We're Getting Closer...

Today while waiting to leave church, I was standing in the foyer talking with a friend and Y was playing around on the floor. Well she was wearing her Christmas dress and judging from the odd movements she had been making all day (crawling sideways instead of forward) I had pretty much figured out that the dress is hard for her to crawl in. Because of this it was no surprise to me when she started "walking" around with her hands and feet on the floor and butt stuck up in the air - she's been doing this for a while now, usually for short periods of time each time she does it. Well I always get a kick out her doing that so I was watching her and out of nowhere she slowly removes her hands from the floor and stands up. She only lasted a matter of seconds before she fell to her butt, but as you can probably imagine, I was clapping my hands and just beaming with excitement. She has never made an effort to stand before so it's a pretty big deal! After she toppled down she it didn't take her long to give it another go and again, she lasted for a few seconds before she fell on her bottom again. She tried it for several times before moving on to something else and each time I think I grew more and more proud. I was just sad that B wasn't there to see it, she did do it again at home though so he got to see it that time. We're getting close to having a walking baby on our hands!!!! Hopefully by Christmas...that would be the best present she could give me! I honestly can't wait to see her walking, and even running, around!!!

A Christmas E-card!

This year, after many years of just having the intention of doing it, I actually made and sent out Christmas cards!!! I am very proud of myself that I didn't procrastinate because had I these cards would never have made it out in time for Christmas. Making handmade cards was a lot more time consuming than I ever thought it would be, but if I'm honest I must say that I really actually enjoyed doing it. Hopefully I'll do it again next year but maybe a simpler pattern (although I really loved this one).

I made 40 cards which isn't even close to the number I would have made had I sent one to everyone, so I thought of a way to give all of you a card without actually sending them out to everyone. If you didn't get one, it doesn't mean that I don't love you, it just means that I have far too many family and friends to mail cards out to every one of them. Anyway, back to my idea...I decided that I would take a picture of the front of a card, the inside of the card, include a copy of the picture enclosed in the card and then a final picture of ALL the cards I made. That way, you can pick your favorite card and pretend you got that one in the mail! It's genius if you ask me!!!

So here we go:

Pick your favorite card out of all these in the picture below (if you need to you can click on the picture to make it larger):

Here's a close up of one card, just imagine it is the card you picked above:

Here's what your card says on the inside (I blotted out the names for all those crazies out there on the internet who might happen to come across our blog) but most of you know the names and can fill in the blanks:

And finally, here is the photo that was included in with the card:

Hope you liked your card (at least you got to pick out which card you liked best, the ones who I mailed them to just got whichever one I gave them, hahaha)!

We love you guys and wish you all a very Merry Christmas!!!

Finished...Done...Finito!

It is the end of an era...tonight I nursed Y for the very last time! I am a little saddened by it but I am also pretty happy about it. I am totally surprised that I was able to breastfeed for 15 whole months - we had such a rocky start with it - but I am so extremely glad that I stuck it out and kept at it. It has given me and Y such a stronger bond than I ever thought imaginable and I loved every minute of it. It has also helped us save a ton of money that we would have spent on formula. I'm in no way knocking formula because I also loved the fact that she would take both breastmilk and formula because there were many times that formula was a lifesaver! But seriously, I can't wait to do it all over again with the next bundle of joy!

15 Month Well Baby

On Monday we carried Y to the doctor for her 15 month well baby check up. She's doing really well, she is now 22lbs 12oz. and 31¾ inches long. She remains in the 50th percentile for weight and head circumferance while being in the 90th percentile for height. He was a bit surprised that she was not yet walking but isn't overly concerned about it but if she's not walking in a month he wants us to give him a call and he'll likely refer her to someone who can just check to make sure everything's okay. Neither he nor us really think that anything is physically wrong with her but he feels it'd be better to find out sooner rather than later, just in case. We really just feel it is a matter of her being ready, she is a very precautious little girl, not really into taking any risks. We also went ahead and let her get her first H1N1 vaccination, she'll go back in January to get the second and final shot.

