Last night Addison removed the bins on the two bottom shelves of a family room bookcase for the sole purpose of making room to scale said bookcase in an attempt to retrieve the bin three “stories” up. This, of course, almost resulted in the entire thing tipping over on her and made me about lose my dinner even though I was only a foot away. I realize many kids do the bookshelf scaling thing at a much earlier age and thank goodness Addison hadn’t considered it before last night. I stopped her in time and she was stunned by my very sudden reaction which I hope means she will not attempt it again.

She rubbed away her dejected tears and skipped off to go get a chair to push over instead. She never even considered asking me to get the bin for her because why would she ask for help when “Addy-Mai do it!”. Just another reminder that we might be done baby proofing but toddler proofing has only just begun. Medicine, heavy bookcases, outlets….these are all Addy’s playground. And the girl is full of some ingenuity and eager to prove me wrong.

A few weeks ago Addy took out a little toy mirror and looked at herself approvingly like only a totally self-centered 2 year old can do. Then she tried to see me by turning it around to face me. Stupidly, I told her “You can only see yourself in a mirror!” and that was the challenge she needed to prove me wrong.

Ever since, she has obsessively gone around from object to object carefully holding the mirror at just the right angle so that she could see other things in her mirror, sometimes contorting herself underneath objects but never EVER giving up on her endless plight to prove me wrong.

She will find the smallest tiny speck of dust and get a perfect reflection going before adamantly letting me know. I’m not sure how many times she has to do it before she figures she’s made her point. Apparently several days is not enough!! She’ll study the drops of water on the window, the body parts of her various dolls and stuffed animals, the pets, her various body parts and of course, me. She can find just the right angle to see them and prove me wrong. That girl is hard-headed and determined. I’m afraid of how she will be at age 3!

On another note, I just want to say that I am not intentionally trying to brag about my kid at every turn. I don’t actually feel like my posts are brags as much as that I am stunned so often by my own kid and want to note those things for when she’s bigger so she and I can both read back about them. I’m sorry if my ridiculous tirades about my girl are annoying. I think I’d be a little annoyed if I was a reader As a parent I tend to have naturally high expectations. Recently I realized that Addison consistently overshoots my expectations and I’m always amazed by her determination and abilities. I should know better by now but I can’t seem to align my own expectations of her in a way that meets her own abilities so she just keeps surprising me. I’m actually worried about this as a parent because what if I don’t challenge her enough? What if I don’t give her opportunities she could handle or deserves because they aren’t age-appropriate or I don’t think she’s ready? These are challenges I have never before faced as a parent and I’m not sure what to do with them at this point.

Another weekend means another three days in the pool for us. We are making some major progress!

Our dog, Lilo, is a Golden Retriever who does not really retrieve much and she does not swim. Her best friend is my cat, Anna. She’s more cat than dog is what I’m saying. We are working on it. I have undertaken the great effort of luring her into our pool. I will not give up until I succeed at making her a water dog. This takes the kind of excitement and energy that can not really be expressed in words or pictures. It is exhausting! But after working with her for a week, we have made so much progress. She will now slowly get into the pool in order to swim to me for treats and today we had major progress when she decided she’d be willing to swim to fetch her ball, repeatedly. She also finally figured out where exactly to go to get out of the water. Previously she would just swim to the side and cling to the edge in fear. I know we will have hit a home run when she finally does that notorious dog trick of flying into the water after her toys. I think she’s really appreciating being in the water, too. She isn’t really anxious to get out, I’m sure it is such a relief from the heat. Hopefully by the end of summer she’ll be swimming in lakes and oceans like a pro!

In other progress, Addison had a big day today in the pool. She usually does not want to wear her arm floaties and I usually don’t push it because I think they are dangerous* but she was willing to wear them today and was SO happy about the freedom they allowed. She swam all over the pool screaming “I’m coming! I’m swimming! Here I come! I’m swimming to Daddy! I’m swimming to Mama”. She jumped off the side and jumped off our laps. She felt so big and really it helped her feel comfortable in the water. She quickly figured out how to flip front and back and relax in the water so her legs would float up behind her. Really it was crazy to see how much progress she made in just an hour in the pool with those floaties on today. Later she asked to take off the floaties and I knew it was going to be rough. *This is exactly why I think they are dangerous - she got a false sense of ability, security and safety with them on and was too little to understand that without the floaties she also lost all her newfound abilities. I explained over and over that she would just sink without them but she didn’t believe me. She tried over and over to jump off me and swim to Daddy and would just sink. But the progress is that she didn’t freak out! She wanted to keep doing it, over and over. She was really tolerating the water in her face and eyes and was actually swimming back and forth to us a little! I would love to get her really swimming before the summer is over and today was a pretty good start.

This weekend our community pools all opened and we plan to visit those frequently. The benefit to the community pools over the convenience of our own back yard is that the community pools are zero depth which in my experience really helps kids get used to the water and become swimmers faster. I think Addy will really love the zero depth pools. The bigger kids are looking forward to the big water slides and diving boards that we also lack. But I know realistically that we’ll mostly use our backyard pool because it is SO much easier. Who wants to pack up the kids, the snacks, the drinks, the towels, the pool gear, the sunscreen and the suits when you can just run into your own back yard? And even worse, who wants to gather all that stuff up again to go home when we are all sun-tired & soaking wet? Nothing is more of a pain to me than trying to finagle wet kids into car seats without soaking the seat, too. The alternative, changing before we go home, requires even more effort. But I am determined to get use out of the community pools this year. After all, I should get some great photography opportunities and that’ll make all the inconvenience worth it, right?!

You know, I’ve heard people say that as you get older, you become more relaxed and laid back about certain things. I haven’t found that to be true, so much. For me, I was young and naive (read: stupid) and that led to a certain fearlessness that I miss so much now. I can’t say anything particularly traumatic happened in the last 15 years but as the years go on, I feel more anxious, more fearful about mortality (my own and my kids), generally less at ease.

Lately I’ve had to face some of my anxieties head on. A few days ago I sat outside on my patio and watched Noah swim in the pool, alone. This was a hard one. I was ready to jump in, fully clothed, to save him at any moment. He was darting back and forth through the water, flipping around, laughing and splashing and I was ready so sure was I that he would drown at any moment. He made it out in one piece, a few hours later. I had a headache.

Yesterday we were all in the pool together which generally brings down my anxiety level at least a bit. I was diving into the deep end, doing a little handstand on the bottom and flipping around to come up to the surface when I NAILED my head on the edge of a Bilibo floating by. It hurt so bad that I instantly feared I might pass out right there in the deep end before I could come up to the surface and probably my family would not notice soon enough because as busy as I was keeping on eye on all of them, no one was keeping an eye on me. Oh the drama! In that split second I considered that this could easily be another story of an accidental drowning death - a variation on the “hit head on bottom of pool” story. But I saw the light (the sky this time) and came to the surface where I writhed in pain and whined and complained until I dragged myself out of the pool a half hour later. I am still in agony today, jacked up on pain meds (ok, Motrin but that counts right?).

Ok so it wasn’t such a brush with death but it still hurt like hell and I have the agony to remind me of it all day today.