I really haven't been writing so much, eh?

I am becoming a little too conscious of who is reading this blog and maybe thinking a little too much about who I'm writing for, when I really do better to just spew thoughts out her without so much premeditation.

A public blog can innocently begin as a place to air one's thoughts and find some new friends who share them. But it doesn't remain so...

Ah well. Things are fine and there's not a whole lot to report. I've just begun 2 weeks of vacation, which would normally seem like quite an indulgence, but our babysitter takes 2 weeks off and pleasantly "forces" me to do the same.

We will take our vacation to a northern lake during the second week. This week I will be playing stay-at-home-mom with my boys and am quite looking forward to it. I'm developing a short list of ideas of things to do, but I'm sure we'll have no problem filling the days with bike rides and trips to the pool. At the parade yesterday I was handed a flyer about the local movie theater's children's movie series, as well as a flyer about an evening Vacation Bible School program that the kids seemed excited about. Maybe we will get back to church.

Things have settled down after our flurry of graduation and back-to-back wedding trips. Things are quite easy, actually. I don't have to pack a lunch this summer or write in a notebook. We don't have to do homework. Our only activities are Tommy's t-ball (so painful to watch 3 and 4 year olds "play" t-ball. Thomas really does great, but some of the kids... whew) and Henry's baseball (which was rained out last weekend and no game this weekend because of the holiday.)

I dropped the ball on horseback-riding this summer- just put a call in to Ms. Pam like a week ago, and I'm sure she's way too busy to get back to me. Maybe in the fall we can start up again.

A few notes about Henry:

-He has been taking private swimming lessons at Easter Seals for years, and has made good progress. This summer I signed both boys up for group swimming lessons at the pool. Their babysitter, L, took them, and she has no first-hand knowledge of Henry's swimming ability.

So the first day of class, his teacher has them all get in the water and tells them to float. Henry says "I can't float."

Now, if he said that to me, his dad, or his private swim instructor, we would all reply "yes you can- get in the water and do it." But no one else is going to respond to him that way, and I wouldn't want them to! His first reaction is always the little sweet helpless thing, and unless you blast that away, he's just going to go with it.

So they put him in the same class as Thomas and a bunch of other kids half Henry's age. It was fine- I decided Henry was learning different skills- like how to participate in the class and follow instructions with a group. He enjoyed himself and had no shame, or even awareness, that he was with a bunch of littler kids. I'm sure he just enjoyed it because it was easy!

But a hard question raised for me: no matter what my child knows, if he refuses to share it, or show it off, what good does it do him? In this case, I can hope that if (God forbid) he were in an emergency situation in the water, the skills he knows would kick in and help him survive. How can I know this for sure?! Throw him off the boat on vacation and see what happens??!!

-We're thinking about getting a Wii for his birthday. I've always been kind of down on video games. But last weekend we visited some friends for the evening; their kids are just a bit older than ours. For most of the evening Henry did his usual thing: watched their DVDs inside the house while the rest of us were outside.

I don't like this dynamic, but feel that it's Henry's best way of coping with a new situation and making it fit his comfort zone, so it's what we do. After one movie was over, we all wanted to try out their Wii- partly because we thought it would engage Henry- he has seen it played at L's house.

Henry loved it! He would have loved just watching, but we forced him to play too and he did pretty well.

We have a little less than 2 months 'til his birthday, so I'd better figure out how to get one of these things.

I hope everyone is having a nice holiday weekend. The 4th of July is always the *%&#*^ longest day of the year for me. As soon as the parade is over at 10:45 am Henry starts asking if it's time for the fireworks. Just 11 more hours buddy!