15 Months!!!

Our precious little angel is now 15 months old!!! As you can see she definitely looks like a little toddler now, I keep searching for my baby in there but sometimes it can be hard to find her. She's still awesome and way better than I could ever ask for. It seems like she adds a new word all the time and pays very close attention to what goes on around her. She has 8 teeth now and loves to eat as much as she always has, my only question is, where does it go?!?! She has the cutest laugh you've ever heard and she has only just become interested in playing with other little kids in the past few weeks, I guess that's due to being the first child who really isn't exposed to other kids that often except at church. She loves to stare out of our sliding glass door and watch the ducks and Canadian geese swim in the lake. She likes to look at the Christmas tree but as of yet has not attempted to take anything off it. It probably helps that we only have a small tabletop tree. Below are some pictures that we took today, we take her in for her 15 month well baby visit on Monday so I'll let you know more about height and weight then. Enjoy the pictures!

Cheese

Today while I was snapping a few pictures of Y (see previous post), I would say "say cheese" before I would take a picture. Well I noticed that after I would say that she would reply with "cheese." So her newest word is cheese. Not sure if I've ever posted her words (and sounds) before but she can say: uh-uh, mmm (when she sees something she wants to eat and she even does the fluctuation in the sound so it's more like "mMMm"), dada & mama (and she does know that they refer to us), baby, bye-bye and a few others that have slipped my mind. But anyway, here's the video.

Words I forgot about when I initially posted this: Yay, hey, & uh-oh.

New Pictures

It's been a while since I've posted some pictures and seeing as Y turns 15 months at the end of this week, it's about time I put some up...so here goes:

Happy Thanksgiving

It's November and because this happens to be the month when we celebrate Thanksgiving it is also the month when people generally start to think of all the things that they have to be grateful for. I honestly express my gratitude for my life and all that I have on a daily basis but I wanna put a few of them in writing. So I have written one thing I am grateful for for each day of the month of November up until Thanksgiving day. Here's my list and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

1. I am thankful for a relationship with my Heavenly Father and being able to talk to him each day in prayer.
2. I am thankful for the Atonement of Christ which allows me to be my imperfect self yet maintain the ability to return to live with my Heavenly Father if I earnestly repent.
3. I am thankful for my wonderful, amazing husband who I still feel unworthy of (but I'm so glad he's mine).
4. I am thankful for my beautiful baby girl and all the joy that she brings to our lives.
5. I am thankful for family and friends and the strength and encouragement they always give me.
6. I am thankful for the turkey who (unwillingly) gave its life so that I may have a delicious dinner tonight.
7. I am grateful to have shelter, transportation, food and all of life's necessities that we often take for granted.
8. I am grateful for the Gospel and all that it has brought into my life.
9. I am grateful for the temple and eternal marriages.
10. I am grateful for answered prayers, even if the answer is not what I want it to be.
11. I am grateful for the summer months that offer me a reprieve from horrible Michigan winters.
12. I am grateful for each day that I wake up.
13. I am grateful for 4 guys who each took 2 years of their life to go serve a mission in North Carolina 16 years ago.
14. I am grateful to live in a country where I am permitted to have so many freedoms which are often denied in some other countries.
15. I am appreciative that my husband has a job when there are so many who do not.
16. I am doubly appreciative that his job allows him to provide for our family which allows me to stay at home with our daughter.
17. I'm thankful for my health.
18. I am thankful for the trials I have experienced in my life which have molded me into the person that I am and given me the strength to endure.
19. I am grateful for my mom who is a pillar of strength and an amazing example of integrity and love.
20. I am grateful for my dad who appears to be a rough and callous man on the exterior, but who I know loves his family more than anything else.
21. I am grateful for banana bread, white chip macadamia cookies and vanilla ice cream (not necessarily at the same time).
22. I am thankful for the opportunity I have to be in such a culturally diverse family. I tell everyone that I come from a small city in North Carolina with black people, white people and 5 Mexicans! It's an obvious exaggeration but never in my life did I dream I would have a Mexican mother, a Canadian Father, a Norwegian brother, a British grandmother, a Dominican cousin, a Kenyan cousin (and maybe one day a Peruvian sister). A piece of useless information: I used to refer to B as my Canican (CANadian + mexICAN).
23. I appreciate the days when I have a clean house (they are few and far between).
24. I am thankful for scented candles and tart burners.
25. I am grateful for Facebook which has enabled me to reconnect with so many friends I had lost contact with and allowed me to become both a chef and a farmer...at the same time. haha
26. I am thankful for good books, even if I don't have the time I'd like to read them.

