A Little More About Elijah

Yesterday after nap time, I took the kids to the local pool for some fun, something I really need to do more of.  Elijah took to bossing me around like Shayna does her sitters at which point I realized he was using two-word sentences, just a day after I said he was still having trouble with that.  They consisted of my title and a command.

"Mama, hep" (help): which meant he wanted me to swim him around a bit.  He puts his chest in my hands and holds onto my forearms.

"Mama, back": when he wanted to be taken back to the ramp where he could run and splash in the water on his own.

"Mama, bo": when he wants me to swim up to the ramp next to him.  ("Bo" means "come" in Hebrew when one is speaking to a male. As this is what he hears a lot, this is what he repeats.)

It's like his language skills exploded in the last couple days and he's so excited to use them.

In addition to bossing me around, they both enjoyed jumping off the side into the pool to me.  Shayna is back to walking down the ramp to neck-deep level but instead of going back up she walks to the side to climb out.  She fell under once during a stroll but righted herself within a second, just as I got to her.  I helped her balance, told her how amazing she did, and, while startled, she didn't cry, recovered in a couple seconds, and continued playing with more enthusiasm.  I think those little easily corrected spills add to her confidence.

A month ago, we took Nahum to that pool for the first time.  These are some of the pictures from that trip.  Yesterday, we had Shayna's water-wings but she didn't put them on until the end so she was unassisted for most of the time, which is how I prefer her to be. Elijah will throw a fit if one comes near him with a floating device, thankfully as I think they should learn to handle the water without such assistance.

Elijah will also throw a fit if one comes near him with underwear to put on, not-so-thankfully.  Here he is hiding under the table from his pumpkin underwear while yelling, "nooo, nooo, nooo, nooo...."