But she didn’t. She swam the 50M breaststroke and did fine. I thought that she was going to hate it, but she rated it a 6 or 7 on the 1-10 awesomeness scale.

All that time spent at soccer, baseball, lacrosse, and football games (not to mention practices) has given me collective heatstroke.

Finally some respite. Tonight, Layla went from great backyard pool swimmer to, well I’m not exactly sure except that she’s more than that now. Don’t know how this will turn out as she’s less than totally enthused about it. I think she’ll be great and thy she’ll live it. But what do I know.

The above picture is from her first practice. She’s in the second lane with the white cap. (Note: I’m doing all of this from my iPhone, so I have no idea how it will turn out or if the picture is decent or even if it’s turned the right way. Exciting!)

Speed: After getting home from camp at noon on Saturday, he took a long nap–neglected to mow the grass–and then boarded a plane to Kansas City to spend the week with Holly’s brother and cousin Noah. Word is he’s had a lot of fun, e.g., seeing a Royals game (a stranger gave them great seats 8 rows up from third base and everything cost $1), riding go-karts (rumor is he fell out of one at top speed; I believe the rumor), and heading to Branson and Silver Dollar City for this weekend. He’ll be back on Monday night.

Madysen: A couple of scrimmages with her new soccer team proves that she’ll do fine moving up to the 93 age group. She does wish she would grow a little bit though. She’s become obsessed with playing Monopoly. At first she played Emma and Layla at least once a day and trounced them both. Emma figured this out and quit playing. Layla continues to play. I have a feeling that Madysen is using Monopoly to avoid read The Hobbit, which is her required reading the summer.

Layla and Emma: Other than playing Monopoly every day, the two of them have spent four hours a day in the pool. Another couple of hours is spent doing cartwheels, roundoffs, and handstands in the living room. The balance of every 24-hour period seems to be spent watching the Disney Channel or various movies (including Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, which was pretty good and Arthur and the Invisibles, which wasn’t). Not being an avid Disney Channel watcher myself, I first saw a commercial for High School Musical 2 this week and asked the girls if they knew about it. Big mistake. First, they were agog that I was unaware that the greatest sequel ever was coming down the pipe. Second, they recounted the entire plot of the sequel over the next half hour. I have no idea how they know all the plot details for a movie yet to be released, but they definitely do. (Emma and Layla loved/love High School Muscial and karaoked the soundtrack continuously for a solid five months.)

Holly: She continues with physical therapy sessions on her wrist, and it is looking better and better every week. She took Madysen clothes shopping last Sunday, which went better than I expected–but not great. Those two are too alike. Of course, neither of them see it.

Me: Nothing too exciting. I did make a couple of trips to Austin for work matters. I have an uneasy feeling about Austin. On the one hand, it is a great college town. On the other, that college is Texas, which I despise. Further, it has terrible traffic, and the constant bombardment of “Keep Austin Weird” looks to have become corporatized to the extent that it borders on boboism. I did eat a Chuy’s twice–the first time because I wanted to eat there; the second because I had a New Yorker with me who wanted some good Tex-Mex (not that I was complaining).

Madysen has gone off to Cedar Creek Lake for the weekend with friends, so it’s just Holly and me with the two little girls. Weird.

Emma

Her backstroke:

Her breaststroke:

Floating fun

Layla

Layla was already very comfortable in the water.

Breaststroke breath

Backstroking it

On Monday, Layla got up on the diving board but begged off and headed back down the stairs. Of course, she slipped coming down the steps and hurt her knee pretty good. On Tuesday, she actually went off the diving board, the first one being a bit of a belly flop. By Friday, she had improved greatly.

The dive begins

Entering spread eagle

Looks like they had fun.

We moved only a month or two later, but the followed us to the Park Cities several months later. And now that the two boys have graduated high school, they are moving to Hawaii shortly. Must be rough.

[Originally posted August 12, 2011]

Madysen and her soccer team had Camp Don this past week Tuesday through Friday morning.  After Friday’s camp, they went over to one of the girls house for a pool party and then to another house for an all-invited party.  Somehow she fell off a golf cart and skinned her knew pretty good.  Another girl ran over a bush in the golf cart, so I’m glad these girls are several yeasr away from driving.  She also had a friend over one afternoon/evening, and they made some chocolate chip cookies.  They weren’t great, but they were better than a previous batch she and Speed made a while back.

Speed had a relatively quiet week.  He had one soccer practice, two scrimmages, and a conditioning workout.  They scored three goals in the scrimmages–Speed had an assist and a goal.  Speed claims that they ran three miles during the workout, but I’m skeptical.

Layla had dance camp every afternoon.  It is amazing how much she enjoys dance. And she went to a skill practice with a friend on Friday night. On the way home, she had McD’s and got her second ice cream treat of the day.

Emma took a few more swimming lessons from the older sister of one of Speed’s friends. She gets better every time she’s in the pool and can use all the help she can get before we move.

With all that activity, we went to a neighbor’s house to swim this afternoon when someone was looking at our house.  It sure was nice to sit around and relax.  I even suggested to Holly that we take the kids out of soccer, baseball, dance, etc. and just hang out at the pool on all weekends.  Right.  Fat chance.

It isn’t the worst fear to have, but it often handicaps her ability to relax and learn to swim. Hopefully she’s working through it this week as she and Layla take swim lessons.

For example, she doesn’t like putting her head back in the water when she’s on her back, which in turn makes it impossible to keep your feet up.

And she needs a little practice on her diving.

But she is cute in the water.

Layla really enjoys sports, but she is sometimes a bit timid. Not so with swimming. She (along with Emma) is taking swimming lessons this week and is attacking the water and doing very well.

[Note: The camera had some trouble focusing on Layla with the movement of the water.]

And from sometime that summer, all of us at the Cambridge Place community pool. I do not think this is the time that I received an epic sunburn just before the Texas Bar.

[Originally posted May 1, 2011]