La Petite Baleen

Every Thursday morning, John takes Evelyn to her 8:45am class at La Petite Baleen. I can't believe she's already had a month's worth of lessons. I went to her first class and was blown away by the facilities -- from the gorgeous setting of Crissy Field, near the Warming Hut and the beach with Golden Gate Bridge as the backdrop, to the miles of new changing tables in the pristine changing rooms. And let's face it, that cute little whale slide had me at hello.

Evelyn had a pretty good time on her first day, smiling and laughing and going along with the activities with a pretty open mind. They put on flippers, sang songs, swam through tunnels, practiced climbing out of the pool (or at least, learned about the concept, with lots of parental help), and learned how to walk their hands along the wall to get around the perimeter of the pool. The only thing I remember her not liking was lying on her back in the water.











I missed her next two lessons because of work, and was finally able to go last Thursday. In such a short time, she's become so much more comfortable in the water. First off, she's willing to keep goggles on the entire time, which is just about the most hilarious thing. And instead of being coaxed into "jumping" (i.e. being lifted by Papa) off the edge of the pool and into the water, she's jumping in herself without hesitation, and doesn't mind it when her face and head go under water.



One of my favorite activities of the class, and definitely one of Evelyn's, is where they set up a floaty thing as a sort of walkway and have the kids run off it and into the water:



And that whale slide... On the first day, I looked at that and thought, Wow, Evelyn's going to go down that slide one day. Maybe upon graduation or something. How naive of me.



What more can I say? I am just loving this swim class.

Then and now, Part 2

Well, any good clip show has 2 parts, right? That'll be my excuse for forgetting another set of pictures I was going to include in my last posting. I swear, I can only hold 2 things in my head at one time these days. A 3rd set of pictures popped into my head at the last minute, and I could not remember one of the two I already had in mind...

So here they are. These are pictures I took of portraits of Evelyn that John had taken, for Mother's Day last year and this year. He couldn't have come up with a better gift. Last year, he came home at lunchtime while I was at work, took Evelyn (forgoing her nap!), dressed her up in an outfit of his own choosing, and swept her away to the magical world of the Sears portrait studio. It all would have been the biggest surprise ever if my mom had been able to keep the secret. She was just bursting at the seams when I got home and let slip that John dressed Evelyn up and took her out earlier. (Hmph). But still, I had no idea what he was really up to til he presented me with this:



And a little less surprising this year, but not any less special, was my 2nd Mother's Day portrait of my favorite little person:



What a difference a year makes! These are the best gifts ever from the best husband ever...

Every now and then, it's time to look at the then and now

Has it really been over 1 month since my last posting?! Could this be the longest I've neglected the blog? Thank goodness I don't make a living from blogging -- I'd have lost my entire readership by now (or maybe I have anyway!). Yeah, phew, thank goodness I don't make money writing about how cute and funny my child is, geez how awful that would be...

So, what does a writer do when she's short on time and creative energy (that being totally sapped by work)? I'll do what TV writers do -- have a clip show! A retrospective.

I've noticed some funny parallels in the pictures I've taken in the 21 months since Evelyn was born, and now's a good a time as any to do the compare and contrast...

In the photo on the left, Evelyn was just 3 days old! She was 8lbs, 5oz at birth and never really looked like a wrinkly newborn. You can see the yellow tinge of her skin, and if you could zoom in, you'd see the yellow in the whites of her eyes -- her jaundice had moved in and gotten comfortable, and we would remain prisoners of it and the hospital for another 3 days. My recollection is that we took this picture in the middle of the night - all was quiet on the hospital floor except the humming of Evelyn's incubator in our room and our own strung out nerves.



The picture on the right is in a nearly identical room in the same hospital where we had Evelyn - St. Luke's -- 3.5 months later. This was in Paula and Rhea's recovery room the day after Rhea was born. Evelyn was a whopping 18 or 19lbs. See how much more relaxed John looks? (though I think it was still all a facade at that point...) It was super hot in the room, so Evelyn was just in her diaper, and only after did I notice these mirror images.

Ah... swim class. In the picture on the left, Evelyn was 14 months old and it was the first day of swim class at the Janet Pomeroy Center. She gazed in wonder at what that giant blue area might be. The picture on the right was taken about 2 weeks ago, at 21 months, on Evelyn's first day at La Petite Baleen -- a swim school for babies, toddlers and young kids that exceeded my wildest expectations and hopes for a swim class.

Words cannot describe how excited I was on the first day of class as they went through 30 minutes full of activities that were not only fun and well-organized but that would really help develop skills in the water. Having no fear of water is such a gift and luckily, Evelyn probably won't ever realize it!