Our week started propitiously last Sunday with a lovely afternoon dip in the neighborhood pool, which, for reasons beyond human comprehension, was completely empty at 4.30 pm. Proud of his new-found courage to venture into the deep on his "fish floatie," Sava enjoyed swimming around while Raya looked on and worked on teething--
It is ending not so propitiously with a most miserably failed attempt at a swim lesson for Sava in the lovely new JCC pool today; Sava is signed up for a group lesson with his best buddy Levi and, lucky boys, they were the only ones in the class today; the class started with the coach asking both boys to get in the deep part of the pool and hold on to the wall as their feet dangled--
--to which Sava's reply was a firm NO; he did get in briefly, held on for dear life with his body half protruding from the water, and then begged to be helped out; he spent the rest of the time being not-so-gently coaxed by mommy to please get in the water or else...(and no, I did not give him a single good reason to do it, and yes, I totally lost it, and made him even more determined to stay out with my determination to make him feel bad about it; I knew it was all futile, and I knew I was doing more damage than the mere idea of "lessons" had already done, but I just couldn't help it; even despite everything I've read about dealing with "highly sensitive" personalities, and even despite the immense growth into which living with Rado and seeing his mind in action has propelled me, I give in to the emotional charge of such difficult moments, and barely hold back from saying, "For crying out loud, just get in and do it! What is the big deal?"--
Well, whatever the big deal is...the boy would NOT get in the water. He spent the whole half hour watching Levi being coached, and in the end submitted quietly to the "punishment" of going home instead of staying in the pool and playing.
We are not sure what to do next, but likely will try to get out of the class and likely will swallow the fat membership fee for the JCC so that we can take him there weekly and begin to coach him ourselves. He loves water, and we have no doubt that he will end up learning to swim--this year, or next, or two years from now--but we also know, deep in our hearts, that he is not ready to do this with another person. As with so many things in life, Sava needs to do things his own way, at his own pace, and we might as well accept it. Otherwise, there is heartache and disappointment all around, and life is too short for those kinds of feelings.
*****
In other news, this week's favorite game around here is a version of
Star Wars in which Sava fights the "staunch troopers" and pursues them in a space suit made up of Raya's flotation device and a toy bucket which he
throws on his head since his hands can't reach that far once he is inside the floatie; he runs around the house, bumping in walls and making strange sounds under the bucket--
When not suchwise engaged, he and Raya work on growing new teeth by chewing on the guard rail of his bed--
He also loves loves building with wooden blocks and fiddlestix, which is a most satisfying thing to witness; it's been weeks since we last turned on the TV, and even though there are times when he seems briefly bored, Sava always finds something to do either alone or with one of us. I had a wonderful student last year whose astonishing mind excelled so far above everybody else that at the end of the school year over a cup of coffee I couldn't help asking her what her parents had done in order to make her into such a remarkable person; she told me that they never had TV, and whenever they complained of being bored, their mother's reply was, "Go read a book." Go build with blocks. Legos. Fiddlestix. Play ball. Draw.
In the absence of more girly toys, and given that her main interest in toys is to
eat them, Raya is becoming quite fond of Sava's cars--
And speaking of Raya, the poor girl is having such a hard time with her teeth. Apart from the fact that they are coming in so crooked that it looks like she'll need braces at age two, they are aggravating her reflux considerably, and she is just plain miserable most of the day; we've stopped giving her hard things to chew on in the hopes that it might help the teeth, which are growing too far forward on the gum, to not get any worse, and she ends up unhappy with most things we do give her--like a bottle of expired tylenol, for instance (we also don't give her any pain-killers, because these tend to make the reflux flare up)--
This picture shows how low on the gum the v-shaped teeth sit and...how darn cute she is nonetheless--
And this one, of her upper lip sucked in, is how she looks much of the day and is my favorite teething image that I'd like to carry with me when she is grown--
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And if it was not 9 pm, and I did not have to go nurse her and then spend an hour pumping so that we'll have milk for her oatmeal tomorrow, this post would probably be a lot longer; there are always more things to record than the ninety minutes between dinner and nursing allow me to put down. So, to conclude, here is a favorite image of Sava who just recently discovered that it is cool to wear both his sun hat
and his sun glasses (he who a year ago adamantly refused to put on his sunglasses...ever)--
And, the sunniest picture of the week, featuring Sava buck naked after a session in the pool, playing a version of peek-a-boo with Raya, who is giggling her little heart out--
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