We're Still Here

I guess I should start this post with an apology, it has been a very long time since my last post. I didn't post much, if anything, while my mom was visiting and by the time she left I guess I had just gotten out of the habit. Luckily though, there hasn't been a whole lot going on with us so this probably won't take too long.

Last month we received what is quite possibly the best gift we've ever been given (it's definitely in the top 2)! Someone very close to us, paid off our car loan! We were both surprised as well as being very excited and it could not have come at a better time. It was an answer to a prayer and definitely a message from Heavenly Father letting me know that we're on the right track. The extra money each month has allowed us to save more money each month which will hopefully enable us to buy a house sooner, assuming we find something affordable in the location that we want.

We had a pregnancy scare this month. Or at least I had a scare, B didn't seem to be worried either way. I guess scare may be a little too severe a word but let me just say I'm not quite ready for #2 yet. Had it turned out that we were pregnant I would have come to accept it and even be excited about it, but I am really relieved that we're not. I have a tendency to plan things out, and sometimes, when things don't go as I plan I can get pretty emotional and even a little upset. Right now I just wanna take some time and enjoy being with Y. That combined with the fact that I'm really not ready for the multiple night feedings, being sleep deprived, and just becoming anyone's personal milking machine quite yet. When the time comes that we're ready for #2 (or even if we're not ready but it's on its way anyway) rest assure I will let all of you know, but as for right now...I'm just relieved!

Y is now 14 months old! She is still not walking and that's probably due to the fact that I want her to walk so badly. I have heard from some moms who have said that their son or daughter didn't walk until 18 months and some even a little bit later. I REALLY don't wanna wait that long. I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will walk by Christmas. I should not, however, be surprised that she is taking her time learning to walk. She is such a laid back little girl and doesn't really seem to be in a rush to do things, take crawling for example. She has 4 teeth all coming in at once and she has been surprisingly tolerable through it all. We recently bought her a toothbrush to brush her teeth, previously we had been using one of those rubber fingertip brushes that you slide onto your finger. I was certain that she would just take the toothbrush out of my hand and start chewing on it but she doesn't. She LOVES getting her teeth brushed so she makes no effort to take the brush from me. When she sees me grab the toothbrush and her toothbrush she gets all excited and happy; maybe we have a future dentist on our hands. She still refuses to touch her own food although I did get her to pick up some french fries on one occasion, but other than that she moves her hand away whenever I try to make her take food. She has started trying to help me feed her when using a spoon, she will grab the spoon and pull it to her mouth. She still brings us so much joy and I love to do anything that will make her laugh because it is the cutest, most heartwarming sound I've ever heard. I really do love being a mom, but then again, she makes it easy!

Like Taking Candy from a Baby???

About a month and a half ago while we were at Y's final dermatologist appointment they had a huge jar of DumDums sitting on the counter, so I grabbed one and stuffed it into the diaper bag. Well tonight I discovered that Sour Apple flavored DumDum and began to eat it as I sat on the floor playing with Y. She was, naturally, intrigued by the white stick hanging out of my mouth and below is a video of Y's first candy experience (and the last for a very long time).

Some Happy News and Some Not-So-Happy News

My mom leaves on Tuesday and I must say that I am really going to miss her. Not just because my apartment is so much cleaner than even my deepest cleaning but because I am really going to miss having some adult company during the day. She won't admit it but I can also tell that she's ready to get back to her chaotic routine with my dad, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc. It has been awesome having her here and I wish she could stay a bit longer but life goes on. I guess we'll just have to get pregnant and have another baby so she'll have to come back! hahaha. I actually told her that and her warning to me was that I'd better plan it out so that the baby is not born in a cold month - she says she refuses to come if there is the slightest chance of snow. So I guess that only gives me the months of June-September to have children as long as we live in the state of Michigan!

