Meatball!

I have been trying hard to do and think about things differently lately. I have spent more time than I usually do playing with my boys, especially Ian. We have painted and colored, read stories, played "Red Light, Green Light" or "Stop, Go," as Ian likes to call it. Today I even took the boys swimming for the first time by myself! I had been pretty worried about doing it, especially at first when I was nervous to do anything in Las Vegas :) But since Chris has taken Ian a lot in almost two months since we've been here, Ian has made a ton of progress and swims almost independently when he is wearing his "muscles." We also just started getting Cooper in the pool the last week or so and it's taken him a little bit to get used to it, but I think he actually really enjoyed himself! I thought we might be out there for maybe half an hour, but it ended up being an hour or more by the time we got back in the house! We had a ball!

Cooper sat in his little floating ring for the first little bit, then Ian wanted to go to the hot tub, so I figured I'd bundle Cooper up in a towel and then we'd head back to the house. But of course Ian wanted to head back to the big pool after that. So I figured I could sit on the edge with Cooper while Ian swam around. I ended up holding Cooper in the water for a bit, then taking him back in the pool, just holding him this time, and the three of us had so much fun swimming around! We chased Ian, then sang songs like "Wheels on the Bus" and "Patty Cake" (which by the way, can be adjusted to work quite well as splashing water songs). Cooper was hungry and tired by the time I was able to convince Ian it was time to go, but I was grateful to have been pleasantly surprised about how fun it was and how easy it really fun, as I had been pretty worried about keeping both boys happy and safe in the water.

Now on to the funny story for which this post is labeled. Ian was sitting in the hot tub and I was dangling my feet in, holding Cooper on my lap. Ian has been into storytelling lately ("One day...one day...!" It is hilarious to hear his rendition of things that happened throughout the day). This particular moment he was doing some future planning. He said: "I want Baby Cooper to get bigger so he can play with me. So he can do a meatball." I tried to hide the confused look on my face. "Meatball?" I asked. "Yah, like that song you sing [referring to "On Top of Spaghetti"]" Ian replied. Still not quite sure where he was going with this, I tried to question further. "What would Cooper do as a meatball?" To which Ian said: "He'd splash in the water!"

Ding, ding, ding. The light bulb finally came on (Come on, silly mom, how slow can I be sometimes?! :p). "Oh!" I said, "You want Cooper to be able to do a "meatball" [cannonball] into the pool with you!" With that mystery solved (in my head, at least) we headed back to the big pool where Ian did a "meatball" into the water. I, too, can't wait until Cooper can join Ian in doing meatballs at the pool. Hmmm...maybe we'll have spaghetti for dinner tonight...