Day Six

We left West Virginia this morning after enjoying a complimentary breakfast at the hotel which went...well....it went. We stayed in Tridelphia, West Virginia which is at the very top of WV and probably took less than 30 minutes until we had crossed over into Ohio. Ohio was where I first really felt the change in location. Miles and miles and miles and miles of endless fields were really all you could see from the highway outside of the occasional gas/fast food exits. We made a stop for gas and caffeine, and then another stop for some lunch snacks for the kids, and got to Indiana in the early afternoon. We settled into the hotel room and while I had forgotten about this when I booked the room, it is our first night sleeping in 2 beds instead of 1! A king bed has served as our family bed each night this trip and while it has worked and we've all survived it... it will be nice to have a little extra room to sleep. That being said, Teddy and I will be sharing a bed and while most of the night he is very sweet and cuddly... he frequently will squeal or toss his body around which is difficult to sleep through. I made a barrier on his side of the bed with throw pillows stuffed under the bed sheet so fingers crossed he won't fall out of bed. If he does it's just the floor and no furniture so he'd be okay, but I'd prefer to not have to wake up out of dead sleep to manage the freak out he would inevitably have.

Tonight we swam at the hotel's indoor pool, which was heated and felt like a sauna and we had a MAJOR development in our lives. Henry (age 4.5) has been petrified of water nearly all of his life. We have tried what feels like every approach when it comes to him and water... swimming lessons, letting him sit on the side of the pool, slowly introducing him to water, and while I'm not proud of it... throwing him into the pool (I realize this one will likely be something he talks about in therapy as an adult.) I don't know if it was his own realization that water is not nearly as scary as he thought, his level of exhaustion from the trip so far, or a Utopian combination of right place/time/moods but Henry finally got over his fear of water, and with the help of a puddle jumper arm float, he swam like a god dang fish! He seemed to understand kicking and arm strokes and was able to really get the hang of it. He yelled "I'm a tiger shark!!!!!" about 8 million times, and we "looked for prey" for about an hour. I had to basically pull him out of the pool. He impressed us both so much, it was awesome. Teddy, sadly, was not able to witness his brother's aquatic developments, as he decided the pool was the best time to take a massive and disgusting bowel movement. Thankfully he yells "I POOPED!" when he goes and we were able to stop him before he jumped back in the pool, but it required Josh and him to evacuate to the hotel room for clean-up, missing out on some of the developments.

Now... it's 7:27pm and I'm exhausted from driving the full trip today of 5 hours, the boys are exhausted from swimming and we are all going to sleep (fingers crossed). Goodnight!

Oh- and probably the best one line of the day was during the drive when Henry looks up from his kindle and says "Mama? Is Indiana the same as India with all the big animals?"  Kids really say the darnedest things.