SwimKids

Jakob started a swim camp this week. He goes M-Th for two weeks for a 30 minute class each day. The first day he was less than thrilled to go because he was scared to put his face in the water. I assured him he would not have to put his face in the water unless he wanted to. He reaffirmed he would not want to.

Day one he put his face in the water and is not turning back. He will now fully submerge and loves getting things off the bottom of the pool. He is not ready for unsupervised pool play, however he has become much more confident and comfortable in a pool.

I had previously stated we would not be going to any water parks until he could go under water. On the third day of swim class he informed me he would be ready for a water park when he learned how to get from the bottom of the deep end to the top of the water and swim to the side. He wants to be able to do things on his own. That's my boy.

DinoDig

Jakob had his first camp of the summer this past week. The class was all about Dinosaurs. He made a costume, an egg and learned a fun song. He also made a fossil and went dinosaur egg hunting on Friday. He loved the class.

He struggled with leaving me for the first day of class. We aren't sure if the move is adding stress or if he is trying to deal with mean kids. We had an incident in one of his music classes with a bully and how he should deal with mean kids. He is now fearful of encountering another bully and we hope we have provided him the tools to make the situation right.

Our rules: 1. Tell the kid to stop doing what he's doing and that you don't like it. 2. Tell the teacher or adult what is going on. 3. If he does it again - kick his ass. (really we just told him to push the kid away and let it be known he doesn't want anything to do with him) It was very hard for me to come to this decision, however after watching the mean kid in music I was ready to push him down and kick his ass. It is very hard watching Jakob trying to be nice to mean kids. I want him to stand up for himself and there is a fine line to being too nice or being a mean kid. Any ideas?

PODS

Today our PODS arrived!! What a cool idea. The way they moved the container without the truck was awesome. We'll take pictures when they pick it up. I didn't think it would be that interesting to watch, but I was very wrong. Jakob and I can't stop telling George how neat it was.

Tomorrow we begin loading the PODS. Of course, it will be the hottest weekend of the year (96 with a heat index of 105) and we are not looking forward to the heat. We are happy we can stop anytime we want and don't have to have the thing packed this weekend. We hope this will relieve some of the stress.

We will be moving to our new home in Springfield (about 20 miles north from where we are now) at the end of July. We wanted to break up the packing and take advantage of a few of the perks of moving ourselves. There are very few perks.

Jakob and I will be visiting Wichita from the 27th of June to the 7th of July. We hope to see everyone.