a beautiful piece of blue plastic

i am loving these summer days with ethan and caroline. as soon as amelia lays down for her morning nap, we have been heading to the backyard to make good good use out of our baby pool! they stay hard at work pouring water from one container to another and making "leaf smoothies" and other concoctions for me. last year, caroline was not so sure of herself on the slide, and i had to stay right beside the pool in case she tumbled over. but this year, caroline owns the slide. ethan will busy himself with his boats and other floating things while caroline takes a wild ride down the slide over and over for almost the entire time they are in the pool. one saturday, they played happily in the pool while brian and i got some much-needed yard work done for almost 4 hours. you should have seen their prune feet! (i could not get ethan to turn around for the next picture for the life of me. apparently, a boy cannot be bothered with a mother's photography when there are boats to sail!)


the kids' joyful independence in this little pool has also afforded me some downtime while they're playing. sometimes i will put my feet in the pool with them (which ethan loves for me to do!), and sometimes i will take a few minutes for myself. one day, i even read a few pages of a book before one of the kids needed me!


karina came over to play one day, and the kids went straight outside to the pool. i didn't get any pictures of them actually in the pool, but i did capture them taking a break from all that swimming...



here, caroline is saying, "two tops!" because she opened both ends of the raisin box. (ya gotta love her watermelon goatee!)


and ethan was trying so hard not to look up at me... but i won that game! :)


i'll end this tribute to the baby pool with a little video of my big girl on the slide... i know that a really good mother would have put down the camera to help her daughter, but um, i just kept filming.


so you know where we'll be all summer. if we're not at the beach, we'll be splashin' and slidin' (and slippin') in our own backyard. :)