…But the weekend was absolutely gorgeous, and we spent all of it at the swim club. Two full days of galavanting in the sun – what a treat!

In keeping with yesterday’s blog theme, I showed Chloe a video of Greg Louganis at the 1984 Olympics this morning – his flawless dives are really quite something to behold. Chloe, never one to censor herself, reacted to the video by saying, “That looks easy!” I guess that’s the idea, though. A professional diver should make her acrobatics look exceedingly easy.

The first thing Chloe did when we arrived this morning was to practice her diving – and I am not lying when I say that as the day progressed, her legs were straighter and more together. A couple of her dives were really fantastic.

Sophie made progress of her own today. For the first time, she was willing to float in her vest (in the big pool) without holding our hands. Granted, these attempts at independence lasted only seconds at a time. But she was visibly proud of her bravery.

My predictions for the end of the summer: Chloe will be doing flips off the diving board (she actually does a somersault under the water just after she comes out of her dive) and Sophie will be “swimming” across the pool in her floatie vest all by herself.

Another cute stuffed animal photo. It’s Monday, back to work after an extra-long weekend. Back to the old routine – except that my husband took today off as well.

This was a bonus for Sophie, who got to spend some quality time with her Papa while Chloe was at camp. Apparently, she’s super monkey at the playground – taking risks and needing extreme supervision so that she doesn’t get herself into trouble.

We never had that problem with Chloe – she was always very prudent. Sophie takes care, but she’s not afraid. She grabs onto the rings and swings from them – although she can’t yet go from one to the other, she’s perfectly content to HANG and SWAY. Until she falls. And that’s where it gets a little crazy. Because if you’re not there to catch her, she’ll still fall. And it’s a pretty long drop to the ground.

Chloe, that is. Made a grand entrance earlier this afternoon, accompanied by two boxes of books and a bag of junk to add to her much smaller collection of existing junk. Aside from the books, she did bring home one cool thing, though. A glass jar that she decorated using a special stenciling process.

She noticed the change to the sunroom right away – “Where’s all my stuff?” After reassuring her that we kept most everything, but just organized it, she seemed a little skeptical. Because we were out and about this evening, however, she hasn’t yet had time to take full measure of what’s missing.

If tomorrow’s blog subject is entitled “Howls Heard Across the Universe,” you’ll know that it’s because our big Chloe discovered the extent of her parents’ heavy-handed treachery. The good part is that I actually did very little of the purging, so when she does realize how much of her stuff is actually gone, I’ll be able to blame her papa.