Repetition is good.

We got confirmation today that, yes, we could go ahead and re-enroll Rachel in another session of Sea Turtles. Hehe. She's doing everything she needs to do, but only at the instructor's request and usually with assistance. Meaghan said that she'd like to see her get more comfortable doing things before moving her forward. I'm in total agreement, as is Ben. We don't really care how many times she repeats a unit as long as she is enjoying being in the water and learning something!

The elephants learn to swim

Rachel has 3 plastic elephants and a rubber duckie for her current bath toys. Apparently tonight during bath Rachel was the swimming teacher. She gave each elephant time to practise front floats, back floats, front glides, blowing bubbles, putting face underwater and kicking. Rachel was a very patient teacher, and all of the elephants were very successful. They should be ready to register for Salamander this fall instead of repeating Sea Turtle like a certain 3 year old might be if she doesn't decide that it's ok to put her head underwater!
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If we had gone back to Kansas, Ben would have already finished his second day of classes. Instead, he's out umpiring and enjoying a brisk, cool summer evening.

A couple of Rachel funnies

Early yesterday evening I was puking my guts out with a little audience since Ben was teaching. As I leaned over the toilet repeatedly, my sweet daughter came over to me, picked up the toilet plunger and asked, "Do you need the plunger, Mommy?" She asked several times although I kept declining.

This afternoon we were putting away her play-doh and shapes in preparation for a playdate. As I lifted the box up to the top shelf, it randomly opened at the wrong end and everything crashed to the ground. Rachel was in the middle of taking things upstairs, but she heard the crash and called out, "What do you need to do? What kind of a mess did Dad make?" Hehe. That's my girl!

A First Trimester Summary (with too much information for some)

Trimesters done: 1

Number of times I have puked: 7

Number of ER visits: 1

Number of ultrasounds: 1

Number of UTIs: 2 (oh joy, oh bliss)

Months done for all those people who don't get that pregnancy goes in weeks: 3

Weeks done for those of you who understand pregancy and how it is counted: 13

Weight gained: 1 whopping pound in 4 weeks at my appt. last week... who thinks that'll go up by September?

Names discussed: Hahahahahahaha! You really thought we were going to be open about this one?

What goes around comes around

Here's the Overland Park weather forecast for the next few days:

http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USKS0450_c.html

Here's London's:

http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/CAXX0255_c.html

I'm the first to admit that while I make fun of Kansans for their lack of coping ability with winter, I could not survive a summer where the temperature BEFORE humidex is 100 degrees F!!!

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Rachel was sad yesterday because she has a different swimming teacher for the next session of Sea Turtles. I literally spent almost the whole day answering these questions over and over:

"Why isn't Chris my teacher?"

"Why was the 9:15 class full?"

"Why am I in the 10:15 class?"

"Why is Meaghan my teacher?"

"Why are there different kids?"

"Why is there a different teacher?"

Rinse, lather, repeat.

The cute thing is that Ben and I are thrilled with the teacher change. We liked her teacher last week, but Meaghan (this week's teacher) is a former piano student of mine so this is really cool to have her teaching Rachel!

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Rachel had a bit of a runny nose yesterday and I thought it might be allergies. She woke up at midnight though, and we gave her some Tylenol. She was up off and on until 1:30, but she'd gone to bed at 6pm so we weren't too surprised by that. At precisely 6am she came running into our room. Again, no surprise. The surprise was that she climbed up onto the bed, smushed herself against me and promptly fell asleep! She didn't wake up until 7am when I had to get up since I was squished between Ben and Rachel and really needed to move.

Rachel the Sea Turtle

For the past two weeks, Rachel has been attending daily swimming lessons at the aquatic centre. She loves it even though she doesn't always do what she's supposed to. The classes are half an hour long and she literally doesn't stop bouncing in the water for the entire class.

They keep the pool at a whopping 28 inches deep so it's perfect for the Sea Turtles (beginner level). So far, Rachel has tried assisted front floats, back floats, front glides, bubble blowing and paddling/kicking. Today she even put her head in the water up to her eyebrows! Ben and I were both impressed. We were less impressed when she kept drinking pool water every time any part of her face was submerged. She thought it was funny.

We decided to sign her up for the same level again for the next two weeks. At $46 for 10 lessons I certainly can't complain!

Frogs in the window wells, geese on the lawn...

Ben ended up going to the pet store today for advice on how to remove frogs from our window wells since they jumped in and apparently can't or don't want to jump out. He'd already removed a dead one yesterday (with his bare hands. Anyone want to guess what I had to say about that!??!!) and we really didn't want more dead frogs on our property.

