I asked him to feed the cat

 Yet I didn't quite expect him to feed her with a spoon.

Family Fun Night

   Our chuch has family fun nights each Wednesday this summer.  We generally haven't been able to go because of swin lessons.  Since Anthony got ear tubes in Wednesday morning, we skipped swim lessons and decided to go to family fun night instead.

  This week's theme was water play.  Anthony was generally content to watch the fun, but he did take a few turns down the water slide.  After water play we had picnic dinner with some friends and then they had singing time.  The songs they sang were all songs from Bible School (I even knew some) and he had a GREAT time singing!

A favorite park

 A few weeks ago we caught up with Anthony's friend C at one of my favorite parks.  MaryMeade park has an incredibly cool water feature--a waterfall!  The water comes down the waterfall every 30 minutes, creating a pool in the sand play area.  The water slowly drains away to be filtered.  Just as the sand is drying out, the waterfall starts again.

Summer of Swimming

 As Anthony finished his twentieth swim lesson of the summer, I was starting to despair that he hadn't really made any progress towards swimming competency.  Turns out I was wrong.

  It was ridiculously hot this weekend, so on Saturday we headed off to the pool.  Anthony demonstrated that he could easily open his eyes under water as we played "guess how many fingers."  He got the right number each time.  Then he amused himself by trying to retrieve the camera from the bottom of the pool.  (Waterproof case, no fears.)  It would take him a couple tries, but he did it six or eight times.

  Today was still ridiculously hot, so we went back to the pool.  Anthony FINALLY figured out how to make the swimming thing work.  The key was getting him to keep his head down.  He could swim a foot or two, but then we got him to take a breath, put his head down and keep going.  His stroke is far from pretty or efficient, but he was able to swim about nine feet and take 2 or 3 breaths before he ran out of steam.  I really hope he takes off from there.

  There were some big kids at the pool showing off hand-stands. Anthony tried awfully hard, but couldn't quite get both hands down on the pool bottom at the same time.

Dance Recital

 I signed Anthony up for a one week mini-ballet camp.  Anthony has been BEGGING for ballet class for years.  After we go to the Los Altos farmer's market we stop by and watch the teenagers in their ballet class.  He loves watching them and would ask plaintively, "But when is the boy ballet class?"  There is a small studio near daycare that Kathleen will happily deliver to, so I figured we'd give it a try.

  Before ANYONE comments that "Ballet is for girls", just remember that someone has to play the prince and twirl the girl around in the air.

  At the end of his little ballet camp the kids put on a performance for the parents.  I couldn't go, too long of a drive from work.  I texted Bob for an update about how the performance was.  His response, "kids singing 'Its a Small World' loudly."

A nice day for a bike ride

Today we joined the Donahues for a bike ride along Stevens Creek Trail.  A new segment opened over the highway and we decided it needed a thorough inspection.  We rode over the highway to where the trail ended, then backtracked for a lovely ride down the trail to a city park.  After a short playtime we headed back home for popsicles.  Its hard to get an exact measure from Google maps, but I think we rode about 9 miles.  He didn't have to pedal all the way, but he did make a pretty good go at it.

Anthony LOVES our new-to-us trail-a-bike.  He tends to misbehave a bit, swinging one leg over the bar, shaking the bike, hands-free riding.  I hope we don't end up learning a lesson the hard way.

Jumped off the high dive!

Yes, he jumped off the high dive all by himself!

Today was "play day", the last day of this session's swimming lessons.  Yesterday Teacher Ryan asked who wanted to jump off the diving board and Anthony's arm SHOT in the air.  I was more than a little taken aback when I saw him in line for the high dive, but Ryan said it was what he wanted.

After his jump off the high dive, Anthony got straight in line for the regular diving board.  He did great on that one, too.

When talking about it afterwards, he mentioned that he sank when he jumped off the high dive.  I think it surprised him, but he wasn't scared or anything.

(You can see me in the edge of the video cheering.  I'm still so proud.)

He has almost (but not quite) passed Preschool, Level 2.  That's fine, I've got him signed up for four more weeks (two sessions) of level 2.

4th of July Fireworks

Twice makes a tradition...

We had a lovely Fourth of July Fireworks celebration.  We joined forces with our next door neighbors and biked down the Stevens Creek Trail to Shoreline Amphitheater to see the San Francisco Symphony's annual concert, followed by fireworks.  Anthony rode in the trailer behind our tandem and the neighbor girl rode on our trail-a-bike behind her father.  We were quite the procession, too bad neither Bob nor I followed through on our thoughts to have parade music on the iPod+speakers.
 
Anthony made a valient attempt for an afternoon nap, but failed.  We decided to just go and keep our fingers crossed that keeping him up three hours past his bedtime wouldn't be a total disaster.  He got pretty wild and difficult around bedtime, but we bought him cotton candy as the concert started and he settled down.  He basically relaxed on our laps, and somehow stayed awake.

He enjoyed the fireworks a lot.  He might have more if he hadn't been so tired, but I'm glad he got to see and enjoy them.  He asked me at one point if they were magic.