Campfest

We spent five days at camp with the boys, my nieces and nephews, and my folks. The boys had a blast and did all sorts of good summer kid stuff. Luke jumped off the dock about 5 million times. He is not at all afraid to go under now and swims right back to the ladder by himself. We have been taking pieces of foam out of his swimmy periodically all summer and he really does seem to be learning how to swim that way. Now he is pretty fearless even when he doesn't have his swimmy on. I think next summer he'll be swimming without it all the time. He also went tubing three times, once with Sarah, once with me, and once with Kate. Like a kid on a ride in an amusement park, he looked like every nerve in his body was on high alert while he was in the tube, but said he had fun and that he liked the fast parts when he was in the boat. He's come a long way since the time two summers ago that he cried from inside the boat when I was tubing and fell off the tube and he thought I was gone for good.


Teo, meanwhile, was charming all the relatives and busy cutting two top teeth. Here he is playing in the faux play pen with his cousins Maya and Linnea. Why is it no child will spend even five seconds in a Graco port-a-crib without screaming, but if you throw him in an inflatable boat or a plastic turtle-shaped wading pool, he'll entertain himself for hours? Teo worked on pushing himself up to a stand while holding onto the sides of the turtle pool and is quite pleased with himself. He is going to be walking before we know it.

Luke came back from camp with a whole bunch of new teen-age expressions, like "Dude, that's awesome!" and "Bring it on!" More worrisome, today he said the word "assimilate" and then spoke what sounded like Klingon. Teo, fortunately, didn't seem to learn any bad habits from the extended family, although I do think he's picked up a little bit of hypochondria from my mom. Oh well.