A Zoo Day

Even though Leo currently has Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, we decided to go to the zoo for the day yesterday. He stayed quarantined in the stroller while Ella had a play date with a friend. They had so much fun. Ella even learned how to use the camera on my phone and took a few photos herself; some of which turned out pretty nice.

Here are Carmella and Kendall posing for the camera in front of the tiger habitat.


Here they are roaring for the tiger. If you look in the background the tiger lifts her head. She must have heard the girls roar.


The girls had so much fun. They are finally at the stage where they play with each other instead of playing side-by-side. It was totally refreshing for Kendall's mom and me too. We had a lovely time talking with each other with minimal interruptions.

Swim Class

Carmella loves her swimming lessons. Her excitement gets her in trouble at times. The problem is, she has a hard time closing her mouth when she puts her face in the water because she is smiling too much. It's so cute. She is the youngest child in her class by a year or more, but she holds her own. She has improved so much since the first day. In the beginning she wouldn't put her face in the water at all. Now, she can hold her breath under water for up to five seconds. I am very proud of her. But to be honest, I just get a kick out of how much she likes it.

I have to back up a bit and tell you how we came to even get signed up for lessons at this particular pool. The pool is walking distance from our house and the lessons are by far the cheapest around. However, signing up is quite a stressful process. As a swim person myself, I really don't understand why it has to be so difficult to get a kid into lessons. Sign-ups start online at say noon on a Saturday. If you are not logged in and ready to go the second they open up the sign ups, you are out of luck. There is only one class per age group for each two-week session. I think there are four sessions total throughout the spring for which parents can sign up their kids. I knew we wanted to do the first two sessions so I got logged on and signed up the second the list went public.

Just for curiosity sake, I logged back in after I successfully added Carmella to both of the Spring sessions I wanted. Sure enough, only 4 minutes after the sign-ups went public, all classes were filled up for all four sessions. I felt lucky to even get on the list.

My thoughts are that if there is such a demand for lessons, why not add classes and teachers? They are missing out on a huge money-making opportunity here. It just kills me. I used to work at a pool and half my day was spent booking swim lessons. The more the merrier. If we had a wait list, we would simply add a class. I guess this place isn't quite at that level, but I simply see missed opportunity written all over it.

But isn't she sweet?

Randomness

Since I have been so bad at blogging lately, I must put everything into one post. We will start with our current state of being and end with some fun things we've been up to the past few weeks.

The biggest challenge we face right now is getting and keeping everyone healthy. Last week Leo had a stomach virus that lasted three days with a mild fever. After the three days, he somehow ended up with Pink Eye. Once we had that all taken care of we thought we were in the clear, until... Sweet Carmella had a really bad night and wound up in the ER with a nasty case of croup. It was so scary. She couldn't catch a breath at all and sounded horrendous. At the ER she got a breathing treatment, a dose of steroids and an orange Popsicle. She came home and slept okay the rest of the night. However, her parents were on edge all night long.

Mark left two days later for a business trip. I ended up battling a sinus infection and two unhealthy kids who couldn't seem to make it through the night without some issue. Mark came home several days later feeling really sick himself. So we muddled through this weekend and somehow survived. Leo's Pink Eye returned this weekend along with a fever and night terrors. Last night was his first night sleeping through in almost a week. Thankfully he slept--because his pregnant momma really needed the rest. I am praying that we have seen the worst of it and will have a healthy week this week.

Okay, now that the illness portion is finished, I can get on with the cute, fun stuff. Somehow in the midst of it all we found a few healthy days to get out and have some fun. The first two photos are from a place called Champion Kids. C discovered that she could operate the rope swing by herself and Leo discovered how fun it is to jump into the foam pit.



And since you can't see from the foam pit photo, C got her hair cut (by me). I was tired of pulling her hair back and using a ponytail holder that only seemed to shred her baby-fine hair. So I created some bangs or fringe so I wouldn't have to keep pulling it back. Here she is at a dear friend's 3-year-old birthday party last week. Everyone keeps saying how grown up she looks.

And here are two more shots of our little nature lover, Leo. Always needing to have something in his hands to hold, carry, or play with.

That's it for now. I hope to take some pictures at C's swim lesson today and write more this week. All my love!!