Swimming Lessons

Max had his first swimming lesson of the year this Saturday. For those of you who have been a part of swimming lessons in Florida, you won't recognize these swimming lessons. Since you don't have a swimming pool around every corner in Illinois, they are less about survival training and more about getting kids used to the water. The Florida girl in me is not sure how I feel about this, but Max thinks they're fun. Hopefully, by the time we leave the beach this year, Max will be a little Florida fishy.

Here are a few pictures from his first lesson of the year:

Getting ready to search for his sinking egg: 

Something he did a lot of: wandering off. 

Blowing bubbles: 

Look, Mom! I'm wandering off again and you can't do anything about it!

This is when he told his teacher, "The zebra in Madagascar says 'Are you biting my butt?!?!'"

And laughing at himself afterward.

His favorite part: the surf board. 

His least favorite part: trying to float.

Between this and the butt thing, he's clearly a class favorite.

My little waterbug!

A couple videos to enjoy

At school they do a video series called Jolly Phonics. It goes through all the letters and some of the letter pairings (ch, sh, etc) and puts each letter sound with a little song. They are super cute and Max loves them. Plus he already knows what sound every letter of the alphabet makes! So there's two videos of that and the third video is the theme song from the show Fresh Beat Band. One of Max's favorites!

Playgrounds sure are extreme these days...

Happy Easter

We had such a great Easter weekend. I hope everyone else did, too. Adam's mom, brother and his wife came to visit, so we had a happy houseful to celebrate with. Max really loved coloring and hunting eggs this year, and enjoyed our church's Easter brunch and egg hunt, too. He did not enjoy "singing" in church on Sunday, or at least, I assume he didn't since he stood on stage for about two seconds before bolting.

Thanks for all the Easter goodies Max received. We have enough candy to last, at least, until next Easter!

Random Maxness

Sorry, Disney pictures never made it up, but you probably saw them on facebook anyway.

Here are a few from Disney and some random Maxness that you haven't seen on facebook. Our boy sure does have a lot of personality these days. And a lot of energy! He has been busy learning his letters and can identify most letters based on the sounds they make. He can recite several of his favorite books to us by memory. His teachers think he will be reading sometime very soon!

He is also loving sports. We play baseball and football nearly every day. He loves to tackle me, so we're working on remembering that pushing and tackling is okay for football but not when we're angry with our friends. It's tough to remember sometimes, but he's getting better every day!

Max's Pirate Party

Disney pictures are coming soon, I promise. In the mean time, check out the awesome party we had for Max in Florida. It was pirate themed and so much fun. True, half the fun was planning and creating all the stuff for it, but Max had a blast too. In fact, when we got back to Chicago the next day I asked him what his favorite thing was and he said his pirate party.

We started by decorating the backyard with some weathered looking banners that you might find on a ship out sailing the seas:

Added in some yummy food and drinks:



Gave the kids (and adults) stuff to turn themselves into pirates:

And pirate activities to enjoy:

Throw in some very yummy cupcakes:

A happy birthday boy:

And a little pirate photobooth fun:

Add that all up and what do you get? A hearty good time, me mateys!

Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us! I can't wait to start planning next year's party! :-)

Max's Birthday Extravaganza!

So much to share! We have had a busy February, not the least of which was a week-long celebration of Max's birthday! We went a little over the top, but had a great time doing it. He had two parties--one in Illinois and one in Florida--and in between he had a trip to Walt Disney World. How on earth are we going to top this next year?

To start, here are some pictures from his Illinois party at Pump It Up. Basically the kids just jump all over inflatable slides and bounce houses for an hour and a half (it's possible the parents do too). Max LOVED his party and so  much fun bouncing and bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. And then eating pizza and cake! Yum!!!

Getting ready to bounce....

Max and his bestie Jackson....

This was as good as it got for a group picture. Those kids wanted to play!

Cupcakes!

Be back soon with more from the big birthday week. In the mean time, hop on over to the KSP Blog to see Max's birthday pictures from Disney's Boardwalk.