party

We have just returned home from KT's first party of the year.

It was for Eboni at Hungry Jacks. It was a small crowd of only about 13 kids which was terrific ... although that many is still enough to make plenty of noise.

KT participated fully in this one ... heading off to play outside in the playground with the other kids .. even a few she did not know who were older.

She didn't seem to be too worried by the noise and she finally went down (several times) the curly slippery slide.

Last year at kindy parties there she wanted to stay very close to me and would not venture near the curly slide until all the other kids were gone ... which of course never happened.

She got to have a brief play with her "best friend" Sophie as well. And I managed to get her sitting next to Sophie for the Ice cream cake eating part of the party.

I am pretty confident that she will have a great time and really enjoy herself if we have a party for her next year!

I am very worn out! I suspect KT will be too later on tonight.

We didn't end up going swimming today because when KT woke up she sounded a bit congested and was a bit sneezy and I didn't think there was any point exacerbating the situation ... especially as we have a big week of birthdays coming up.

I also missed swimming on Friday because I felt a bit under the weather and my throat was a bit sore. Hopefully we all stay healthy. I have been gargling with a few drops of tea tree oil in water every night and trying to get plenty of sleep.

On Wednesday night I had a great swimming class and was introduced to a drill where you do "rocket arms" along with a body undulate and butterfly kick and every 4th count you do breaststroke arms (continuing nonstop with the butterfly kick).

I was also asked to continue to be aware of my body position in the water and try not to lift my head so much because when my head comes up my feet and lower body go down. You need to bring your feet and legs up and when you roll your head to the side you have to blow air (and water out of your mouth) until your head is turned far enough that your mouth is clear of the water.

I found this quite tricky to do and ended up swallowing and unexpectedly gulping quite a bit of water.

Will have to practise this a bit more but this coming week my period begins, Uni's birthday is on the night of the swimming class and the pool will be closed and KT will be home for the ekka holidays on Mon and Wed so I may have a bit of difficulty doing much swimming this week.

May need to start fresh the week after.

When i returned home I had the swirly eye thing happening again ... thought I might have been over that now ... but admittedly I did swim pretty solidly for the whole hour again. There were more people in the class this week and some people had to share lanes. I did pretty well with back stoke ... when I concentrated on really pushing the water down to my feet with strong arms, and also moved both arms more frequently one after the other I really starting moving along the pool and I stayed pretty straight!!! The other thing I tried to concentrate on was stretching my arms forward, holding them out in front and keeping my fingers together while stroking.

I am not really doing too much with my arms under the water ... it is hard in enough to remember to breathe and move my arms above the water and bring them down in the right spot at the right angle so then I can stretch them forwards .... then somehow they make it back out of the water again but I am not aware how. I guess I have to move the opposite hand/arm under the water to the hand that is up above the water ... but for the moment that side of things is not very connected or co ordinated.