My Amazing Water Baby

Fridays are my days with Shayna and away from the books so we met up with our usual swimming buddies at the new Christiansburg Aquatic Center.  It wasn't as quiet as we'd hoped as there were 3 buses worth of 4th & 5th graders.  Luckily, Shayna loves to watch other kids play as well as has great confidence in herself so will walk right up to them in the water to see what they're doing.  Her favorite was the kids laying under the bucks (see pic left) waiting for them to fill and dump water on them.  She thought that was hysterical.  Shayna also likes to go between the fun, regular pool and the warm therapy pool.  While were not really allowed to go in there, one of our friends is connected enough that the manager gave the lifeguard the okay for us (poor Shayna's lips were turning blue too).  The pic below shows the nice, gradual ramp the kids like to play on so we spent a lot of time walking up and down (or "in" and "out" as Shayna says).  Now this is the amazing part: She's gotten the concept of "under" (the ball rolled under the bed, the duck is under the water) so today she showed me she could do it to herself.  She would squat or lean forward usually just covering her mouth and/or nose but sometimes her whole face with water and hold her breath for at least 2 seconds at a time!  I've tried to teach her to blow bubbles, which she can more of less do, but holding her breath I didn't think she'd understand until much later.

I guess she just picked it up on her own.  This kid blows my mind every day.  The stronger she gets (and we're about to graduate from physical therapy), the more she experiments with her body and all objects and structures around her.  The more she talks, the more confident she is in herself.  She also must have this unflinching trust that we'll always be there to lend a hand or help when needed because she'll just wonder off on her own.  I guess that could be scary for some folks, but we keep an eye on her and take it all in with pleasure and pride.

Life continues to be good.  SJ's getting bigger and stronger and both Nahum and Shayna are noticing it.  Nahum and I got to feel him kick with our hands for the first time Tuesday night and Shayna seems to notice that my belly is getting bigger.  She also asks to see the baby since I say he's getting bigger.  I'm starting her on the word "huge" so I can keep saying "bigger" then add that he has to get "huge" before he can come out to see her.  Shayna also recognizes the letter A and 2 Hebrew letters.  She seems to understand the concept of 1 and 2 and has been working on 3 in the last couple days.  All I do is talk to her about what we do and she just picks things up or she'll ask about pictures (she's got a place mat with letters and pictures).  Shapes and colors seem to be coming along too.