My little fish.

Layla simply amazes me every summer.  She is DRAWN to the water.  

 Last summer it was the no-fear swimming with the water wings, jumping in, getting her face and eyes wet, etc.  This summer it's lots of swimming without water wings (and some with, of course...but sometimes at the lake we let her go without to start getting used to that too...), putting her face in the water, and just this past Friday she decided she wanted to swim under water.  She holds her breath for 6-8 seconds at a time, fully submerges her head, and kicks and swims to a different destination.  

Behold the power of no swimming lessons, people!  :)  

This was her first day of doing it.  On Sunday we went to Dan's pool and they swam for four hours.  The ENTIRE 4 hours was spent in the pool.  No joke.  I tried to get out every now and then, just to sit on the side and relax, and Finn would throw a little fit, grab my hand, and insist I join them in the pool again.  :)  She was a pro at underwater swimming by then, but here she is on the first day, just putting her head in there and showing her lack of fear.  

I don't know who taught her this, still...kids at the lake?  Claire and Anja?  Older kids/peer pressure has MANY positive uses...

Some beach time:

Finn had SO much fun when we were at our lake swimming yesterday, so I decided to go again today...why not, right?

UGH.

Why not.

FINN.  He has been really, extremely crabby, clingy, and needy for the past 2 weeks.  Part of me thinks he is getting over some "being left" issues internally (after J and I went to Chicago), especially since he wants me to hold him all the time and cries for me all the time now, and he was never like that before.  

Part of me thinks he was maybe getting sick, or teething--two year molars, maybe?--but come on.  Two weeks?  I'm doubting this.

Part of me worries that Finn is going to be a cranky two-year-old!  Maybe it's juts being TWO!  Gah!  Layla never really had a "bad year" like many two or three-year-olds seem to have.  She had two bad months before turning two, and two bad months before turning three, but not whole YEARS.

Finn cried, whined, and did his utmost to disrupt the peace the entire time we were swimming.  Here is one video I managed to get.  Layla, of course, just had fun and was a doll.  ;)