Swimming Week 5- Swim Sequence

Swimming Week 5- Swim Sequence, originally uploaded by mgianchetta.

So, I am a little late posting last week’s swimming. Jack is still doing well. This is supposed to be the last week but he still needs a little more work, so we may end up going next week for a few days or for a week in the beginning of January. I’m hoping we can finish up next week. Right now Jack is working on being able to rollback to a float and rest in the floating position. This is really important because if he were ever in a situation where he fell into the water, the floating is his opportunity to rest before attempting to swim a little closer to safety. He knows to rollback but he doesn’t trust the floating part yet. Also, in the beginning when we were in a really cold pool he would never kick. Now he kicks but doesn’t understand that he should kick when he is on his tummy and float on his back. He is getting it though. At any rate, this whole process is amazing and I am so impressed with what his teacher Sarah has taught him (and the other kids that I get to see) in just 6 weeks. We love Sarah and are pretty disappointed that she won’t be Garrett’s teacher next year.

Week 4- Solo Rollback

Week 4- Solo Rollback, originally uploaded by mgianchetta.

This is a video of one of the first times Jack has ever been swimming and done a rollback to float on his own. He did a great job and followed his instinct. The idea of the rollback to float is that when he is swimming and feels uncomfortable or needs a rest that he knows he can rollback to float and be safe or rest. He is improving so much every week. Should be only a few more weeks and he’ll be finished. Yea, for Mommy not having to keep a food diary anymore…until Garrett starts lessons in a few months!

Week 4- Float

Week 4- Float, originally uploaded by mgianchetta.

Last week was our 4th week of lessons. During the week Jack worked on floating and learning to rollback into a float. Floating seems to be one of those things that kiddos have to work on. I think it is because they can’t see where they are going. He is doing really well though. And by the look on his face, he LOVES swimming lessons!

Tagged

So, I’ve been tagged to do a meme.  I had never heard of this, but my friend Susannah has tagged me to do one!  Here goes…

The rules:

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write 6 random things about yourself.
Tag 6-ish people at the end of your post.
Let each person know he/she has been tagged (or let them get tagged by reading your blog).
Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

My six random things:

1) I’m not a fan of even numbers.  I like odd numbers.  I never set my alarm for times that end in even numbers, I always get up at 6:33 or something like that.  We got married on an odd numbered day.  The one exception is my birthday, it is an even number.  I still like my birthday and my birthday month and year are odd numbered, so I’m okay with it.  I don’t know why I care about odd and even numbers, I guess I am just odd!

2) I don’t like to talk or be spoken to before I eat my breakfast in the morning.  I don’t wake up cranky really, I just like to have my space and time to wake up.  It irritates me when someone wants to chat right off the bat.  I just want to get up, get my breakfast, be quiet (not something you usually hear from me!) and then I’m ready to go.  Since having kids I am learning to be able to get up and talk and then have breakfast.  Little ones don’t care if you WANT to talk or not, they always need something and your morning preferences are of no importance to them!

3) I must eat breakfast every morning, even if my morning is 2pm.  When I get up I have to have breakfast.  I can’t skip to lunch.  I love breakfast and tolerate lunch most days in order to get to dinner.  So when I wake up it is always breakfast for me.  Travis would tell you that I am not flexible with this rule, even to an irritating fault.  He has two choices, get me breakfast and have a normal day or make me go straight to lunch and suffer the consequences!!

4) I’m a cloth diaper addict.  When I got pregnant with Garrett, Jack started to show interest in the potty.  I was taking him often and he was peeing on the potty often.  So often that I was starting to have to throw away dry diapers because the tabs wouldn’t stick anymore.  So I decided to try cloth diapers.  My friend Susannah (not the one that tagged me for this) loaned me her pocket dipes that she wasn’t using at the time.  I loved them.  Then I found out about this site diaperswappers.com.  You can buy/sell/trade new and used cloth diapers.  I am addicted to buying “poopy” diapers as Travis likes to say.  They are clean, just used.  I love to try to get good deals on them and I like trying new styles.  I love to research the different types of diapers and I like to read the message boards where people post their cloth diaper trials and tribulations.  I’m officially addicted to diapers!

5) I, not so secretly, want to have a home birth with one of my children.   I delivered both of my kiddos in a hospital with no medication.  I have long labor that starts and stops sporadically.  With both kids I checked into the hospital, had my contractions stop (and we aren’t talking like I had a few little cramps, the real deal contractions stopped!), got sent home and then went back to the hospital later.  I have all back labor and it takes for ever for me to get going.  However, once the birth is over I am ready to go.  Literally, I am ready to go home.  With Jack I delivered him at 2pm on a Tuesday and we went home Wednesday evening.  With Garrett I delivered him about 6am and we were home about 9pm that night.  I hate the hospital and I want to get out of there with my little bundle as soon as possible.  So, I want to have a baby at home.  I never thought that I would be that person.  I always said that I would never want the mess and I would never be able to relax, but I honestly hope that I can have at least one of my kids at home.  (Anyone who knows Travis knows that I have A LOT of talking to do if I want this to EVER occur!)

