Living in Florida means that we are surrounded by water. We’re in Orlando, so I’m not talking about the ocean. I’m talking about our neighbors. Seems like every house in FL (except ours) has a swimming pool. We opted for a big shade tree that our young boys wouldn’t drown in.
Our neighborhood also has public pools. Not 1, not 2 but 4 pools for our boys to beg* to swim in.
*BEG (verb) To whine and plead for hours; to use a tone and pitch of voice that runs up your parent’s spine and into their brain like a jack hammer until they collapse into a fleshy puddle on the floor and say, “Yes.”
Zeke's learning the Duck Method from Teacher Sarah.
Most kids are happy to put their face in the water and get a duck. Not Zeke. He wants to squirt Teacher Sarah's head. We have to pay extra for that.
Then she teaches them to "Jump into the hoop". He'll be starring in Cirque du Soleil's "O" in 2026
Then they do a “Starfish float”. That’s when Sarah hold’s their head and counts, “1 starfish, 2 starfish…” while they float on their backs.
A few times, when Sarah was helping Zeke with his Starfish float, she laughed. I never understood why until I did some Starfish floats with Zeke after class to practice. He’s still really nervous to hold his hands out, so he reaches back to grab something…anything…to hang onto. “HONK!”
My "innocent" devil.
Zeke is almost 3. He likes to “help” me do everything. Sometimes it goes well, most times it requires deep cleansing breaths and cleaning supplies.
The guilty party always stays around to watch his destruction.
Grocery shopping with Mommy means that Zeke wants to “help” put the items on the conveyor belt.
I turned my head for a nano second (to explain to the bagger how to put the cold items in my insulated bag and that a box of pretzels was NOT a cold item.) Zeke reached around behind him and picked up the vegetarian-fed, free-range, chauffeur-driven, carton of eggs.
I did an actual spit-take, “hummina, hummina” stutter when I turned around to see the entire dozen broken and dripping onto my entire cart of groceries.
“Sorry, Mommy…I had a accident…sorry, Mommy.”
“That’s OK, Zekey…accidents happen…thank you for helping me.” is what I heard coming out of my mouth, which was really hard to hear over all the screaming and cussing in my head.
I wish I had taken a photo of all the eggs in the cart but my shock and horror didn’t wear off and allow me to move for several minutes. I did get a shot of the poor bagger guy who was called to clean up:
Nothing like a 97 year old on his knees cleaning my mess to add to my guilt and horror.
At least there was a huge line of people huffing, puffing and sighing behind me.
And how was YOUR day?
