Those girls!

I need to be better about just jotting things down on the blog with a quick pic, since I use my phone way more than the camera anyway and I can't seem to find the motivation to sit down and really blog much anymore.

Isabella
Just finished Safety Town, which she loved!! To my surprise she was a Pledge of Allegiance helper, which meant she was one of 3 kids to stand in front of the 80 kids, 40 counselors, parents, and police officers to recite the pledge into the microphone!! Whose kid is that?  And she tells me she wasn't even nervous! She went to Safety Town each day without even looking back! She's also been taking swim lessons, and has come a long way in her swimming so far this summer. The other day at lessons she swam 2 laps! She loves going down the slide at the pool. Her confidence has grown in leaps and bounds over this past year. She is ready for kindergarten! Oh man this morning, she picked up this HUGE HUGE beetle that was crawling on our sidewalk and it pinched her...scared the shit out of both of us! Hopefully it taught her a little lesson, though I'd hate to squelch that side of her that enjoyed letting cicadas crawl up her shirt...

Bailey
Has also been taking swim lessons. She has hated it! I call it a good day when she cries for less than half the lesson. BUT...she is already reaping the rewards! The past two days we've been at the pool she has been swimming!! Jumping twisting gliding floating...finding her inner dolphin! Not really propelling herself very far but it is so awesome to see her developing so much confidence in the water. It makes her just as happy as it makes Isabella! She is still such a funny girl with her little facial expressions and made up vocabulary words. She's also in quite the mommy love phase right now. It is a little more sophisticated than the usual mommy clingy phase, as she insists on marrying me, and in order for that to happen, "only girls marry girls" (I love her way of thinking and really hope that when she gets a little older the mindset is prevalent that anyone can marry!). She also named a country after me, when she designed her own flag at school. And she told one of her teachers "my mommy is pretty, isn't she!". But behind all that sweetness and intuition lies a little beast of a child who will stand her ground with intense stubbornness, flummoxing us into a state of parental frustration, since we didn't really deal with this to quite the extent with Isabella.

The girls get along, ah, probably about as well as any other siblings. Sometimes they play together happily for hours, though that is usually dictated by Isabella. When she is in the mood to play with Bailey she will direct play and Bailey is almost always genuinely happy to play along. But sometimes Isabella can just be mean! Of course, Bailey can sometimes be the instigator...and so the story goes...

The girls are  both so very excited to go to the beach later this summer, hooray for summer!