Wednesday, June 18th
We spent the weekend in Cincinnati visiting my brother, Joe. His son, Erik turned 2 years old, so they had a party for him on Friday. Saturday we went to the ball game and watched the Cincinnati Reds lose to the Boston Red Sox. We had a really good time. On Sunday we went to an amusement park in Cincinnati called Kings Island. We spent the morning in the "Nickelodeon-land" doing rides suitable for little kids. Morgan loved seeing the "Singing and Dancing with Dora and Boots" show, and Melanie's favorite was the bumper cars. After lunch, we went to the waterpark portion of King's Island, and spent a couple of hours cooling off before we made the drive back to Clarksville. Everyone went down one of their waterslides, even Morgan. They wouldn't allow anyone to go with her...so she went by herself and I caught her at the bottom. She came down head-first. She didn't seem to mind it, but wasn't interested in doing it again. No matter, she's shorter than she was supposed to be to do the slide in the first place. All she wanted to do was swim, swim, swim. She almost fell asleep in the inner-tube during the trip around the lazy river, and was out like a light before we ever got out of the parking lot.
Monday evening the girls started their swim lessons. They are both in the same class this time. It's a "mommy and me" type class, so a grown-up has to be in the water with them. They are both doing fantastic. Melanie is getting very proficient at floating on her back and is starting to get the doggie-paddle concept down. Morgan doesn't want to float on her back just yet, but she surprises everyone with how well she does other things. There are 4 year-olds who won't get their faces wet, and here's little Morgan, who won't keep her head ABOVE the water. Her small size really fools people! The should both do really well when we go to Florida next month.
Sunday, June 8th
Not too much excitement around here lately. We just spent the week playing with friends, going to the pool, and otherwise just trying to keep cool. This heat really snuck up on us! We went from weather in the 70's to weather in the 90's pretty much overnight. So it's been a bit of a shock to our systems. But the girls are enjoying the outdoors a lot.
Morgan is officially wearing panties all day every day now. We have not gone back to pull-ups at all during the daytime, even if we leave the house. She still wears them at night, but we're working on getting rid of the bed-time sippy-cup, so that will come. But she has only had a couple of accidents all week, and not more than one a day on the days she has had an accident. She has really gotten the hang of it. Yay!!
Tuesday, June 3rd
Today our dog Casey went to see the surgeon who did his ACL repair in April. It has been 8 weeks since his surgery, and this was his second follow-up appointment. He got another good report from the surgeon. He is recovering nicely and should not have any trouble with that knee if all continues to go well. He does have some arthritis in his knees though, which is going to just get worse as he keeps getting older (he's 2 1/2 months shy of his 10th birthday). But the surgeon was very pleased with his progress so far, which is good news to us. He is still on a "light duty profile" for another month or two, which means he's still not supposed to be doing any running. That's the hard part! Now that he's feeling better, that's what he wants to do. So we really have to be diligent about keeping his activity to a minimum until he is fully recovered.
The other big news today is that this was Morgan's second full day in panties, and there were NO accidents!! She is doing wonderfully. I know now that she has known what to do for awhile, but has been waiting for us to quit being lazy and make the break away from the pull-ups. What a milestone!! Now if we can get her to stay dry through the night...but that requires breaking a different habit first. She still wants her sippy cup of milk at bedtime. But for now, we're thrilled with her progress.
Monday, June 2nd
Well this month has started off with a bang. Melanie really banged up her lip on the side of the pool yesterday. She probably could have used a couple of stitches, but since it was inside her mouth and we got the bleeding to stop, we opted to skip the hours-long visit to the ER. She's tolerating it well, and not complaining, but it looks pretty awful. Also yesterday, Morgan and I collided heads while goofing around on the couch. I have a magnificent black eye to show for it. Morgan seemed unharmed. Today I took the girls to McDonald's for lunch and got tons of stares...but not one person asked me how I got that way. I guess everyone assumed I am a battered wife and chose to stay out of it. There was one big burly man there who stared at my eye with a cross look on his face. I was pretty sure that if Chris had been there with me, the man would have tried to start something with him. For his safety, Chris and I probably should not be seen together in public places until my eye heals :-).
The girls will start swim lessons on the 16th of this month. I'm really looking forward to that. Melanie is such a good swimmer, she just doesn't know it yet. I'm hoping that since she won't have her water wings on during the 8 lessons, she will have an opportunity to discover that she doesn't really need them anymore. Morgan is really good for her age also. She too is very dependent on the water wings though. But the other day I got her to take them off once, and she went under, kicked around for a second or two, then stood up. She didn't want to do it again, and I didn't push it, but it was good to see that she was able to figure out what to do in that situation. She takes a little longer to get her feet wet (literally). But once she gets into the water, she is every bit the little fish that Melanie is!
Today Morgan went all day without a pull-up/diaper. She did great and the only accident was tonight at bath time, as we were waiting for the tub to fill. I guess when she starts getting tired, she either forgets or just doesn't feel like making the effort anymore. Either way, today was huge progress.