The pet store employee suggested using a fish net to remove the frogs. So Ben did just that, and now there are no longer 11 frogs living in the window wells. They have been relocated to a large puddle on the vacant lot next door to us.

As for the geese, that's another story. We live very close to the storm water ponds (ponds are behind our across-the-street neighbours). Ergo there are lots of geese and even seagulls around. I have chased Canada geese off of our lawn several times this summer already.

Imagine our surprise and distress to see our backyard neighbours out FEEDING the geese on their back lawn tonight! Yes, they have a little girl who's about 8 or 9 months older than Rachel. So what?!?! Go to the POND to feed them if you really feel the need. Feeding geese on your lawn is moronic. They went back inside before Ben got out there, but he chased the geese off. We're not sure exactly what we'll say to the neighbours if they do it again. These are the same neighbours who "borrowed" water from the builder's house next door to water their entire back lawn. To be fair, they were apparently told that they could use it to water the lawn in between the two houses until the people moved in. Whatever. The mom told me the first time she met me that she was pregnant but it was an accident and she didn't want another child. Please note that I was not pregnant when I met her. I think I made some generic comment about there not always being a "good" or "right" time but it'll all work out. I know I followed up with a comment about my infertility. Apparently our neighbour knows how I feel because she miscarried and it took her a year to conceive her daughter after that. Um, nope. Sorry. You told me your 2nd child was an accident. You certainly don't know how I feel.

Oh, did I just turn that into a rant about our backyard neighbours who also smoke outside?

I'm very grateful that our yard is very long. And I think that come next summer it may have a fence.

*end rant here*

Some days I wonder

Most of the time, we're pretty impressed by Rachel's abilities and general understanding of life.

Tonight in the car she was happily holding a crayon (don't ask) when all of a sudden she said, "OUCH!" I asked her what was wrong.

"I pinched my forehead and it HURT!!"

Ok....

10 seconds later: "OUCH!"

Now what?

"I pinched the other side of my forehead and it HURT!"

We suggested that she stop pinching herself. A moment later: "OUCH! I pinched my leg and it HURT!"

I believe that this is when Ben just started snorting in a futile attempt to keep his laughter under control.

Random updates

We had a very rainy day yesterday. Rachel announced that it would not be a good day for t-ball. She also told me that the rain would help our grass grow. Thinking I'd expand on this, I told her that the rain would also help the trees and plants grow. "NO!" Rachel said indignantly. "The rain is not for the plants. WATERING CANS are for plants." I think she's spent too much time with Grandma Karen the Former Botanist. She also told me that she wants to plant a flower garden with all of her favourite flowers in it. I told her that we'd have to wait for next spring and that I was sure Grandma Karen would love to be involved with choosing and planting flowers.

Lately Rachel has been obsessed with workbooks and connect-the-dots books. She is actually quite good at connecting the dots without much help from us! Her letter and number tracing is getting better although it's still quite comical to watch.

We're supposed to be getting a letter from the pre-school sometime in the next week or so, so that's very exciting. Rachel is looking forward to school and I'd be lying if I said that Ben and I weren't excited too!

Ben found out today that he may not have to make a second trip down to Kansas City this year to finish off his degree. It might be possible to do his final recital at Western and send a DVD recording to UMKC for them to grade. We had originally planned to have him go down in December or very early January but yesterday Ben confirmed with someone at UMKC that it would be a bad idea to do that given the number of snow days they tend to have. Could you imagine how frustrating that would be if Ben flew down and his recital was cancelled? He has also been told that if he needs to re-take a section of the exams, he should be able to have someone at Western proctor it since the next session dates at UMKC nicely encircle my due date. So things are moving along there and if all goes well Ben will have his doctorate as of next spring!

Another new elephant has joined the herd. While in Toronto over the long weekend, Rachel's Bubbie Faye gave her an adorable pink elephant that has been named Strawberry. I'm pleased to report that Strawberry gets along well with the rest of the gang.

Afraid of the dark

It turns out that Miss Rachel has developed a fear of the dark. This doesn't totally surprise me since she's at the age where kids start to be afraid of (sometimes irrational) things.

A friend of mine brought down a nightlight for us, and Rachel & Ben picked out a super-cool cat nightlight at Wal-Mart so now there is a nightlight in Rachel's room and in her bathroom. I hope to eventually convince her to go potty all by herself in the morning. Hehe.

This morning she came into our room at 6:13am to tell us that "My nightlight kept me safe." Great! Now could your nightlight help you to stay put until 7:00?!?!??!