In other news...B was previously assigned to work both Thanksgiving AND Christmas this year, much to my disdain! I was not a happy camper about it but at least he has a job, right? But he did have a few remaining personal days so we were going to try to make the best of them and shoot for a long shot and have him use them by requesting off Black Friday as well as a few days after Christmas. Well it turns out that one of his co-workers really wanted to have New Year's Day off (probably so he can get wasted on New Year's Eve) so now he's going to work on Christmas Day and B will work on New Year's Day. To top it all off, he also has the 4 days following Christmas off! So we get to spend a whole 5 days together at Christmas, it's like a mini-vacation!!

The Cutest Lamb You'll Ever See!

Y was supposed to be a Ladybug for Halloween. However, in my ignorance, I thought that buying a Halloween costume in September would allow plenty of time and a store definitely wouldn't be sold out...I was WRONG!!! So after that total disappointment, I went home and started looking on the internet but I couldn't find anything I really liked at a price I really wanted to pay. So I went to walmart.com and settled for a bumble bee costume. I wasn't excited about it, but it would get the job done. Then I found THE cutest costume and after a little encouragement from my mother-in-law I decided that I was going to return the bee and Y was gonna be a lamb instead. Last night was our ward Halloween party and of course I took pictures. Here are some for you guys to enjoy! Love ya!

Trying on her costume

Too Cute!!

Sleeping in the car on the way home...guess she was exhausted!

4 Awesome Years

On Wednesday, B and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary!!! Time sure has flown by and I've enjoyed every second of it. We were fortunate enough to have my mom here visiting us so we were able to leave Y at home with her. Last year Y was about 6 weeks old when we celebrated our anniversary and a friend in our ward offered to watch her while we went to dinner. That was the last time that we had gone to dinner sans Y. She has always been a very good baby and so it was never a big deal taking he rout to dinner with us, she kinda just went with the flow. However, this year when we went out and left her with my mom, I realized how awesome it is for just the 2 of us to go out together every now and again. B was of course concerned about leaving her with my mom, he didn't want her to end up spending the whole night crying. Well, turns out she didn't cry once the entire time we were gone. In fact, I'm not sure she missed us at all! So now we will definitely be going out and having more date nights without Y every couple of months. It was so great to just sit and relax, talk, and reconnect. I love having our wonderful daughter as part of our family, but I also appreciate just being able to spend some one-on-one time with my wonderful husband. He has given me 4 awesome years of marriage and I am truly thankful for the ability to share eternity with him. He reassures me when I need it most, comforts me no matter how small or simple the issue may be and it also helps that he's always willing to help out around the house even after having a long day at work. He makes my life whole and I appreciate everything that he does for our family. 143, BPF!

Each year on our anniversary we take a picture of our family to add to our wedding album. That way as the years go by we'll be able to look back and see how we and our family has changed over the years. As you can imagine, getting a good shot while holding a 13 month old can be more than a little tricky. In all the pictures that I really liked Y was looking away or squirming so I am uploading 2 for your viewing pleasure - one where Y is looking at the camera and another that I think would be perfect had Y been more cooperative (it was her bedtime, so I can't ask for much from her).

ARGH!!!

I shouldn't be surprised by the ignorance of some people, but somehow this one just really irks me. I was doing some reading on the internet when the words "Interracial Couple" caught my eye in a headline. It likely caught my eye because, well, I'm ½ of an interracial couple. So I read the rest of the headline, Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License By Louisiana Justice of the Peace, and I was just so curious that I couldn't stop myself from clicking on it to find out precisely what it was about. By the time I got to the end of the first paragraph I was already furious with this guy. He says that, "it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long." Well what experience would he have in the matter? It's obvious he's never been in an interracial relationship and even more obvious that he's never married an interracial couple! My mother and father-in-law have been in a successful interracial marriage for over 34 years now as well as having some aunts and uncles who are in mixed marriages and I am sure that there are many more out there just like them!

