Swimming Lessons Round Two!

Last week Emry and Calum both had swimming lessons.  Emry redid her level 4 and Calum did his first level of preschool, Starfish!  They both did very well and they both passed!  Emry was all alone in her class which I think really helped her stay focused, her dives really improved from her first round this summer, as did her front crawl, back crawl, glides and bobs!  She was able to bob under the water and touch the bottom of the deep end by blowing out all her air!  She was so proud of herself and so was I!

In Calum's class it was him, Liam and Bowen!  They too had a blast and by Wednesday Bowen was going under the water without anyone forcing him too!  I didn't get in to see Ashton's lessons but he did very well too and also passed!  Despite the chaos of the week they all did very well with their lessons.  I love our little pool and since it has been redone it is 100 times better!

For some reason Calum had to wear a pair of Emry's sunglasses and would not take them off during his lesson!

Bowen with his head under the water!

Calum would swim through this hoop under the water all by himself, there was always a lifeguard on the other side to get him!

Calum jumped off the lifeguard chair, at one point it was the only thing to make him stop whining!

He ended up doing a belly flop and didn't want to do it again!

Poor little Liam was only able to swim Monday and Tuesday, by Wednesday his eye was so swollen, red and goopy!  Luckily I had a doctor's appointment Wednesday afternoon so I took him with me to see what the problem might be with his eye!  The verdict....PINK EYE!  I also had it, so together we were given drops and ointment!  Poor little guy, it was like we were torturing him when we put the ointment in his eye!  We had quite the system though and by the time he went home on Saturday it wasn't nearly as traumatic!  One of us would kneel overtop of him and hold his arms down and pull down the bottom part of his eye lid, while the other one would hold his head between our knees and hold open his upper eye lid, and squeeze the ointment on the inside of his bottom lid!  Thankfully I had the eye drops and it was so much easier, I could even do it myself!  As a precaution I also picked up a bottle of Polysporin Eye drops, they are used to prevent the spread of the bacteria from pink eye, so Wednesday night Lalainia and I lined up all the other five kids and put two drops in each of their eyes!  It was also quite the ordeal, Ashton did great, Emry not too bad, Calum wasn't pleased, Armin didn't know any differently, and Bowen freaked out!  But the result, no one else got pink eye so what we did must have worked!  It was funny when I was at the doctor with Liam I asked if swimming lessons were out, of course I knew the answer but I thought I had better check, Dr. Wade said he cannot be around any kids, oops!  That was merely impossible since his parents were in Calgary at the Children's Hospital with a very sick little Jonas!  We knew it wouldn't be that big of a deal if all the kids did get it, pink eye isn't a life threatening disease!  Happy to say we made it through the week all of us in one piece!

Emry and Bowen played lego all week, together they built some pretty neat things!

Thursday night the kids had a movie night in Grandma's sitting room, they watched "Horton Hears a Who" and had popcorn, all except Emry and Ashton, neither of them like popcorn so Emry had plain chips and Ashton had a chocolate covered granola bar!  Friday afternoon Lalainia and I took 4 of the 6 kids into the pool, they had a great time, and Bowen was a mad man diving under the water looking for diving sticks!  Ashton, Emry and Calum spent most of the time jumping off the diving board!

Friday night everyone except Jason was home and we had a BBQ.  Jonas was discharged from the hospital so Jared and Rachel came to the farm too!  It was so good to see little Jonas looking so much better, he was laying on the floor wide awake kicking his legs and flapping his arms up and down, a huge improvement from the Saturday before.  It truly was a good week, I know at times I would get frustrated with the noise level but the kids were really all very good, just typical kids without a volume control!  I enjoyed helping as best I could and I am so happy all has turned out well!  We have noticed a pattern within the Puzey family whenever we all try to get together through the summer, someone seems to get sick, and not just a little sick, hospital worthy sick!  When the entire family went to Radium a few years ago Emry got really sick.  We took her to Vulcan and an X-ray showed some kind of air bubbles throughout her tummy, so they sent us up to the Children's hospital.  It started with her throwing up as soon as anything touched her tummy.  In Calgary they didn't see anything serious with her tummy but she was extremely dehydrated so they gave her four bags of intravenous fluids and let us go home.  We decided to still go out to Radium and just kept her full of liquid, by the end of the week she was a lot better but at least five pounds lighter.  Next summer we hope things are different and we will again try to do swimming lessons with all the kids, because it was a lot of fun and the kids really seemed to enjoy spending a whole week with each other!  I loved being able to spend the week with Lalainia, I really do admire her and just being around her so much was a ton of fun, next year I look forward to spending it with Rachel too!

Ashton made some of the kids into robots by taping a lego antennae to their shoulder and then using his remote control, also made from lego, he would command them to do something, and they had to repeat back the command in a robot voice!  Dave wondered why with all a robot can do they still talk with a mono tone voice without any inflection to it!  It  really is something to wonder about!

Despite the stress and chaos, I was able to lose 1 pound!  I am pretty shocked, I actually didn't get any exercising in, but maybe keeping track of 6 kids under the age of seven is exercise in itself!  I vow to do better this week, but I am happy with the progress so far, at least it is moving in the right direction!