Swimming lesson

Esme did such a good job today at her 'swimming lesson' at our lake. She has been saying 'No No' to 'Do you want to go swimming?' for two days in a row. The last two 'lessons' she has been screaming and crying most of the time asking to go back to the truck, to go 'outside, inside, sorry, please!' etc etc..

Today she giggled, blew bubbles in the water, kicked her feet and hardly clung to either of us. In fact, I had to ask her to come back once! Her little swimmer lifejacket is doing a great job letting her wave her arms and swim around by herself.

I think it helped today that she knew after we swam some she would get a ride on the boat. She loves the boat. That is how I got her to come willingly to the lake with us - she didn't want to swim but DID want to go on the boat. I told her we had to go swimming before we would ride the boat (which is the 'process' every time) and she said 'ok' and got ready to go. She is our process kid, definitely...

Esme is also scared of 'big brown bear' lately. This comes from two things. Her Starfall on the letter 'b' has a 'big brown bear' that growls. And this game I'm playing lately Frontierville has a big brown bear that stands up on the loading screen and is roaring with fangs beared. One night when we were outside in the dark playing in the sand I told Esme I was worried about big brown bears coming and finding us.. and she grabbed my hand and marched right inside. I feel a little guilty, but not much *haha* as I was hearing noises in the woods that I couldn't attribute to the dogs. When we were out on the boat the other day Esme was saying 'what's that!' and making her scared noise in several places. I (jokingly) pointed to a very dark area of the woods and said a 'big brown bear' lived there. Today on the boat she pointed to a different but similar dark part of the woods and said 'big brown bear there'. She has quite the memory!

And yesterday at Grandma's house Daddy was getting a metal jar out of a cupboard. Esme sometimes plays with that jar and makes it go 'ding' by hitting things against it. It lives in a specific cupboard, or at least - it did, until Daddy decided to take it home. It was something Grandma was keeping for him. Esme got really upset about us not putting it back away in the cupboard, and didn't want us to go out the door without putting it away. She knows she has to put away toys and that was a toy! We had to explain we were taking it home and have Grandma say it was okay. Again, the process kid...

Note We went to the flea market this morning. The alphabet panel fabric came in the mail today, as well. It looks like it is just about the perfect size if a border is added around the outside. I haven't made many more squares for the quilt yet - machine is still acting up some, but hope to get to a few more tomorrow? We don't have so much running to do tomorrow as we did today.

Lifejacket: It's a Stearns Puddle Jumper in bright yellow :) We got it at WM, but Amazon has an online listing for them. It really doesn't look like much until you see it in the water! If the strap is loose she gets a little water right up under her mouth and she gets scared. When the back strap is properly tightened it is just perfect... need to double check that each time before going in the water because it loosens up and slips position as the straps dry out.