6) I’m scared to death of mice.  It is my one big, irrational fear.  Thanks Mom for passing this on to me, I really appreciate it! *)  I know they are little and they can’t really hurt me, but I HATE them.  So much so, that when we get them at our house I can’t go into the rooms where I think they might be.  Last year we had a huge mouse problem because the house next door to us was being gutted and flipped.  All the displaced mice came to our house– I’m not kidding we got something like 12 in 2 days.  It was awful!  For the most part they were concentrated in the basement.  We only saw them a few times, but I knew they were there.  I made Travis go down to the basement before me and make sure I wouldn’t see any before I would go down there.  Needless to say, no laundry got done when Travis wasn’t home.  I HATE MICE!

Okay, I’m tagging:

1. Shalan

2. Elizabeth

And I’ll have to think of more.  I don’t think I even know 6 people with a blog and most of the ones I do know are on Susannah’s list.  I’ll update as I think of more people!!

Where does the time go?

I blinked and BAM we are in December.  Where does the time go?  I realized I haven’t really blogged in a few weeks, other than Jack’s swimming videos.  That is just not enough to keep the Grandparents happy!!

We had a great Thanksgiving.  I was completely unprepared for the whole thing.  In fact, up until the day before we didn’t even know what we were going to do.  My procrastination paid off.  My friend Susannah invited us to celebrate with her family at her parent’s house.  It was great.  I was in charge of mashed potatoes and wine.  It couldn’t have been more simple.  Susannah’s Mom made a fantastic turkey and all the fixin’s.  It was really nice and as an added bonus, the Dads were mainly in charge of kids, so us Moms got to visit.  It couldn’t have been better for me!!

We’ve actually had a pretty busy few weeks.  To add to our already crazy schedule, we decided to start potty training Jack.  (I guess I didn’t have enough going on, I needed to add to it!!)  We started the Friday before Thanksgiving.  It is going surprisingly well!  I followed my Moms advice and did just what she suggested.  I figure she has been potty training kids for the better part of 40 years, she probably knows a thing or two about it!  We put Jack in training underpants, set a timer for 30 minutes and took him to the bathroom every time the timer went off.  If he went we reset it for 30 more minutes, if he didn’t we reset it for 10 minutes and tried again.  I made a potty chart and every time he went he got to put a sticker on the potty chart (an extra special sticker with wiggly eyes when he pooped!).  It worked like a charm.  It has been a couple weeks now and basically we have very few accidents.  The funny thing is that he doesn’t really go that often now.  I basically rely on him to tell me when he needs to go or watch for cues.  He can hold it forever.  He is strategic too.  He likes to pee in public restrooms, so if he knows we are going somewhere he will hold it until we get there so that he can go in public.  Totally random!  Now if only I could get him comfortable in pooping in public.  He even wakes up dry from naps and almost always in the morning.  The whole thing is a little cray.  We have lots of potty talk around our house.  Who knew we could be so proud about it?!

So Garrett has been a good baby from the start.  The biggest challenge we have had with him is sleep.  Neither of our kids have been easy sleepers, but Garrett has been difficult.  He can sleep really well– as long as it is on my chest or next to me on my pillow.  Props to the Mamas and Papas out there that love the co-sleeping, but I am not one of them.  When they are brand new and never move, it is nice to hold them when they sleep.  When they are five months old and latch on when they want to eat in the middle of night, sleeping with them is not nice.  For the first four months or so Garrett would sleep pretty well in the swing.  Not ideal, but at least the majority of the night was not on me.  Then he learned to roll over.  Then he practiced rolling over and got REALLY good at it.  Then he didn’t want to sleep in the swing anymore, he wanted to be on his side or stomach.  One would think that that would mean he could sleep in his own bed.  However, we were pretty sure that G had acid reflux from birth.  Hence the sleeping in upright in the swing or on my chest.  We tried and tried to not have to put him on medication for the reflux, but when the swing sleeping went away we had to reconsider.  So we took him to the doctor a week ago and they put him on reflux medication.  Wow, what a difference.  I wish I could say that he suddenly slept 12 hours through the night, but let’s be realistic, my kiddos just aren’t going to do that.  He has however, started to sleep in big stretches and last night he only got up once.  A huge improvement!!!  Hopefully it will just get better.  Since we went to the doctor, we had a weight check for Garrett.  He is exactly 15lbs.  I wasn’t surprised because he seems like he is growing like mad.  He is much thinner than Jack was at this age, but he is also much longer.  I think that Garrett is actually about the same weight as Jack was at this age, but they are built completely differently.  They do share one funny thing in common though.  Both boys have lost all of their hair in the back and kept it all in the front.  Garrett is entering the pompadour stage.  It actually doesn’t look quite as funny as it did on Jack.  I’m not sure if that is because we are used to it the second time around or because Garrett’s new hair in the back is coming back in dark and Jack’s came in blond.  I’m still convinced that all our boys will have full heads of hair and if we ever have a girl she will be bald until she is 2!

Hopefully I’ll be a little better about updating this more often.  You can count on a swimming video every week until we finish up the lessons.  Other than that, you’ll have to stay tuned!