The Bright Spot.: Memorial Weekend 2008

Summer is here! I feel a little behind on my blogging, but the long weekends always mess up my sense of what day it is. So here it is Thursday and I'm just now getting around to blogging. Feels like Wednesday. We had a really fun weekend this past weekend just relaxing. I looked at my calendar and the last totally free weekend that Lee and I had was March 29. We almost went to the lake this weekend, but then we thought about how nice it would be not to have to pack everything up... so we stayed here. As an added bonus, Ellie slept until 7:45 on Sunday morning. 7:45!

Our community pool opened this weekend so we went there once on Saturday afternoon and once on Monday. I'm so glad that we started Ellie in swimming lessons early because she had a lot of fun splashing around with all of the other kids. I think we're going to be at the kiddie pool at least until next year because children have to be potty trained to go in the bigger pool. It's nice to be at the kiddie pool because you get to meet a lot of other moms. I got a little floaty to pull Ellie around in and she really liked that because she got to float around in the "deep end" of the kid pool, which is only two feet deep. The great thing about the pool is that it wears her out. She willingly took three naps on Saturday.

On Sunday, we went to my parents house for a cookout. We spent some of the afternoon outside letting Ellie play in the baby pool my parents had set up, but she liked going down the little slide and swinging on the swing set they have set up in the backyard more. My dad grilled out hamburgers, which Ellie didn't like very much. I think it's because they had that grill taste. She likes chasing my parents dog all around, but lucky for Abbey, she can still run faster than Ellie.

Ellie has had some big changes this week. We got her a new car seat so she's been having a lot of fun sitting up higher and looking all around. She is also switching classrooms this week into a toddler room. In order to advance, a child has to 1) be wearing shoes all day, 2) drink only from a sippy cup, 3) be walking, and 4) be at least a year old. I wish that's all I had to do to advance. She's been doing the first three things since she was 11 months so we just had to wait for her to turn a year. Poor kiddo. Her friends Tanner and Jackson are moving to another room and Simon's mom is going to stay home with him, so Grayson is the only little boy she'll know in her new class. Ellie is really friendly, but I remember how it is to go someplace new and not have any friends. It's a little scary... and it happens your whole life! We also completely did away with her bottles when she turned one. She was only taking one feeding from them in the morning, so I don't think she even noticed when we took them away. But she still has the paci... what to do about that. The doctor told us she has to loose it by 18 months. She uses it mainly at night and during naps now, but it's going to be hard to get her to give it up at bedtime.

After a year, I am finally getting back into the swing of working out. I kept on thinking that somehow it would work out that I would be able to workout after work, but I feel too guilty about leaving Ellie in another daycare situation while I'm off having a great time at a step class. So that only left me with the option of working out on the weekends and the dreaded mornings. I had been going just on weekends - well, mostly just on Saturdays - but one Saturday morning workout a week isn't cutting it. So this week, I started morning workouts. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Getting up an hour before the crack of dawn is not my idea of fun, but it's my only option. I made the unfortunate mistake of telling my midlife crisis spin instructor my name this morning so he yelled at me for the full hour. "Let's go, Tiffany!", "Tiffany - How are you doing?!!", and "Tiffany, we've been climbing for a 20 minutes! You know what that means?!!". Yes, Rick. It means I'm about to throw my water bottle at you. I don't know if his name was actually Rick, but he looked like a Rick. Not going back to his class.