As if that wasn't enough to tick me off, I continued reading the second paragraph where he said: "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else." Well woopty-freakin'-do! I'm so happy to know that if I were his friend he'd trust me enough to use his toilet, I'll rest so much better tonight knowing that! And as a little note to him and everyone else out there: If you feel the need to precede or follow up ANY statement you make by saying, "I have (Insert Race Here) friends" in order for you to feel justified in making that statement, you're probably better off just keeping your mouth shut! The only part of his above statement that I agree with is when he proclaims he is not a racist! Well Mr. Bardwell, you are 100% accurate in that statement! You're not a racist...you're a bigot!

Ladies and Gentlemen the fun does not stop there! The article continues and states:
"Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

I guess my next question is exactly who he discussed this topic with, was it his piles and piles of black friends that he so graciously allows to use his bathroom? Because it seems fairly obvious to me that in an instance such as this, maybe, just maybe he should discuss it with people that have been in an interracial relationship. I mean, they would be more educated on the topic than someone who has never been a part of it. And why is it the fault of the parents if SOCIETY doesn't accept the kids (which I completely disagree with). I honestly believe that the majority of society has no problem with interracial children. Sure, there are idiots out there who do, but I think they are the exception and not the rule! I really think Mr. Bardwell needs to get out of Louisiana and explore a little bit more of society before he can start speaking on behalf of all of black society and white society. I know quite a few interracial people, namely my husband, his siblings, several of his cousins, a few of my own cousins, friends and acquaintances throughout life, etc. and the all seem to be pretty well adjusted and accepted by all of those who matter in their life.

I hate that people, such as Mr. Bardwell, still exist. As for me, Here's to creating many more interracial offspring, in hopes that one day people like Mr. Bardwell will be nonexistent!

Last Lesson

I had my last swim lesson tonight and I am actually quite sad to say that I'm finished. I am extremely proud of my progress and being able to now say that I can swim. There are still some aspects that I want to continue working on, mostly improving my stroke and also my breathing technique (which as of right now is pretty lame). So I had B film a little video of me swimming for you guys to see. I'm still not as good as I one day hope to be but it's a lot better than I was 30 days ago. You'll notice in the video that I stopped fairly quickly and that is because I ended up getting a cramp in my foot (ouch). But not including the time I took to massage the cramp out of my foot, it took me slightly over a minute to finish one lap in the pool!

13 Months

I am late writing this post, 5 days late to be exact. I didn't forget to write the post, I'm just a procrastinator and finally forced myself to sit and write it. Unfortunately my camera battery is completely dead right now so I'll have to come and upload pictures later. I've also debated whether I would continue my monthly pictures of Y since she's now 1, I couldn't decide if it were still necessary or not. But I've decided to continue doing it because there are a lot of you out there that don't get to see her very often and might appreciate the monthly updates.

As for Y at 13 months, she still has only 4 teeth but I think I can see white pressing against the gums where 2 more might break through at the top soon. She isn't yet walking solo but she loves to take anyone's hands and walk them through the apartment over and over again. People keep telling me that I should appreciate the fact that she's not yet walking because once they start walking they start getting into everything. Well, I have a newsflash...she already gets into everything. She crawls into and under things that I would never have fathomed she could get to let alone fit in or under. She can reach pretty much everything and she has mastered the art of standing on her tippy toes to get to the things she can't reach. She opens cabinents and pulls things out and she even reaches for door handles and can even turn them slightly (thank goodness the locks are out of even her tiptoe reach). She knows how to turn the DVD player on and off as well as making it open and shut. She can quickly grab and open a DVD case or game cases. She loves to open and shut drawers and recently has started opening them and pulling things out of them. She points at pictures with B in them and says Dada but I've yet to see her do this with any of my pictures. She mostly does it while B is at work so I'm thinking that maybe it's because she misses him and since I'm always with her live and in person, maybe that's why she never does it with my pictures. She fully understand "no" and "uh-uh" and sometimes she even listens to me when I say it although she doesn't always stop what she's doing, until she notices me coming towards her. Her favorite word is "uh-oh" though I don't think she fully understands its meaning. Ya see, "uh-oh" implies you did something on accident but I believe she does things just so she can say "uh-oh." Like throwing her toys on the floor in the car while we're driving, or letting her cup fall on the floor during dinner, the list goes on! She still refuses to touch her food and i have tried everything to no avail to get her to touch it but she refuses. We are finally mastering naptime and have managed to get her to consistently take 1-2 hour naps instead of 30-45 minute naps. She loves it when we blow bubbles and her favorite toys just happen to be her books. Her favorite cartoos are Word World and Super Why but she doesn't mind Dragon Tales or Barney. She is still such a happy and enjoyable baby and I love being able to spend all my time with her, we're the luckiest parents in the world!

