5 years 8 months 15 days

Day 2084. It was a rough morning with Emmy constantly coming to me and not letting me sleep. He also woke up Tammy who was sleeping next to me. At 9:30 my alarm went off, and I had to get up. I was pretty tired.

We all got ready to leave the house, and just before 10 am I left with Tammy and Emmy. Randy wasn't quite ready yet, so he left with Sammy a little later. He was going to take him to the playground, but he was so upset about having to get off the subway that they never made it there. Instead they came to our music school.

Tammy, Emmy and I rode the subway downtown, then walked to the music school. Even though there had been a subway disturbance/hold-up, we got there on time. And today the four regular kids were there for the class. The teacher did the greeting song, then they did a guessing game what they had all had for breakfast. Then it was time to get serious. They did the finger warmups, then she asked them to open the "Brother John" page. However, they never played it with both hands like they had done at home. Instead they only did one hand at the time, and one half of the class played the one hand, and the other half the other. It was a little confusing to them.

Then she gave them boards and had them listen to what she was playing. Then they had to put the notes on the lines. Finally they went up front to show that they can sing the new song they had learned last week and practiced all week. After that, it was story time which was exciting to them. They were then impatient to get their stickers and stamps. She did the good-bye song, and the class was over.

I had gone outside, when Randy and Sammy arrived and calmed down Sammy a bit. Randy then read some kids' books with him while we were still in class. After class, we all left together and walked to the tram stop. We took the tram, then got on the subway, then walked to the McDonald's right by the swimming pool. They had new toys, much to the kids' delight. We had a good time eating, then we left.

We crossed the square, paid for 2 hours of swimming and walked around the building to the wheelchair entrance. We all got changed and went inside, walking all the way to the warm water baby pool. We still had about 40 minutes until their swim class at 1:45 pm. And we had lots of fun in the pool. Emmy started playing with some other boys right away that had a ball and water guns. Tammy did lots of diving and water acrobatics, and she also played with Sammy who was with me for most of the time. Sammy and I actually went on a whole journey, role-playing going different places, and we had lots of un.

Their class started late. We left the warm water and went over to the big pool with cold water. I really did not want to go inside and didn't go in all the way. I did the greeting song with Emmy standing on the steps with water to my waist. Emmy then got a swim noodle, and off they went swimming. The teacher then gave Tammy a noodle as well as she was not happy about her leg movements this time. Last week she had still praised her big time. Tammy wasn't too happy to go backwards. I never went into the water but walked along watching them swim. They both had issues with their leg movements. She tried to correct them taking quite a bit of time with them. There were not as many kids as usual there today.

In the end she told them to swim all the way to the other end of the pool so they could jump off the board into the water. They were excited about that. Emmy was the best jumper, jumping high and far and without fear. Tammy spread out her legs, when she jumped rather sideways. They got to jump in three times each. Then they had to swim back to the other end where we did the good-bye song. They then got out of the water quickly to return to the warm water where Sammy was eagerly awaiting us. We played some more, but I was ready to go home as I was hurting a little again, though not as bad as yesterday. Randy was already out of the water as he'd had enough. So we soon all got out and went to the changing room to put our clothes back on.

While there, there was a diving instructor we haven't met yet who was impatient to have the changing room to herself. She was quite unfriendly. It simply takes us some time to all be dressed again and ready to go. We then walked to the subway and took two subways to get back home, where we arrived around 3:30 pm. While we were still at the pool, the IKEA delivery people had already called me that they were ready to deliver even though I had chose 6 to 10 pm as the delivery window. I told them we'd be home in an hour, and not long after we had returned they called that they'd be with us 10 minutes later. Randy then had to go to the building entrance to get the boxes and bring them to our apartment. After he had done that, he left with Sammy and Tammy to go to the grocery store and buy flowers for Mother's Day tomorrow. Emmy didn't want to go; he preferred watching videos at home.

At 4:30 pm I started teaching. Randy and the kids returned home while I was teaching. At 5:20 pm I was done and went to the kitchen to make their dinner. While they were eating, I was cutting up vegetables for my salad. Once they had stopped eating, they went into the bathtub, where they continued eating. Unfortunately especially Sammy still doesn't eat before going into the water, but there he ate everything on his plate.

I prayed for Sammy, then sat down with Emmy and Tammy for story time. We ended up reading quite a lot together. Then they went to bed after I had prayed for them.

I went to the kitchen and finished my salad, then sat down to eat. Later I started working on today's pictures. Randy always sits down with the kids, when they go to bed, and stays there until they are asleep, or until he has had his own nap. Tonight he put both IKEA shelves together which I really appreciated. One went into our bedroom, so I cleared out the messy corner where it goes and put the stuff in after. The other shelf we'll have to put up during the day tomorrow.

Now it's 1 am, and Randy has only just gone to bed which is unusually late for him. I still have to take care of the kitchen.