Swimming and Spreading Awareness

So yesterday afternoon I decided to stop at the grocery store with Elizabeth (4 years old) since we were a little early for her physical therapy. Elizabeth can really be hit or miss when it comes to going into stores, typically she is really good although typically I get a cart and put her in it. This time I decided not to get a cart since really I only wanted to buy us something to drink and a snack.

So we walk through the doors of the store and the first thing we see are a bunch of balloons. Elizabeth really loves balloons and wanted to play with them. I let her for a few minutes but then told her it was time to move on. Well you would have thought I was trying to kill her because she just began to do this whiny scream thing THE ENTIRE TIME! I just love walking through the grocery store getting those evil eyes from all of the old people. I could have taken her out to the car and not bought our drinks but I thought that I should probably just stick it out because if I leave every time we have an issue I would never be able to go anywhere. We eventually found what we were looking for and went to check out, Elizabeth had almost completely stopped yelling by that point. I guess we spread our awareness for the week!

That evening after therapy we decided to go swimming at my parents house. Elizabeth loved it! The only issue I am finding is that I cannot really decide on what flotation device to use with her. We tried the water wings (floaties? not sure what they are called) and a few other things. I ended up using one of those puddle jumper things (name??) on her and it worked alright. Elizabeth decided that she wanted to drink the pool water so as we were pulling her around the pool she kept taking big gulps of it. I am really hoping to find a special needs swim class for her but so far everywhere I have called does not have anything like that.

Samantha (2 years old) loved the water as well. She is such a dare devil. We opened the pool gate and she almost jumped in on her own. We finally got her flotation devices on her, and she jumped in. She loved the water and she really wanted to swim on her own without Mommy holding her which was a problem since we could not find a good flotation device for her either. It seems like everything we try their head still does down to far in the water.

Samantha eventually decided she was done swimming so we took off all of her gear and sent her out of the pool to NiNi (my mother) but the little trickster decided to jump in without warning. Luckily we caught her and she didn't go under or anything but man we are going to have to watch her closely around water.

We go to the beach in two weeks so hopefully we will get a few more swimming practices in before we go. We are lucky that Elizabeth is still only 4 but what do you do when they get older and are still in swim diapers. The place that we stay at will not let kids in diapers in the big pool, they are only allowed in the baby pool. I guess fingers crossed that she will potty train some day soon.

Sorry for any mistakes and misspellings!