Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Sunday, August 1, 2010

All Wet

What a wonderful weekend for getting into the water!

On Saturday evening we took the whole family to the public pool. It's lovely to be able to go one-on-one with the girls as they get more adventuresome. Rose has been taking swimming lessons during summer day-camp, and can now tread water a little bit and do a splashy crawl for a few yards. She's also stretching out taller and taller, to the point where she can stand up easily in the water at the base of the lovely long waterslides. I've been trying to persuade her to go down the waterslide for the past couple of years -- but they won't let you wear your goggles, and they won't let you go down tandem, and these have always been her excuse. Finally on Saturday I convinced her to go down one slide while I went down the other. Guess what she did over and over again, all on her own, for the rest of the evening, and was terribly disappointed to quit when it was time to go?!

Joy, meanwhile, was making new discoveries too. She was experimenting with going underwater (all in the 2-3 foot zone of the pool, not to worry!) She was teaching herself to hold her breath, either popping right back up or submarining forward underwater for a bit. No coughing and choking at all. It was wonderful to see.

Since Rose was so busy with the waterslide, I didn't get any two-girls-jumping-in photos like we did last year. Joy didn't mind the lack of company, though. She jumped quite happily on her own. And the new twist this time was that she didn't always really need someone to catch her! She needed someone to jump towards, but there were several jumps where she went in and under and then stood up all on her own, without JoyDad having to touch her at all.

Joy Jumps
On Sunday we stayed in the back yard for our pool play, with a new larger inflatable pool and a big blue bucket. Joy loves the bucket in particular. This move I call "the ostrich":

Joy Ostrich
She was probably drinking the water. Oh did she drink the water, both at the public pool and at home. I don't know how she could hold that much -- her subsequent diapers certainly couldn't....

Rose invented a new game to distract her sister from consuming the water (perhaps we could call it a non-drinking game?) This one involved big buckets of dump and splash! I hasten to add that Joy doesn't mind being deluged. It makes hairwashing in the tub much easier than it otherwise would be.

Rose Splashes Joy
At least Rose has a sense of fair play and equal opportunity deluge:

Rose Splashes Herself
I can't believe that it's August already.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Joy's All-Natural, Super-Power, No-Fail Laxative

OK, since we've been talking toilet-training...

I don't think I've blogged about it, but one issue that we've had on and off with Joy has been a problem with constipation. You wouldn't expect it with her, because she eats a lot of fruits and vegetables, but there it was. We had her on a low dose of Miralax for something like a year, which helped. And then at some point earlier this year, the situation had gone TOO far in the opposite direction, and Joy was objecting strenuously to the ensuing messy clean-ups, and so we stopped the Miralax.

Things have gradually crept toward constipation again, skipping days and such, if you know what I mean.

But since spring brought warmer weather, we have discovered the absolute fool-proof, totally natural, works-every-time way to induce the desired effect.

Go out and play in the water.

I'm serious. Every single time Joy goes out to splash in puddles in the street, or cavort in the inflatable pool, or run through the sprinkler, or even (as this morning) dance in the rain on the deck -- shstuff happens.

With the backyard play, I've gotten so that I just take the diaper bag out with me and change her right there in the (nice private fenced) yard. Because of course the water play is so much fun, Joy totally hates to have it interrupted to go inside and change.

It's almost too bad that this super constipation-problem-solver is so extremely natural. Something that works this well could make millions if it were an ingestible substance or a purchase-able device...

As it is, we'll just continue to use it strategically and count our blessings.