Fighting Barracudas (A Tribute To Carmen)

As you know this summer we signed Rooney up for swim team at the country club where we live.  We thought this was a great opportunity for Rooney to expand on his swimming skills,we could get to know our neighbors and Rooney could earn a trophy which he desperately wanted.

The season was great.  Thankfully the Itty Bitty Barracudas were non-competitive exhibition only races.  We only had to attend home meets and the Itty Bittys always swam first. This is really nice when you have a baby and the meets are around dinner time.  Along the way through the swim season I hit along alot of emotions.  Excitement, trepidation, disappointment, frustration, pride, relaxation, and happiness.  Beside becoming comfortable at our community pool we met alot of great people.  I didn't always think that was true but midway through something happened.  One day I was sitting watching Rooney practice pool side.  I liked to sit close because a month or so prior I had to pull a kid out of the water.  He was close to the steps but couldn't get back to them without going under water.  I grabbed him and pulled him back onto the steps.  It wasn't too big of a deal but it made me want to keep a close eye.  So I am watching Rooney from the lounge chairs that line the pool.  Since the Coaches have the kids sit on the steps in the shallow end while they take individual kids out in the deeper water of the pool, I had to turn to the left.  While Ailbs and I are watching Rooney do his thing in the water a woman comes along and starts to talk with her friend who was on my left.  The woman is decently tall and her young daughter has a huge backpack on her back.  Of course since I have to watch the practice from an angle on my left they are standing smackdab in my way.  I assume the chit chat will be quick and then they will move on.  That didn't happen.  The two women are in a full on conversation, the daughter is now involved and dancing around with her huge backpack and the longer the talking goes on the more irritated I become.  I really couldn't believe how rude some people could be.  Eventually I get up, probably making a big huff as I have to unlock the wheels of Ailbe's stroller and move my bags, and move over to the right which gets the lady and her daughter mostly out of my range but then they walk away.  Ugh! 

Practice went on fine without too many obstacles when I see the woman, her daughter with the backpack and another older girl come out of the locker room and walk up to the edge of the pool.  I heard the woman (whom I will now call "the mom") ask Rooney's coach while pointing at Rooney "Is this Rooney?".   Of course I am thinking 'What the?" but then the mom proceeds to introduce her older daughter Carmen to Rooney and said she was the Swim Buddy we had signed up for at the beginning of the season.  Doh! 

It turns out this women and her daughters, who I thought were incredibly rude, are the sweetest people.  For Rooney's first swim meet with Carmen as his buddy she brought him a toy diving shark she purchased for him in Florida before they met.  The mom, Caroline, always came over to say hi to me and tell me how cute and great Rooney was.  She would cheer for him during the meet and took all but one of these pictures for us.  She said Carmen took her duties as Swim Buddy very seriously and she did a great job getting Rooney to the block on time and introducing him to the Coaches for the older kids (evidently some of them wanted to meet this kid Rooney).  

I am so thankful for Carmen and Caroline and I'm so glad that my original impression was not true at all.  As a matter of fact I feel really guilty for even being put out to begin with.  I'm pretty sure we will be signing Rooney up again next summer for Swim Team and we have already confirmed with Carmen we will ask for her again.  So a swim season that started as a frustrating and overwhelming experience really turned into a great season and Rooney EARNED the trophy he received. 

Dante's Inferno

Last night we had a couple of firsts happens.  We haven't had any firsts in awhile but I guess they need to happen every once in now and again.  Last night we rushed Rooney to the ER due to a high fever and last night Rooney slept in our bed.

After weeks of a dry cough and a previous stint last week with a lower fever Rooney came back full force last night with a fever of 104.3 (taken in the arm pit).  I had previously read when taking a temp in this fashion to add 1 degree which meant he had a temp over 105!  I am not one of those moms that rushes my kid to the MD every time they have a sniffle but with such a high temp I was a little freaked out and decided to call our mobile nurse.  After alot of  Q & A and poking & prodding on Rooney she told us to take him to the ER right away.  I gave Rooney some Motrin, packed Ailbe's bag, got some snacks and we all trekked down to the hospital. 

