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Thanks Aunt Susan and Uncle Ike!! Their Christmas gift to Tyler was swim lessons at the Y. He's been sooo looking forward to it. Tyler is our little fish. He loves to go swimming, and he's really pretty good at it, too. He's not scared of the water at all, which can be a little scary for us parents. He can swim a little bit, but I like the idea of him learning more about how to be safe in the water and stay afloat for longer amounts of time and all that. He loves to practice holding his breath under the water in the bathtub...which tends to leave Tony a bit confused! :) I can't wait till summertime when we can get both the boys back out in the water. I don't know where we'll go yet, but we'll figure that out. I have a feeling that's how we'll spend a lot of our Saturdays. I hope Tony likes it as much as Ty always has! Maybe we'll get Gramma and Ga-Ga talked into a pool one of these years.

Swim lessons have also provided this overly possessive Mommy an opportunity to let go a little bit. Let me explain. Steve is a wonderful, fun Daddy. The boys and I are soooo blessed with him. I hear so many women talk about how uninvolved their husbands are with the kids. Steve wants to be a part of everything the boys do. He helps with get ready time, with bedtime, with diapers and other messy kid stuff, just everything really. He's a huge help to me! My own Dad didn't get too into the "kid stuff" when we were little. He's a great Dad, but he just wasn't involved the way Steve is. So I had my Mom with me ALL the time growing up. Every childhood memory includes being with her. So a lot times I get stuck feeling like I need to be the same way with my boys. I feel like I'm not being a great mom if I miss out on something. The thing is, that's really not fair to Steve or to the boys. I'm home with our little guys every day. I get to see a lot of the firsts, and I get to love on them all the time. So lately I've been thinking about how they need some special time alone with Daddy, too.

We were afraid if we took Tony to swim lessons, he'd be really mad the whole time when we found out he couldn't get in the water with Bubba. So I decided this was my chance. Steve was really excited to have a special time alone with Tyler, and they both really enjoyed it. Oh, and I didn't die either. It was actually nice. I got a break from my completely non-stop preschooler, and it turned out Tony was pretty happy to have some alone time with his Mommy. He got in my lap, and we cuddled nearly the whole time Steve and Ty were gone. If you know Tony at all, you know that NEVER happens!! So I learned how precious that one on one time can be and how much of a gift it is to Steve to make sure that he gets that with our boys, too.