Settling

After a long string of events and visitors, life here is finally settling down into what I imagine will be "normal". JJ is working Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, so we have all of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as a family. We also get nearly all of Saturday (before he leaves for work) and Tuesday afternoon (after a morning nap). On Sunday, A. and I visit with my parents. On Monday, we swim. And on Tuesday morning, we go to the library story time.

As our pediatrician advised, we're teaching A. to swim. The preponderance of swimming pools and lakes down here makes that nearly a necessity. We've decided to forgo the survival swimming -- two intense weeks of having your child dropped into the water and being forceable taught to back float. Instead, we've gotten a membership to a local gym with a pool, and I've been taking A. in the water about 4 times a week.

We're taking it slowly, mostly letting her play around. She loves to be held so that she floats on her stomach, head out of the water, and we propel her around the pool. She likes being dipped, on her side, into the water so that her cheek gets wet. We've done a few submersions, and they go over so-so. Sometimes she comes up surprised but quickly grins, but this last trip she cried a bit after her second dunk. We'll back off a bit and go back to things just being fun. There's no real rush -- I'd rather take longer but have her enjoy it, rather than the horror stories of crying kids and parents that I've heard about the survival training.

The rainy season has started here, so we get thunderstorms every afternoon. Our home's location, in particular, seems to attract even more storms than is normal. My parents, who live only about 7 miles away, get hit by about half the storms that we do. We live a mile or two from a fairly large lake, so part of it is the storms that just pop up over the lake, swoop over us, and die. The rest... just seem to like Montverde.

I'm starting to settle into my role as a stay@home mom, as opposed to the long-term vacation this seemed to be up to this point. I'm trying to see the care of our home as my job, something to be done whether I really want to or not. JJ's wonderful about helping, and has no expectations other than that I care for A. He knows that's a full-time job in itself. But I have a picture in my head of the household I'd like my daughter to grow up in, and there's no one else to make that happen but me.