Turns out by the time they took his temp it dropped 4 degrees and he was definitely feeling better.  By the time the MD came to check him out he was wanting to hit the hospital restaurant and by the time the MD cleared him and basically just told us how to manage the fevers, Rooney was telling knock knock jokes.  Before we could leave Rooney had to take some Tylenol and here came the only ugly point in our night.  Roon does not like cherry flavored Tylenol and has shown me this by throwing it up.  After many pleas, no thank you and attempts not to take the wretched syrup Rooney finally got it down...then brought it right back up.  Once again proving that you can lead a horse to water, you can make him drink but you can't keep him hydrated.  Before we left Rooney's temp was down to 96.2.

Later that night he got another fever of 103 (under the arm) and was obsessed with going to the bathroom.  After being up from 3 to 4am with various kid isssues (Ailbe was also involved in these shenanigans) Mike and I decided to divide and conquer so we could all get sleep.  Mike took Ailbe to the basement and I brought Rooney into my bed where he spent the rest of what I believe was his first ever night and hopefully last.

Forced Family Time

On Monday Ailbe turned 9 months old. This was a big day and we celebrated by staying home watching PBS Kids all day.

Rooney and Ailbe both came down sick and were equally pathetic. Rooney has had a recurrent cough for a couple of weeks but seemingly felt fine otherwise. Ailbe has a cold but no real fever just a lot (I mean a lot!) of snot. Sunday night Rooney got a fever and slept from early evening through the night. Number one sign a kid is sick...they sleep without being prompted. By morning the fever was gone and he was full of pep again but the rule is keep 'em away from other kids for 24hrs after the fever goes away and that's exactly what we did. Unfortunately we missed a beautiful day and a really cool trip to Ballard Locks because of it. Ailbe on the other hand had been playing with her ears when she was tired but was still a sweet baby so although I suspected an ear infection I wasn't really sure. Thankfully her 9 month well check was on Tuesday and we found out she had a double ear infection. What a trooper! Brings a little tear to my eye that she could tough out the discomfort without a peep. A little trick she's learning from her dog brothers I suppose. This is her second ear infection. The MD assured me this was well below the norm but I still don't like it. I don't think Rooney has ever had one and I hate the idea of the kids having to take antibiotics so young. I do know it was necessary though. Her eyes and her nose seemed to be getting infected as well and she has already had one resistant bacteria in her eyes.

Before I move on I'll post Ailbo's 9 months stats. Drum roll...she is measuring in at 28-1/4" in length, a slight 19lbs & 0.5oz and her head is a little less petite at a staggering 17". That makes her percentiles 75%, 55% and 25% respectively and it just means she is growing perfectly.

By Wednesday everyone was feeling better and the weather was warm so we broke out Rooney's Slip N Slide. We invited April over and Brooke and Cole from next door came over and the kids have what Rooney called "A Slip N Slide Party". It was a great afternoon and the kids played for 3hrs in the front yard. Just as I finished packing everything up Mike came home. Too bad he missed all the Slip N Slide fun. Maybe we could have convinced him to take a little trip down. Some of my best memories still are when we hit got to go down the Slip N Slide when I was a little younger than Rooney. My mom made us all a DVD of it this Christmas. Maybe I'll post that to YouTube one of these days. Anyway I digress. Wednesday turned out to be a fabulous day because after dinner that night Mike, Rooney, Ailbe and I went to the pool for the last hour before it closed. We almost had the place to ourselves and just had alot of fun playing together as a family.

Unfortunately as of late last night Rooney got a fever again and is being pretty pathetic today. We are missing yet another awesome event due to illness...Caspar Babypants! Rooney didn't know we were going so he's not heartbroken yet. Thankfully I'm pretty sure they will be playing again soon.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Running a moms group is great. The kids (hopefully) learn a lot of wonderful social skills, meet many new friends and become very familiar with the library system. Since we have events everday, and most days several in one day, the kids are exposed to some really cool new experiences but there are some things a group of moms generally just won't do and today Rooney got to do one of those...fishing!

