Cincinnati

We took a quick trip to Cincinnati Thursday for Steve to do a workshop at the plant there, and have a mini vacation. The boys and I went for a swim in the hotel pool before dinner. Jakob remembered how much he loved the water from California, and would go under water, except he wouldn't really go any farther out than the third step. Noah went in to about his waist and didn't even like it when I tried to carry him around.
Ben didn't like to get in past his knees but he kept going between the pool and the hot tub to dip in his toes and run back to the pool. He slipped on the tile 4 or 5 times until he finally bumped his head on the floor and I made him sit out for a little. Then he agreed to just sit on the side of the pool and not go back and forth. We decided to go over to the hot tub and he was sitting on the side again. He kept putting his hand in the water and would pretend to drink it and then laugh. He got brave again and went back over to the pool and did the same thing with his hand and wouldn't you know it, he lost his balance and fell in. As he was flailing around trying to get himself out, I ran across and jumped in to get him out of the water while some crazy woman said 'oh, he'll be alright' like I shouldn't really be concerned - but her largely prego daughter was sitting in the hot tub with her, so what does she know?! I got Ben out of the water and he was just fine, he was pretty scared and crying, but he didn't swallow any water or anything, so we left the pool. The whole thing probably lasted only 10 seconds, but it seemed like a lot longer, and I am really glad I didn't have to do CPR because a lot has changed since I was 11 and took the course for baby sitting! Jakob thought it was pretty cool that Ben swam but he didn't understand that that wasn't real swimming.
I also got to go to the new Ikea store in Cincinnati. It was great. Jakob and Noah got to play in Smaland for an hour, and Ben has new motivation to become potty trained. He'll get to play the next time we're there if he's out of diapers. He was very sad that he couldn't play yesterday, so he tried sitting on the potty a couple of times today.
After Ikea, we picked up Steve and went to a really cool grocery store. 'Really cool grocery store?' you ask. It's called Jungle Jims." It has really cool international food and fresh fish and produce and you can watch the fish coming in to the tanks, and they have cooking classes, and so much more that we probably didn't even see. It would have been better if we weren't so tired and the boys actually liked shopping.