On Friday, I drove us to Meierotto's at the suggestion of several commenters. I drove there without calling first. On the way, Beloved said, "Do you think they might be closed due to the holiday?" and I was all "Dude, the holiday is TOMORROW and this is TODAY." So after a 45-minute trip through blinding rain, we arrived to find the good people of Meierotto's are out of the country on a diamond buying trip until, um, today I think. But this was Friday.
Beloved immediately got on his phone and started looking up other jewelers in the area. We ended up at Drenon Jewelry Co., a place I'd never heard of that had crazy selection and a hard-driving salesman who had me at "I once sold 86 Rolex watches in one month." No, seriously, they had exactly what I was hoping for and under the cost of the ring I lost. I ended up with two micro pave bands, one for each side of my engagement ring. So now I have a wedding band and an anniversary band and Beloved is off the hook for the rest of his life. They just need to be, um, sized. WHICH I WILL DO IMMEDIATELY.
After the wedding band journey was over, the rest of the weekend was devoted to swimming and blowing up our vast arsenol of fireworks. The little angel is not a born fish. She, in fact, hated putting her head under the water with the force of North Korea until just recently. We invested in private swimming lessons this year, and that has made all the difference. Her swimming teacher is awesome. I have no idea what she said, but suddenly the little angel is paddling around (albeit still in her life jacket, but I'll take it) without being held and dunking her whole head under the water without coming up shrieking like a greased hyena. To have a child willing to immerse her body in a swimming pool has brought me fifteen steps closer to what I consider "competent mother." It's probably unfair of me to internalize my daughter's swimming issues in this way, but swimming isn't like playing basketball or knowing how to draw a full house in poker -- it's a survival skill, and I've felt like I've failed her until she knew how to keep her head literally above water.
Yesterday Beloved and I experienced the thrill of sitting on a deck chair sunning ourselves and sipping cool drinks while watching our daughter play in the pool. We watched her. From the side of the pool. Earlier this summer I watched other parents of five-year-olds sitting on the side of the pool working their tans while I tried to pry my life-jacket-and-floatie-wearing offspring off my neck and wondered when? How? How did they do that? How do I manage that? Will she go to high school still clinging to my neck in three-foot water? It's truly amazing how quickly things can change with the right swimming instructor. My sense of motherly satisfaction hit an 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 yesterday around 4:30 p.m., there on the side of the pool, watching my life-jacketed wonder twirl in the three foot without me.
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Around the Internet: I reviewed The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting on Cool Mom Picks and wrote about mommy bodies on BlogHer today.
