Like A Fish Out Of Water

Almost overnight, Stretch has learned to tie her shoes, ride her bike, jump rope, and swim.  Not just doggy paddle, either, but full-on under-the-surface darting through the water like a sea lion.  I’m pretty sure that page two of the Good Mommy Handbook states you should never compare your daughters to sea lions, but I wasn’t sure how else to describe her new skill.

The swimming, and all those other accomplishments, is a sign of something bigger.  A sign that my baby is growing up.  And, no, I don’t have two babies just because the girls are twins.  Reckless was born two minutes before Stretch and quickly took on the role of big sister.  Not only did Reckless roll over, sit up, and walk first, but she’s been riding her bike without training wheels and swimming for two years now.  She’s always been fairly self-sufficient.  I’m pretty sure I caught her ordering her own cell phone on line last week.

But Stretch….well, she’s always needed me.  It’s been exhausting at times, but now she’s figuring things out.  And, she’s starting kindergarten on Thursday!  Technically, they both are.  But my only concern about Reckless and school is that she’ll break out and hitch a ride to Vegas.  With Stretch, I worry that she’ll need something and we won’t be there to help her.  Or that worried me until recently.  In lieu of her swimming performance at the pool today, I’m starting to suspect she’ll be just fine.  I’m also starting to suspect I’m not her real mother.

Because I’m not a good swimmer.  I can swim, but I’m self-taught, so it’s sloppy.  And, I’m not the only member of my family that is aquatically challenged.  My brother just took lessons a few years ago and prior to that, he couldn’t so much as float.  He also struggled with snapping his fingers until he hit 30, but other than that, he has excelled at everything in his life.

My mom still can’t swim, which explains her fear of boats.  Her absence of fear about flying is intriguing in light of that.  I’m fairly certain my maternal grandparents couldn’t swim, but I doubt it came up since they likely never even saw a concrete pond.

I enjoy swimming though.  Sometimes I go up to the neighborhood pool early in the mornings and swim laps to give my joints a break from all the running I do.  It’s a good workout if you’re doing it right; it’s a GREAT workout if you’re doing it just a little bit wrong.  My swimming is always accompanied by a subconscious fear of drowning, which further elevates my heart rate.

That fear was instilled when I was learning to swim.  And, now that I think about it, self-taught is probably the wrong descriptor.  I figured out how to swim because my teenage babysitter’s younger brother repeatedly tried to drown me in the lake every time she turned her back.  Maybe self-preservation is more accurate.  And, maybe mankind would learn to fly if we were repeatedly pushed out of airplanes without parachutes?  The repeatedly part of that equation is tricky.  But maybe someone should check with my mom.  I suspect she already knows how to fly, or else she’d show some kind of reluctance about boarding planes.

But this blog isn’t about my mom being a superhero.  It’s about Stretch finally finding her own wings and learning to fly.  I assume she’ll still be coming back to the nest after school each day, so I won’t cry too hard on Thursday.  But I hope she’ll continue to let me tie her shoes from time to time.  And I hope that one day she’ll teach me how to swim like her.

the Graduates

Reckless and Stretch graduated from preschool Thursday night.  Finally.  I suspect that my husband and I felt a little like the parents of those college kids that take like seven or eight years to finish their Bachelor’s degrees because it seems like the girls were at that school For.Ev.Er!

They started there in September of 2008, when they had just turned two.  I only sent them one morning a week, and it was basically so that I could have three and a half hours alone to contemplate the reasons I shouldn’t run away from home, which can be a hard thing to resist doing when you have two two year olds and a four year old.  Not to mention, I was worn out coming off of the previous year of having two one year olds and a three year old and I had pretty much faced that year in a stupor because before that I had two babies and a two year old!

The next year of their preschool life, they attended three days a week until November.  Reckless had a horrible, serious bout with pneumonia that had her hospitalized twice in one month, and the pediatrician recommended we take the girls out of preschool because if she contracted any other respiratory viruses that fall or winter, it could be life threatening.  Stretch hadn’t been as sick, but even though they were awful at sharing toys, they were great at sharing germs.  So, instead of taking a semester off to travel Europe and experiment with drugs, the girls took a semester off to watch cartoons and take steroids.

They made a triumphant return to school in April and finished out the year with their three year old class.  Sure, they only knew A-E and U-Z, but part of an alphabet can get you pretty far on the playground these days.

The next year, 2010-2011, they were in the four year old class and what we thought was their “senior year” of preschool.  Their health, thank God, had improved drastically by the time they were four.  And they’d both nailed down a major – Arts and Crafts.  But, when spring came, the teacher encouraged us to hold off on kindergarten.  She felt that since their birthday was so close to the cut off and they were born five weeks early and one of them was barely going to pass Calculus that year, they’d benefit from one more year of preschool.  She was so right.

We split them up into different four day a week pre-K classes this last year, allowing them to make separate friends, cultivate their separate personalities, and have at least a few hours a day to share germs with other kids, not just each other.  Granted Stretch was so tall by this year that many of her classmates confused her for a teacher’s aide, but that’s okay, she’s going to be a legendary basketball player as soon as we can figure out a way to keep her from running off the court crying.

At this point, they’re more than prepared for kindergarten.  And I’m more than prepared to have all three of my kids in full time, year round, school.  I survived off of one morning a week; I rallied when I had three; I finally saw some productivity out of myself when they were all out of the house four mornings a week, so this six and a half hours a day five days a week thing should have me thriving!  I can catch up on all of the books I’ve been wanting to read, the laps in the pool I should be swimming, the projects I need to tackle.  With that kind of time on my hands, I should be able to launch an effective campaign for the presidency and solve our nation’s fuel crisis!  I guess I’ll see how it goes organizing and painting the office and take it from there.