Swim rave about Ben!

Since school let out I've had Ben enrolled in swim lessons. He's in the preschool programme through our town (the children's programme starts at age six) and has taken the same level lessons three times (he's in his third round now). He's been a bit nervous about floating on his own (front and back) and using floatation devices on his own to glide forward and backward.

In the previous lessons he got a handle on using floatation devices, but he was still nervous about floating on his own. However, he'd completely nailed the front float (for min. 3s) during his lessons, and on the weekend we had him at the pool ourselves where he figured out the back float. It was so awesome to see how proud he was of his accomplishment. I was SO excited for him. And his instructor today was so pleased for him, too.

So now Ben gets to level up and will start his new lessons in August. Yay Ben!!!

Caitlin's vocabulary and other stuff.

Jeez, it seems like as soon as she mastered walking my baby girl just grew right up! She has lots of words and phrases already, and is quick to pick up new words (like Cleo's name when we were visiting Granny and Granddad recently).

Her favourite word is 'outside' - she absolutely loves to be out in the backyard and can entertain herself for hours it seems.

She's been doing a few signs and uses the 'more' sign a lot and combines it with words, like she'll sign 'more' and say 'bubbles' after we've blown bubbles.

I don't think I could possibly compile a comprehensive list of all her words at this point, but here are some of her words that come to mind:

• apple (ah-pah)
• Ben (Bah)
• Mama and Dada
• bubble (buh-buh)
• no (she likes this word, too!)
• hello and hi
• bye-bye
• Pablo (from The Backyardigans)
• Cleo (Granny and Granddad's pug)
• meow
• ball
• star

No more nighttime pull-ups for Ben!

Ben has started staying dry through the night, or he wakes when he needs to go pee. Yay! No more pull-ups at night for my big boy.