5, 6, and 7

It's been a while since my last swimming update which is very likely because I felt like my progress had stalled. Needless to say I had been pretty down about it because the pressure builds the closer and closer I get to my last lesson, which is a week from today. Like last time, I'll give you a lesson-by-lesson replay, so here goes...

Last Thursday, October 1, was lesson #5. It was much the same as lesson #4 (where I first swam unaided). We did several laps with the noodles and a paddle board, several more with just the paddle board, still more with just the noodles and finally about 5 minutes of swimming with no assistance. Nothing really exciting happened in this lesson, I was just happy I hadn't lost my nerve from lesson #4.

This past Tuesday was my 6th lesson and I was feeling pretty crappy at the end of it. Not because I had a hard time completing the tasks but because I didn't progress anymore. I was still swimming a little at the end of the lesson but I still couldn't manage to do it for long periods of time without my brain telling me feet to find the bottom of the pool. In other words, I was swimming for short periods of time and even that could be a struggle. I was angry at myself, frustrated and it didn't help one bit that I kept reminding myself that I only had 3 lessons left. I went home pretty downtrodden! I felt like I knew what my problem was but I didn't know how to fix it. I needed to find in myself the ability to have my head at least partially in the water so that my upper body was not constantly struggling to stay afloat as I swam. And seeing as I still have my fear of water, it's still perfectly intact, this is pretty hard for me. But allowing my head into the water will allow me to straighten out my upper body which would make it a lot easier to do the kicking motions when I'm not concentrating so hard on everything else.

The defeat I felt after lesson #6 actually gave me a great deal of motivation for tonight's lesson, #7. I'm pretty sure that knowing how few lessons I have remaining also had something to do with it. We went about the usual laps in the pool and we'd randomly take a minute break here and there in order to give myself a little rest. While taking these breaks I decided I would work on going underwater. I would take a deep breath, submerge my head, and bring it back up when I needed to breathe. While doing my laps with the noodles I decided that I would attempt to do it then as well. I was actually surprised by how much easier it made the whole swimming process! I would take a deep breath, hold it, submerge my head a little, exhale and repeat...all while continuously swimming. I felt like I had made a major breakthrough. I was totally amazed at how much easier it made things, not only because my body was better aligned but also because I wasn't spending so much time and energy focusing on trying to keep water away from and out of my nose. I was so excited about this but I knew the hard part was still to come. It was time for me to set the noodles aside and do it all on my own. So I tried my best to relax, took a deep breath, closed my eyes and just started. Boy did I feel my muscles start to burn but I kept at it until I couldn't take it anymore and when I stopped I realized that I had swam half the length of the pool! I don't know who was more excited, me or my instructor.

It is so very exciting for me, I love to marvel at the progress that I have made since I first started. I was talking to a friend on the phone yesterday and she said to me, "Umeka, I can swim a mile and I'm still not over my fear of water." And I can now say that I completely understand what she means by that but before I started these lessons her statement would have been a total oxymoron to me. I am still afraid of water, but I'm going to learn to swim anyway. I don't think my fear will ever completely go away, it'll probably show its ugly head everytime I get in a pool, but I'm gonna do it anyway!

