Playing with Scissors

We’ve been doing some arts and crafts activities with Katherine in an attempt to reduce her weekend TV time which lately has meant watching The Tigger Movie and Winnie the Pooh’s Very Merry Christmas (“My Other Tigger Movie”) over and over and over. We've done painting, playdough and cutting and pasting. This weekend K. insisted on trying the scissors herself. Now, much to my amazement, they have done cutting at school, I was shocked one afternoon, a number of months ago, to walk into the two year old room and find one of the teachers cleaning up a table full of cuttings… “We’ve been working on our fine motor skills!” Wow, really?? Scissors at TWO? You people are brave! So when K. grabbed the scissors Sunday morning I tried my best to stay calm and supervise instead of grabbing them from her with a “Mommy will do that!” She didn’t do that bad except for the fact that our scissors are not made for little hands therefore she had trouble opening and closing them once she started cutting. She also insists on holding them upside down but hey, it does get the job done for her. And in case you’re wondering she does a good job of keeping her fingers out of the way.

Ted and I decided that if she was going to be doing some cutting at home it would be best to get her own pair of scissors…blunt tip scissors. And while we were at it, we could restock our arts and crafts supplies. K. was thrilled with this idea. Off we went to Michael’s where I attempted to sneak a peak at the scrapbooking stuff before picking out K’s scissors (the nerve!) She held that little package of scissors (with a purple handle) all through the store and then spent most of the rest of the afternoon cutting up her “Cut and Paste” book. No pasting was done. Our TV room floor is a mess and Katherine is very happy with “my scissors”.

What would a weekend be without some swimming? We went multiple times on Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday morning however, we woke up to find the ring at the top of the pool deflated. Seems that is has a small leak. No problem, we’ve got patches…except…we’ve got to find where the leak is. Obviously submerging the ring is not the answer, the pool water will flow out. I did a visual inspection and I didn’t see any huge holes, so we’re looking for a tiny one. I’m thinking some soapy water and a paint brush might do the trick, if I paint around with the water and watch for bubbles. My first place to look is going to be the seams. I’m also thinking that going around the seams with a tube of seam sealer might be the best thing to do anyways. Then if its still leaking at least I know its not the seams. We really want to keep this pool for next year too, so I’m determined to find the leak. Any other ideas are welcomed! Of course with highs at 100 over the next two days, I’m thinking we may just blow the thing back up twice a day and wait for some cooler temps before we sit in the sun leak hunting. UPDATE: since I wrote this post this afternoon I very easily found the hole in the pool! It is all patched, the pool is full and we are back in business!