Last Tuesday (June 19) we didn't have swim class, so I took the boys to the Cupertino fountains to cool off. Even though we'd been to the much louder and more intimidating Los Gatos fountains two days before, Julian would still have nothing to do with them. I don't know what happened, he liked fountains last year!
Gabriel, on the other hand, played in them nonstop, having a fabulous time. Gina was his usual cohort, but he also played with Erin and another boy we don't know, who showed him how to sit on the fountain and direct the water with his legs, which he found hilarious.
Lucky me, I got to sit in the shade with a reticent Julian and chat with my Mom friends, though Julian did relax later when one of my friends rolled a ball to him. But it was way too hot to be running after a ball, and within minutes, he was all flushed.
Even after stopping for a few bites of lunch, Gabriel went back out to play in the water. Oddly, in the pool, lately Gabriel has been pooping out before Julian, but not in fountains -- especially when Julian won't go near them. What is his deal?!
Thursday the 22nd, I had a horrible morning, I was unrecoverably exhausted and just couldn't function. Dave's been out of town, so I've had to get up at 6:30am with Julian, and it's killing me -- I HATE being up early, it ruins my day. I stumbled through dressing and breakfast for the boys, falling asleep with every blink of my eyes, and tried to put my head down sitting on a chair, but I got interrupted again and again and again. No surprise; two little boys need constant intervention. It was so frustrating that just 20 minutes was all I needed to take the edge off. And I'd easily have had that if I had just Gabriel or Julian, but as usual, both together means even a few seconds to run upstairs to rotate laundry is risky.
I finally resorted to something I've never done once: putting on a video just so I could rest. But I felt so bad about that that I couldn't sleep! I got up and saw them zoned out on the couch, on a hot summer morning, and I felt terrible about how I'd been -- grumpy, impatient, shouting, trying to ignore them. I was finally awake, so I got a whole bunch of things together, then took them to the Y where I did a little weights work and swam, and they had lunch.
Then I took them to our local pool to cool off, and that was so much fun. I was delighted to discover that Julian can stand up in the shallow end of the pool, which meant I didn't have to hold him the whole time or pull him out of over-his-head water every 5 seconds. This made it much more fun for me; I could splash around and play with them, go underwater and chase them and relax a lot more. Gabriel kept practicing swimming back and forth between the steps and the shallow end, but he wanted to get out much sooner than Julian did. In fact, I was so busy playing with them that I didn't get any pictures -- odd for me!
That night, what a treat for me: I asked Peggy to come over and take care of the boys while I attended my last skating class (sniff!). The ice rink was a wonderful place to be on such a hot day. And I almost sort-of got some momentum on doing back crossovers, which had been my main goal. I really want to find a way to keep skating and keep learning. Maybe the key is Peggy, actually: she was competitive as a teenager and practiced every day, and the rink I've been going to even asked her to teach. So who knows, maybe we can go to skating outings and I can ask her to help me with the baby and give me some pointers! Of course, she'll have her hands full with her own baby, due in August, though Peggy is never rattled by multiple children or babies, not like me.
But now, it's Friday night, and I have less than 24 hours to gather a zillion odds and ends for our trip tomorrow. The boys are really excited about going on an airplane (though Julian says he wants to go on a helicopter instead), and I will be too once I'm ready!