Another great thing about running your own moms group (or should I say co-running?) is that you can say who can join and that someone doesn't necessarily need to be a mom. Several months ago we admitted into our group our first stay at home dad. There was a little controversy about having him join, or at least the fear of there would be, but this dad has really become an active member and adds a great new dimension to our group. But another wonderful thing about having a dad in the group is that he is able to bait a hook!

We had a great day fishing yesterday at a local fishing hole. There are a couple u-fish type places around here and I know several moms who have taken their kids there but I am happy that Rooney got a little taste of actual fishing yesterday with someone who actually knew what he was doing and honest about the "sport". Once the excited of Ken and Rooney baiting the hook and casting the line (that's what its called right?) was over Ken told Rooney "now the rest is boring". Honestly I think if it were just a bunch of moms at a u-fish we would have tried to keep the excitment of the moment up and there would have been a lot of great picture moments. That didn't necessarily happen here and even though Rooney tried to reel something in (he caught alot of pond weed) I think quickly he did find it to be boring.


Most of the kids didn't catch anything but Rooney did get the much needed experience of poking a dead fish with a stick and being scared by his friends with said dead fish. Those are memories you can't fake.

"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"

I was being really sneaky I thought and back dating posts so I kept everything in time but I got behind on that as well so let's just start over and hopefully I can add some back dated posts to fill in any blanks. Ailbe is almost 9 months old now. She has started crawling. She was crawling fantstic for over a month...backwards. Just in the last week she is able to go forward. I caught some of it on video to prove to Mike that she could do it. As you may recall from many a blog post Mike never believes when one of the kids hits a new milestone. Pip really seems to want to stand though. I think she figured out how to back herself up into the sit position by accident when trying to stand. She gets all the way up into the Downward Dog position but can't quite get to the next step. That's OK with me. I'm not quite ready for a walker yet.

Rooney is now on Swim Team. We go to practice just about every day and now that the weather has suddenly got alot warmer it is also suddenly alot more pleasant. Rooney hasn't really seemed to notice but it is much nicer sitting on the chaise lounge in the sun then huddling underneath the overhang while watching him swim. He seems to love his coaches Brendan and Eric. They're just high school kids but Brendan seems to keep the kids in line and they have a good time while at practice. The swim meets can be a little time consuming and I am very thankful right now that Roonster is only on the Itty Bittys. This group is just exhibition races and they don't keep time. Unfortunately I do not think he will earn any awards and they just collect Airheads at the end of each race instead of ribbons like the other classes.

There have been tons of things going on here. Grandma and Grandpa Wade just came for a visit and we finally made it to Remlinger Farms while they were here. We had a great day and Rooney is already asking to go back. It didn't hurt matters that we met up with Charlie and his family there. If Felix would have been there I think it would have been Rooney's best day ever! The weather has been hot so we've been hitting the pool for fun over the last week. We discovered that Ailbe loves the water so maybe we'll have another little swim team member in the making. The pool has been nice because we can bring our friends and we were able to get Aunt Annie a caregiver membership so I can have a little help with the kids. Thankfully Aunt Annie likes to swim.

Mike and I have been constantly working on the yard(s)...weather permitting. Since April we have been working on the front yard ripping out the old plants and putting in grass. Just recently we were able to add bark after 3 years of debating about it. Finally I won and it looks pretty nice if I do say so myself. This weekend we are prepping for "dog fence". With having 2 kids we really felt we needed to break up our backyard into "kid side" and "dog side" so we can go tell the kids to play outside without fear of what they might bring back in on their feet. Courage and Rocco will get a nice dog run behind all the foliage in the back plus about 1/3 of the actual yard. There is a lot of work needed back there but the fence is taking number 1 priority this summer. Little by little. One day, when the kids move out, we'll get it just the way we want it.