Swimming and Reading

I've been having some technical difficulties which have prevented me from uploading some great videos into my web album...so, for now you're just going to have to imagine my awesome children. :)
Swimming:
Zach has now begun swimming lessons with Lexi. On Thursday nights the whole family heads over to the local YMCA. Zach and I head into the water first for his lesson, while Daddy and Lexi watch. Then, when Zach is all done, Daddy takes him home while Lexi and I stay for her lesson. Zach's first impression of swimming lessons was not favorable...he spent most of the lesson clinging to me and sobbing. But after four lessons he is much happier, and now occasionally even laughs during class! His favorite part of each class is when the teacher brings out the basket of balls, and he can throw them out at his sister. The goal right now is just to get him used to being in the water, and being in class. So far, all is going well.
Lexi is now a super swimmer. She has decided she does not need the bubble at all anymore, and has become far more confident in the water. She challenges herself in every class, and can now swim half way across the pool before asking for a break. Sometimes her head goes completely under the water and it doesn't phase her at all. What an amazing improvement! This is the last class we'll be able to take as a Mommy and Me...so I'm not sure what we'll do after. Hopefully we'll get lots of time to swim together at the pond this year, so that by the fall she'll be ready to try a class all alone.
Reading:
Holy moly we have a reader! Lexi has been working on a little bit of reading for about a year now. I've tried very hard not to push her too much because she really loves to read, and I want it to be fun for her. But recently I noticed that she was sounding out some really big words, so I mentioned to her teachers that they may want to work on that with her more. Within a week she came home and read every single book of her early reader series! She's now quickly sounding out words like "splish" and "marsh" (from a book about a duck who gets stuck in the muck), and breezes past "sight" words like "the", "in", "and", etc. It's very exciting to listen to your baby reading, and she is so proud of herself. In the fall she'll be going into the "Older Learners" classroom at school, and I think she's really going to excel there.
There's lots of exciting stuff happening in the Lippman household. Hopefully I'll be able to get things back up and running soon, so that I can share all the excitement.