One Hot Week

I haven't had my camera with me lately... it's not safe most of the time these days to focus on taking pictures because the girls are running off in two directions, usually toward a body of water :) BUT, we'll try to be better and get some pictures of the girls swimming at the Y soon. I LOVE that they are so excited about the water!!! So, I'll post some pictures from our afternoon in the backyard throughout the narrative, and you can imagine the girls in the applicable scenarios :)

It has been crazily hot here in Texas. No really! We haven't had rain in about forever, and the temps have been above 95 every day for weeks. It's awesome most of the time, but when we have to run errands and can't be in the pool, it's not quite so great. BUT, running errands in the heat is better than running errands in the snow. Although I'm not sure that my friend Jennifer, who will deliver Baby Keaton in August, would agree with that right now!

We went to our second Little Gym class on Tuesday, and it went very well! Izzy was still a little slow to warm up and cried a little when I was helping Abby with a skill, but she got her sea legs pretty quickly and impressed her teacher, Miss Jessica, with her ability to grab and swing on the bar. Abby also earned praise for her two-legged jumping :) They really seem to love the class, although they're not too sure about the whole "structured learning" times. Miss Jessica assures us that exploration is important for toddlers' risk-taking development, so I think we're doing all right. It's very fun for me, if a little exhausting :)

We had a swimming playdate this morning with a little girl from church who is about a month older than the girls. Abby and Izzy aren't quite sure what to do with other kids... they adore little babies, and they seem to really love older kids, but they're a little put off by their own peers. They watched Bree very carefully, but it seemed like they were trying to be subtle about it, and ended up ignoring her. Bizarre little developmental stage... the "experts" seem to agree that children do "parallel" play when they're toddlers, but that they won't do "interactive" play until they're older. It's interesting to watch them with other kids, because that really plays out, but they definitely have a different relationship with one another (sharing, patting when crying, throwing balls back and forth) than they do with other kids their age.