u/Valuable-Mastodon-14

I LOVE my mother to death. Like sure we butted heads a lot when I was young (and on into my twenties 😅) but the older I got the more I realized how right she was about a lot of things and how much she really helped me. Heck if not for her myself and my twins (1yr boys) wouldn’t have even survived the pregnancy because she’s the one who took my call at 3am and said go to the ER. So I owe her more than I could ever give back in the form of love and respect.

That being said…she is driving me nuts. Bananas. Insane in the membrane. Out of my gourd. I’m losing my will to keep my mouth shut y’all. Every time I mention something my very mischievous little goblins are doing she has to come back with a worry wart answer nearly every time. If she thinks what I’m doing/allowing is especially egregious she will full on lecture me about it. These are my first children, yes, but I also have a masters of education and am 35. I’m not ignorant to what could happen if they just so happen to eat a cat treat—upset stomach, possible choking, rare allergenic reaction to ingredient—or fall off their chair—head trauma, scratches, bruise. Obviously I take precautions all day, every day to ensure their health and safety. I do feel that objectively that am a good mother. Yet every little quip about safety, lecture on health, and her use of possessive language towards my babies (she calls them her boys, which I get but it bugs me when coupled with this stuff) makes me feel like she’s accusing me of being a bad mom.
Today for example I took my boys out back to swim in our stock tank pool. I’ve been practicing with them safe swim techniques for infants so that they are less likely to accidentally drown if they ever fall into water. As you can see they are standing up flat foot and holding onto the edge. Cruising along the side of a pool is a very important step in their swim practice and I was so so so proud of my baby boys 🥰 they did so good, they were having fun, and even though one of the boys got a little spry and tried to walk without holding on (they haven’t officially started walking yet) which resulted with him briefly dunking himself he did exactly as we trained and popped right back up! Little trooper didn’t even cry! I sent a few pictures and a video to our family group chat and her first response was “omg they’re so precious! They really should be wearing floaties. They’re way too young to realize they don’t know how to swim and they could slip and drown even though you’re right there.” 🙄 the pool is 2ft deep and I was scooting along side them the entire time. Even if they both fell over at the same time I am more than capable of picking them both up, call for my husband, and worst case scenario begin CPR. I fully recognize pools are dangerous and things can go wrong with even the best made plans, but I’m not going to live in constant fear and teach that to my children the way she did to me and my sister. I just wanted to share something exciting and she made it into something ugly. She didn’t even comment on how impressive it is for them to be cruising along like this. I’m just emotionally exhausted 😩 I want to talk to her about it because I don’t think she’s doing it to be mean, but between taking care of my grandparents and my sister’s drama I don’t want to pile on just for the sake of my own feelings.
If you managed to read all of this then thank you for listening ❤️

So my new filter works perfectly fine for the big stuff, but there’s a lot of small little dirt particles getting in that just don’t get either sucked up or are stopped by the filter. Anyone have any advice or tips for getting all the silt out of the bottom of my pool?
(Pic for attention—and because I’m extremely proud of my little swimmers holding on while cruising around the rim today haha)

So I started my little stocktake pool back in 2021 as a treat for myself completing my first year teaching (smack dab in the middle of Covid no less). Up keep has been a challenge over the last two summers because I had my twins in the NICU last year and now they’re a year old so I’m chasing them around constantly 😆 but I’m dying to be able to have a space for me and to start teaching my boys how to swim so I have busted tail trying to get this in shape. I finally got it from Shrek’s swamp to clear water, protected it with a pool cover, had to get a new pump because the last one melted (that was a wild discovery when I took it apart), added a outdoor rug to give the boys something to sit on while I dried them off or skimmed the pool, and so the last easy project I had for it was to sand the deck and stain it! I got it sanded during a nap time a few days ago and then today I let my husband watch the boys while I stained it and I am tickled with how nice it looks! Except….its the wrong wood stain 🤣 all that work, all that sanding, and I didn’t read the can I was just like ooo I love this color and we have plenty of it! It’s an indoor furniture stain 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️ my husband said it’ll flake off at some point so I guess we’ll see how long it takes.

Ok so he’s not that big, but a very respectable size ❤️ after the tragic loss of a couple of tree frogs last week to pool chemicals—which I’m happy to report the cover is in place and four frogs have been saved thus far—I was tickled to see this big boy sitting on my porch 😁

I’ve saved many a tree frog, but I sadly couldn’t save these two. At least they died after an all night P Diddy level freak off—-I could hear them and their friends all night. I’m not sure what kind of frogs these are so I don’t know what I might need to block off, put treats near, etc. to keep them from venturing towards my pool.
Also I do have a pool cover for my tiny pool, but we have been leaving it off so we can see when the jets turn off and the pool needs a new filter.