Happy Birthday

Today is my mommy's 50th birthday!!! I just wanted to wish her a very happy birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom! I hope your day is filled with lots of joy and you're able to enjoy it. We love you and look forward to seeing you soon!!

Who Woulda Thunk It?!?!

I am sssooo excited, I can hardly contain myself, I seriously couldn't go to bed without typing this post!!! Tonight I had my fourth swim lesson and guess what - at the end of the lesson, I swam all by myself; no assistance and no floatation device. I left that lesson walking on air! I would have never thought that I would be swimming after only four lessons. Now it wasn't the perfect swim with the beautiful strokes that experience swimmers do, but it was me, refusing to allow my feet to rely on the safety that could be found at the bottom of the pool.

With that said, I'll give you more details of the entire lesson. We started the lesson off using the noodles and the paddle board. The noodles were under my arms (in my armpits) and my arms were fully extended with my hand holding the paddle board. We did this so that I could focus on the kicking without having to worry about my hands or arm movements. We did 6 laps using this method, I found that doing this I had to stop frequently because I would reach a point and even though I was kicking, I didn't feel like I was moving forward. So I would stop and use my feet to push off the bottom of the pool which gave me more momentum to push myself forward. After six laps of that he took away the paddle board and wanted me to use my arms (imagine the doggy paddle stroke). I actually was relieved to get rid of the board and use my arms because then I actually felt like I was moving. We did this for 3 laps of the pool and I actually surprised my instructor! He kept telling me that I could stop whenever I felt like it and take a break, but for the first 2 laps I made it over half the length of the pool without stopping and on the third lap I made it the ENTIRE length of the pool. He also told me that he knew I could do it without the noodles but he still wanted me to work with the noodles in order to help with my endurance training. So with 5-6 minutes left in our session he asked if I wanted to continue using the noodle or try it without, and of course I choose to try it without the noodles. At first I struggled to just let go and not use the pool floor as my safety net but after trying it a few times I DID IT!!! I swam all by myself with absolutely no help of any kind and I was so happy that I could have cried.

I am totally and completely amazed at the progress I have made. Some of you may not really know or understand just how terrified I was (and kinda still am) of water and the idea of swimming. But imagine your worst fear, the one thing you've spent your entire life being afraid of and then one day deciding that you have to overcome that fear. Maybe that's easy for some people, but for me, I can honestly say that this is the scariest and hardest thing I've ever attempted. I have gone from nearly drowning myself in my first lesson (and that's not being overly dramatic) to allowing myself to trust water enough to swim for a short period of time without panicking or fearing the worst. And I cannot take full credit for my accomplishments either. Heavenly Father has been such a HUGE help for me in this, each time I have gotten in that water He has sent his Spirit to help me, to comfort me, and let me know that everything is okay. To let me know that I can do this and that He did, indeed, listen to every prayer (and there have been a lot of them) that I sent up to Him before starting my lesson on any given day. And I am so grateful that I have the ability to not only ask for His help but also to have my prayers answered because I can tell you my progress would not be possible without Him and His Spirit.

Forgive me for taking ya'll to church in that last paragraph but I would feel very ungrateful if I didn't say that because, trust me, I have taken up a lot of His time in the last few weeks (haha). And I have a stronger testimony of prayer and faith because of it.

Also, thanks to all of you for your kind words of encouragement and support! I appreciate it more than you know.

Here are some photos of the township recreation center where I have my swim lessons and where Y and B play while I learn:

This is a shot of the Lazy River, Lap pool (where I swim) and some log balancing thing.

Here's the Lap Pool, where magic is made (and no, not that kinda magic).

The splash pad area without all the sprayers on, of course.

The water slide.

Just Pictures

Here I just wanted to share some pictures with you guys that we've taken over the past few days, enjoy!

Say Cheese!

Adorable!

She loves her mommy!

I think she totally looks like me in this picture.

Too precious!

I love her laugh and her smile, in this picture I got 2 for 1.

LOVE it!!!

B's favorite outfit and she's trying to see her reflection in the glass.

Trying so hard to touch it without mommy noticing.