KD Photography

Ella and Max started swimming lessons 3 weeks ago.  Which at first I was all about.  But then when it got nailed down, I was SO skeptical about all of it.  For a list of reasons…

1. Ella was pretty much terrified of water and really only ever wanted to just dip her toes in a call it a day.  Max has a lot less fear in general but the last time he had been near a pool (or any body of water bigger than a bath tub) was last summer, almost a whole year ago, and he was only 1 then so he really didn’t know or remember, so there was no way to know how he really felt about water.

2. The place was really quite far away and pretty expensive. Both of which were mostly just annoying, but add those to the fact that each kid only spent 10 minutes in the water per lesson, so I would be spending more time in the car to drive there than they would even be getting lessons in the water seemed kinnnnnd of crazy to me.

3. It’s technically a “survival” swim class. So it’s not really teaching them “strokes” or anything like that. It’s seemed like it would be pretty much just helping them learn how to save themselves by floating or getting to the edge of a pool if they ever fell into one.  I was really skeptical about what kind of things they would really teach the kids and if it would really help at all.

4. I have spent every summer with them going to the pool lots of times and made very little progress (especially with Ella) at getting them to love the water and want to be in it and “swim” or even get their heads wet.  And I would say I think they tend to listen to me pretty well so I was a little bit cocky and thought … “really if they won’t do things in the water for me, will they do it for a random swim teacher for 10 minutes in the water??”

As you can see I REALLY had some serious doubts about this whole thing. And then on the first day of lessons the place was SO hard to find and we were almost so late.  Add that to the fact that it just worked out that our lessons had to happen right during the kids normal lunch hours … and I was expecting the worst. I was prepared to be annoyed 2 days a week for 8 weeks.

Let me tell you right now: I was 100% wrong. These lessons are amazing and fantastic and worth the half hour drive and every penny.  Three weeks in and these kids are NEW KIDS around the water. They LOVE lessons and they love their teacher, Mr. Will, and they are learning to love the water.  Ella now not only CAN put her whole head underwater, she WANTS to and shows off how she can all the time.  Both kids are already able to swim about a 5 foot distance on their own. Both kids can dive down under the water and get a ring on the bottom (of the shallow end, so like 3ft down) and bring it back up.

It is seriously AMAZING. I don’t even know if I am describing the difference in them well enough, but I hope I am because it’s an amazing transformation! The first few lessons they cried a ton and freaked out a lot and weren’t very cooperative and hated getting water on their faces/heads/hair/ears.  Now they can barely wait their turn to get in the water and hate to get out.  Their teacher is so good at his job and he somehow gets them to do exactly what he says and has made them water lovers in 6 short 10 minute sessions. Literally it’s been a total of an hour in the water for each kid and they’ve become little fishes!  The cutest little fishes:

This might look like he’s afraid but he actually was just being goofy and pretending the water was hot lava.

Happy Friday! ::KD::

I’ve written here about my friend Jacqueline who is a nanny for friends of Ella and Max’s family. We try to get together once a week with the kids because they love to play together (well. that’s not entirely true. but mostly they enjoy each other!) and we like to get together.  It’s seriously so nice to have an adult around so that my entire days worth of conversations are not all:

Ella: “Katie I have to go to Australia today. For business. For work.”
Me: “Well great, have fun! … Hey, do you even know where Australia is?”
Ella: “Nope. But it’s just pretend Australia. By the front door. So I don’t need directions.”

So anyway we were talking about how we should do an art project with the kids this week and since it’s almost mother’s day we decided to search Pinterest for some fun preschool art projects for mother’s day ideas!  Turns out we both found the same little idea that we liked and we combined our collective grafting goods to come up with the CUTEST mother’s day art project EVERRRRR.

Side note before I continue: can we discuss Ella’s painting of her name?!?!?! Pahahahahah holy crap I laugh every time I look at it. It’s abstract for sure. But The E, the two l’s and the A are all there! And she did all by her little self!  She cracks me up.

Okay back to the project overall. While they turned out seriously to. die. for. cute … it was complete and total chaos. Herding cats. Such a mess (sorry Alex! I think we cleaned it all up! :)) and so freaking hilarious to Jaq and I.  We laughed so hard almost the entire time and the absurdity of trying to get 4 kids under 3-years-old to do this. Painting all 8 little hands and all 8 little feet and rushing back and forth to the sink to wash each little hand or each little foot before moving on to the next. Because trust me, you DO NOT just paint both hands on a kid and hope that you get both hand prints nicely on the paper before they’ve covered the rest of their body and a 3 foot radius around them in paint. As soon as you’ve painted a kids hand they have an itch. or they have to sneeze. or they JUST HAVE TO TOUCH EVERY POSSIBLE SURFACE AROUND THEM.

So we were a hot mess of paint and hands and feet and naked kids (again with kids and paint – the less clothing on them, the less scrubbing of laundry you have to do later.) and running to the sink and scrubbing paint off and it was just crazy.  Luckily they all were as great as infants and toddlers and preschoolers can possibly be during an art project!  No one really freaked out about being painted (not even baby B, who’s picture is soooo tiny and precious and cute and perfect) and they all were as patient as their little selves could possibly be. And so while it was total chaos, it was also so fun and funny and they turned out so great it was worth all the effort Jaq and I had to put in! :)

Anyway that was just one little day in the last two weeks of fun so here are some pictures of all the other things we’ve been up to!  … Like here’s what I like to call “teaching a cooking class to the most disinterested class EVER”  (mostly unrelated to nannyland, but related to this photo: I have had a major life change in the last few weeks… turns out, I LOVE SWEET POTATOES! not even just love. Like looooove. I sing their praises to anyone who will listen. Most people won’t, but whatev. I love them. Max and Ella are unimpressed.)

Okay hair cuts for Max… He has had more bad haircuts in his 2 years of life than I have had in my 25 years. His hair is just SO hard to cut right. That is until we found the miracle worker that is Chase. He is a Max-hair-cutter genius and we love him. And ummm also how cute is Max getting a hair cut?!?! The cutest. ever. in the world.

Hugging nuggets. They love to hug. It’s presh.

Ella had some work to do at the office:

And they were really good helpers when we got a big watermelon and it was rolling around in the back seat. They would throw their arms out and “save” the watermelon when I would have to stop the car and it would roll forward. They thought it was hilarious.

This kid loooooves her some pancakes.

These were her two outfits the other day. The one on the left for gymnastics class and the one on the right after is her new skirt. She’s obsessed with twirling in it and I’m obsessed with how cute she looks in it!

The kids started swimming lessons two days a week and it seriously wears them out HARD. The other day Max fell asleep on the way home, slept through me taking him inside and taking off his shoes, slept through reading a book with Ella before nap, and slept while being changed. Just slept straight on through till the end of nap time!

Checkin’ out his hawk! LOVE this kid.

Max’s version of doing a puzzle:

annnnnd Ella’s version:

I recently took advantage of Ella being up for letting me actually do her hair and I first did this side braid which we call the JC braid:

And then the upside down braid and bun. She got SO many compliments on them!!! Which she of course loves.

When you’re two and you’re a little bit OCD this is how you play with your cars:

Love him.

Okay this is top 5 favorite pictures of them ever. Ever. And If I loved these two fools anymore I would just explode. Also. How cute are they in footie pjs and boots?!?

Here are the other photos in that series:

Happy Friday!!! ::KD::