Who's the Boss?

Ian began swim lessons last night with the City of Mesa program at the local junior high pool. His class is in the toddler pool and there are only a handful of kids in the class. It is run by what look like three high school students. Tom took him last night and he seemed to have a lot of fun.

I took Ian this evening while Tom took Connor for his swim lesson (I'll have to get pictures of that later this week). Turns out Ian is quite bossy when it comes to swim class. Which is interesting since he came straight from karate, where there is no room for him to be bossy at all. So, he was trying to tell the instructors which games to play and at one point, said "I just don't want to play this game anymore." The high school boys didn't really know how to deal with him, so they either catered to him or ignored him. I ended up going over three times to talk to him about who was in charge of the activities.
Ian loved the treasure hunt game and the talking underwater game. He led the discussion on what should be said under way, barely giving the other quieter boys a turn. Ian is normally pretty shy, so it was interesting to see him be as bold as he was, bordering on impolite. He insisted that all of the animal games be alligator games. The instructors allowed him to choose alligator a few times and then gave up and allowed them all to just pick what they wanted to be.

Instructor: "Let's be snakes!"

Ian: "No, no. Let's be alligators!"

Instructor: "We were just alligators twice. How about a new animal?"

Ian: "How about alligators?"

Instructor: "Let's be snakes. What do snakes say?"

Ian: "I'm an alligator. What do alligators say?" You see?

Needless to say, being the neurotic parents that we are, we discussed who's in charge several times and role-played a few alternative things to say when we want a turn or want to try a game. We'll see what happens tomorrow night and Thursday.

Anyway, not to be completely negative....Ian did put his face in the water and was very content until the water splashed in his eyes. Then he would scream and cry, but he does that in the shower too. Other than that, he seemed to be ease in the water, even floated with the instructor on his back. Aunt Terri....I think you need to be ready for swim lessons when we visit! We have already talked up the swimming lessons with Aunt Terri!

In other news, for my new purchase, I got a new bicycle the other day. We have two mountain bikes that I didn't really enjoy riding because they were not comfortable. I chose a Ridgeback comfort bike WITH GEARS. Apparently, Tom has been spreading lies that I chose an extra girly pink bike with no gears and a pink basket. I'd like to dispel the gears and basket rumors, but it probably is girly in some ways, starting with the bell.

We have been riding around the school yard each evening and also riding Ian to preschool each morning. I rode a few miles on my own yesterday morning and this morning, Tom, Connor and I biked down to the nursery, which is about two miles away. While there, we chose some lovely landscaping trees and plants for our backyard and biked back home.

Here is a cute little picture of Connor. He held up well on the 102 temp bike ride this morning and no sunburn as we applied an entire bottle of sunscreen to his delicate Irish skin. I think the protective layer of crust on his upper lip also helped.


Back to the landscaping....I will take a photo of our backyard before and after shots on Friday. We have a really good-sized backyard for Arizona and over the last few weeks, have weeded by hand the entire yard, reseeded and fertilized, edged and hopefully in the next day or so, weed-wack. We decided to have a drip system installed in the desert rock and they will also install two trees, 4 plants and 3 shrubs for us as a start. We will see how that goes and maybe add more in the fall when we have money and the weather is cooler. Those who have seen our backyard know that it could really use some dressing up. So, Friday is the big day and I'll be sure to document our new look.