doudsville

window in carthage jail.


the prego lazies are really starting to affect the blog.

not too much to report around these parts...my eldest brother darin and wife have been staying with us this weekend from michigan, so that's been fun.

i've been introduced to a new chocolate chip cookie recipe and will never go back to toll house....ever. i now have cake flour and unsalted butter on hand at all times.

let's see, i've also been eating a lot of tortillas and otter pops lately.  so there's that.

elizabeth just had her third swim lesson today.

these lessons have become a source of worry for me. the first one went pretty well, then we had a substitute instructor for the second lesson. big mistake. HUGE. mistake. i should have just skipped it and waited for the teacher to return for the next lesson. the sub sort of ruined her. i mean, i'm no expert on toddlers, but i do know some stuff about training/conditioning behavior through my work with dogs. this sub basically spent a half an hour conditioning bets to fear not only him, but he successfully established in her a negative association with the pool where the lessons are held AND she's now scared of our original instructor as well.

awesome.

anyways, today the original teacher was back and asked me how the last lesson went. i very calmly told her it was sort of a disaster and i felt we'd actually taken several steps BACK. i really didn't have to say much, because she could see bets was a mess. and let me say it has NOTHING to do with the actual swimming. if i take her to the pool by myself she does great. i can dunk her under the water and she'll jump off the side to me, etc. she's not afraid of swimming. she's afraid of swimming with strangers....at this specific pool. it's been three lessons and we haven't even been able to get to the actual swimming part. sigh. luckily our teacher is head of the infant division, so she arranged for us to have an extra lesson for free as a sort of compensation. i really do think she felt bad. and though i still don't feel like we're on the up-an-up, i do trust that with this teacher, we're moving forward albeit slowly. we certainly aren't giving up.  bad news is i have to get into the pool now for the next couple weeks. did i mention there's only 8 more weeks until a baby climbs out of me? yeah. the swimsuit really punctuates the fact.

next waterboarding swim lesson is thursday afternoon. fingers crossed.

what else....

so you think you can dance started up again.

i need a haircut.

the roses are in full bloom in the backyard.

greg and i have our eye on a house for purchase in the old neighborhood behind my parents' place.  it's so close they'll actually be able to WALK over to babysit:)


greg, in nauvoo at the place where the pioneers crossed the mississip.