Swim Lessons and Hannah turns 10 months!

Dear Hannah and Nathan,
This has been quite the week. Swim lessons for Nathan, me getting sick, and Hannah kissing people. Hannah has gotten pretty good at waving. It starts like a "Hi" but then she gets pretty excited and starts to flap both arms up and down.

 One afternoon, Nathan brought a couple of roses in for the girls. Hannah was very interested in it.

 Look at this little gentleman!

 But sometimes you are not that great of a gentleman. I was cleaning up or getting Hannah more food (which is pretty much all the time these days) and when I returned, I found your beautiful avocado art smeared on the tablecloth. Here's the conversation:
Me: Nathan, you made a mess. What are you going to do now?
Nathan: I make avocado train.
Me: [grabbing the camera and taking this picture] I'm going to show Daddy this picture of your train. I don't think he's going to like it. I don't like it when you make messes with your food.

Nathan: No, don't show Daddy! I clean up! 

Me: What do you need to clean up?

Nathan: [looks around] a towel! 

Me: [pass him a towel and I watch him frantically wipe the table cloth] Hmm...I don't think it's very clean, how are we going to make it clean?

Nathan: We need more water. Soap! 

And then I proceed to explain to you that while making art with food may be fun, it's not so fun for the person who has to clean up. And even though you helped clean it up, more work has to be done to clean it up completely. 

We are also working on getting him to understand the concept of wasting: electricity, water, cold refrigerator air...etc. I think he gets it, but sometimes he still spends a bit too much time washing playing at the sink. 

Nathan likes to talk to us during dinner time. It makes you sad when Mommy and Daddy talk to each other about grown up things and leave you out. Sometimes you attempt to join in by laughing at jokes (even if you don't understand why we are laughing) or you patiently put your hand on the table (our secret signal that you need to speak to us) and wait for us to turn towards you. And when we do, you can't come up with anything to say except, "I want Mommy Daddy talk." Does that mean you want us to explain what we are saying to you or do you want us to talk to you too? We are not quite sure. When we ask you, you just give us a hesitant laugh and then you change the topic. 

Another cool thing you've been doing lately is telling jokes or being sarcastic. It's all based off of what we, as parents already do to you, but you add your own spin to it. You've also started to change the lyrics to well known songs to make them silly. It's pretty fun when you do it. 

And then one final Nathan event is that this week we started swim lessons. The first day was really rough. Your teacher is intense. She proudly wears the title of "swim Nazi." The first day pretty much consisted of throwing you into the pool and the teachers holding your head down as they guided you from one end of the pool to the other. Along with every other kid in the class, you cried, held on to me for dear life (as I was also carrying Hannah), ran away from me, begged, pleaded for us to stop and go home. Believe me, it was tough for me too. I don't think I have ever made you do something that you didn't want to do and deep down I felt horrible. I saw kids tremble with fear right before they got pushed into the pool. It seemed almost unnatural. After the last jump, you quickly gained composure and seemed to be ok, so I pumped you up with encouragement and we got a sticker and headed home. 

 I went to class the first day with a cold and the intensity of the class wore me and my immune system out so that night we got home, my body just shut down and I felt like I had the flu. Fever, chills, aches, the whole shebang.  Daddy came home early and rescued us.  

The next day was better. Daddy went with you to class while I stayed on the side and took videos of you and your best friend, Abigail. You were still crying for most of the class, but you did the last few laps tear free. And you were actually swimming! 

Video of Nathan Swimming Day 2

And by day 3, you were swimming through 2 hula hoops under water (with some help ). You remained tear free for most of the class and you actually liked jumping through a hula hoop before landing in the pool. When the teacher took away the hula hoop, you got a bit upset. By today, most of my doubts about sending you to this particular swim class disappeared. We have another day tomorrow, a 3 day weekend break and then another 4 classes next week. 

 And of course there's Hannah. Hannah, Hannah, Hannah. Master of destruction. I pretty much think it's hilarious when you start going for things that big brother is playing with, but he does not like it.

How could you get upset at this sweet face?

You two continue to want to ONLY play with whatever toy that the other person is playing with. Even though we have and ENTIRE HOUSE FULL of toys, you must play with that exact toy right now. Well, I've come to let you guys just battle it out. I have told Nathan that Hannah is a baby, so she can't talk and so he needs to listen to her and guess what she is feeling, but if she bothers him, he needs to figure something out without hurting Hannah. Nathan's pretty much learned that if he wants to keep the toy that he's playing with, he needs to play away from Hannah.

If Hannah is playing with a cool toy, Nathan will call "switch" ask Hannah for the toy, take it and give her a new toy. I think it's pretty good for a 2 year old and if Hannah doesn't protest, I just let it be. I'm going to try not to get in between them too much, starting from the beginning. 

But there's many moments when they are able to play side by side. One afternoon we all played together. Nathan drove Hannah to the grocery store in his Blue Lightning McQueen car. (Hannah wanted a steering wheel so we gave her one too)

 When you two got to the store, Nathan pushed Hannah around in the cart while shopping for groceries. Hannah kept throwing things out of the basket and Nathan didn't quite like that. Kept telling Hannah, "Bu-xing" (Can't do that!) Gee, reminds me of something someone used to do all the time when I would take him shopping...

 Hannah just loves it whenever big brother pays attention to her. She had a blast letting Nathan push her around.

 Afterwards, we decided to do some crafts for Craf-T Tuesday. While Nathan drew on coffee filters, and watched the ink spread out after dipping them in water (or his drool), Hannah chunked markers around to see what would happen. I think we all learned a lot about gravity that day.

 Hannah is continuing to sleep from about 7:15 to about 7 in the morning. Her afternoon nap has been only lasting an hour lately and her morning nap lasts 30-45 minutes. I find that she usually takes a longer pm nap if her morning nap doesn't last more than 45 minutes, but recently, this was not the case. Hopefully this is a cognitive leap stage and you'll resume your 1:30 - 4 afternoon nap schedule once again.

Your motor skills are catching up. First of all, you are able to deliberately play with toys, with intention. No longer are you sticking everything in your mouth, but for example, when I put a xylophone in front of you, you know to pick up the mallet and start banging. You are really understanding cause and effect.

Hannah is also starting to lean in to give kisses. Nathan's first kisses were open mouthed and drooly. Hannah's are not the case. Your mouth is semi-open, but not as drooly. We purse our lips and tell you to give us a kiss and with a smile, you slowly inch your face towards us. It is simply adorable.

Well, that's it for now. Until next week.

Love,

Mommy