Kosher Shrimp

I know I said they were swimming, but here's undeniable proof. (Well, I suppose you COULD deny it, but why?)

They've been perfectly happy in swim class so far, despite the difficulties in getting them into consecutive classes. I'm not sure if this is easier or harder than putting them together, but I thought they would be more likely to stand around poking each other and giggling if they were in the SAME class. Besides, they're together too much anyway, this gives them a (tiny) breather.

David announced the other day that soon he's going to "be a lobster." I found this to be an interesting statement, until I finally tumbled to the fact that he's referring to the levels of swimming lessons available. So then we had a nice chat about advancement, and how he'd be needing to take a test before moving on to the next level, and how he needed to work more on blowing bubbles and keeping his legs straight before he was going to be able to be a lobster. Apparently he found the pep talk quite inspiring, as he spent a great deal of the next lesson with waterline coming just up under his nose. I did get a small visit from the teacher after his class, telling me that he'd done very, very well. So I suppose he finds this motivating?

Lauren spends less time worrying about such silly things as class advancement, and instead she focuses her energies on making sure that Mom is watching her at all times. She does this mainly by employing lots of grins, winks, and thumbs-up signals. She also excels at memorizing music of all kinds, so I get treated to the "Swimmy Alligator Song" quite a bit...a lovely tale of a treeful of monkeys. (You have to envision this song complete with three-year-old enthusiasm and body language.)

Five little monkeys swinging in the tree,
Teasing Mr. Alligator, "Can't catch me, you can't catch me!"
Along comes Mr. Alligator, quiet as can be,
And SNAPS that monkey right out of that tree!

The joy, of course, is the person who has been "snapped" must jump into the pool. It's all quite exhilarating. Oh, and as a side note: Swimming lessons in February is not exactly the most brilliant of ideas. The pool is nice and warm, but one must be extra-careful to get hair dry and put hoods up on jackets before dashing through an ice-covered parking lot to find the car!

Swimming days are twice a week, and since they happen late in the afternoon, I rarely cook on these days, so we end up going out. One of the days coincides with the same day that "The Clown Lady" (in reality she's Princess the Clown, who really does do some spectacular work) makes an appearance at Fazoli's restaurant. The kids end up going to swimming lessons and then going to get their faces painted during dinner.

David approached this poor woman, and instead of requesting the typical Spiderman face, he asks her to paint him up like a Triceratops dinosaur. (Did I mention the boy's laser-like obsession?) I think, given the circumstances, she did quite well. I have another set of photos which I'll have to post...they're on my cell phone, so that means digging up the various cables to getting them downloaded. Urgh!

Speaking of which, someone wanted me to show them how to download music from iTunes and get those songs backed up onto an iPod. This is particularly hilarious since I don't even OWN an iPod. Still, I think we did relatively well...the biggest problem was getting the 10-15 songs downloaded over the dialup modem. Now if only I could figure out how to hook up one of the tiny iPod shuffles to the car radio, I'd be set!

Let's face it, I have to have my ears open and available at all times with the kids around! Lauren nearly burned the house down the other day...no joke. There was a newspaper on the flat-top stove, and Lauren got up early, came out, dragged a chair into the kitchen, and figured she'd turn one of the knobs on the stove "just to see what would happen." Well, she turned it on low, but pretty soon the newspaper started smoldering. Doug was sleeping on the couch due to a combination of getting all-night technical support calls and a hurt back which didn't want the bed, and he sort of felt like something was wrong, but couldn't put his finger on it. He got up and started to stumble into the bedroom when Lauren intercepted him and said, "Daddy, dere steam inna kitchen." He said at that point his brain clicked on with the sudden realization of you smell smoke!! He shut everything down, but the stove had blackened a good deal of the newspaper. Luckily there was no fire yet. Neither of the kids would talk to Dad about what happened, but when I came out I managed to get the story out of Lauren. Reluctantly, but she told me. So we had a nice conversation about what fire does and how it burns up and "eats" our most favorite things, like our stuffed animals and our blankies and our dollies, and how it can even eat up the whole house and sometimes, it can even eat up your family. This impressed her enough that went around for two days saying, "Mommy, I NEVER going to turn the stove on again! Never, ever, ever!"

I devoutly hope not!!