.

We went to visit my college roommate Arianne and her husband Jeff. They live in Oxford, OH which is home to Miami University and not much else. So we spent a lot of our time driving around Ohio... and Indiana... and Kentucky... The Cincinnati area encompasses many states.

We visited the Creation Museum. As an atheist and a science nerd, Heath got giddy just thinking about it. It didn't exactly deliver what he was expecting, which was apparently more science and less "Bible crap." I was actually surprised by how MUCH science there was and how little it was politicized. Of course, there were a whole lot of incongruities to their "science," such as how supposedly dinosaurs all died in the world-wide flood, and yet they were included on the ark; and the Bible is okay with natural selection, but their definition of natural selection sounds a whole lot like the traditional definition of evolution. Regardless, it was at least interesting to see the creationists' arguments against evolution in a somewhat reasoned way. The most interesting thing to me was how much they played up dinosaurs. They were adamant that dinosaurs DID exist, they just lived side by side with humans 6000 years ago. They were even in the Garden of Eden! The only reason we could think of that they were pushing dinosaurs so much is that dinosaurs are cool and kids love them. There was a t-shirt in the gift shop that said, "Taking dinosaurs back!" so I think we were right.

We also visited the Newport Aquarium, which was fun because it was something Ben could enjoy, too. He seemed to like watching the fish. Unfortunately, by that time we were well past lunch and he started getting cranky. Frankly, I was feeling a bit cranky myself. There's only so much of museum crowds I can take before wanting to kill them all. I suppose at the Creation Museum that would've been acceptable, because they just would've assumed it was the rapture, but it seemed a little harsh at the aquarium. So many innocent fish.

On Sunday we were planning to make a picnic and go to a park to hang out, but there was rain in the forecast, so we decided to celebrate our fallen soldiers with rampant, mega-store consumerism instead. Very American, right? We visited Ikea, a first for the Borders family. Then after lunch we headed to Jungle Jim's, the hugest freaking grocery store I've ever seen. It seems lame to visit a grocery store on vacation, but seriously. The place is amazing. The liquor department alone was the size of an entire grocery store. The international foods department was ANOTHER whole store. It'd be a work out just to do your weekly shopping there.

We ended our day by going for a swim at the hotel. It was Ben's first time in a pool and after his initial unsureness and death grip on Daddy, he really seemed to enjoy himself. He splashed up a storm and by the end he was kicking his legs when we floated him around. He even intentionally put his face in the water a couple times, I think because he saw us do it. So that was a great success, which is good because he starts swimming lessons next week.

Ben is turning into quite the little traveler. It was a 6 hour car ride each way and overall he did really well. His eating and napping schedule was messed up all weekend, but he took it in stride. I think I was more thrown off by that than he was. And since he was so tired from activities all day, he even slept in in the mornings, which is unheard of!

So we had a great weekend. Arianne and Jeff are wonderful hosts. As an added bonus, Jeff is also a great cook. And their cat Jiji was very adept at avoiding Ben at all costs. He has good survivial instincts!