Mermaids

My children are mermaids. Who knew? After two and a half months of swim lessons and several heart-stopping moments of watching them sink rather than swim, or inhale mouthfuls of water when they’re supposed to be holding their breath, I’ve finally witnessed the miracle of watching them propel their little bodies without the teacher’s assistance about five feet. They just duck their wet heads, get those skinny arms and legs going, and pop up for a breath every few strokes. The most amazing thing is how calm they both were about it. Peanut turned to her teacher last week and asked her to let go, saying “I want to try swimming by myself.” I figured she’d sink like usual, but instead she chugged right over to the wall like she’s always known how to do this. String Bean had the exact same realization yesterday, when the teacher pointed her toward the wall, asked if she thought she could make it on her own, and without a word she took off, all those long limbs pulling her along from the middle of the pool until she was face-to-face with the wall. She came up to find her dad and I applauding, and looked surprised to be there, right at our feet, halfway across the pool from where she’d started. We praised her, this girl who just two months ago hated getting her face and ears wet, until she gave us her trademark smirk and eye roll and asked us to stop. But even though they didn’t want anymore effusive praise, I could see the pride in the way they both tipped their chins up, just a little, waiting for their next turns to swim.

Swim Girls

We had our last play group gathering at a beach-type pool nearby (Contra Loma in Antioch, for those in the Bay Area). They have a large, shallow pool, with a nice sand bank on one side, perfect for young swimmers and tots who can’s even walk yet but know how to sit on sand in shallow water and splash up a good time.

The girls were thrilled to wade and play with their play mates in chest-high water, and were equally excited to wear their life vests and water wings (not at the same time) and try out the deeper water. There were lifeguards on duty who spent most of their shift yelling at kids to stop throwing sand (not to mean that the kids there were out of control, but to point out that the mass of little swimmers kept it safe enough that the lifeguards had little else to do but scold the sand-throwers).

Hubby came with us, which means I actually got to socialize with my friends a bit (not always possible at play dates, with two girls to watch who are always running in opposite directions). My sister, now at the tail-end of her maternity leave, and her 4-month-old baby came, too, and a good time was had by all. The girls had a tough time choosing between staying in the water and camping out under the beach umbrella next to their favorite baby in the world, and we had to drag them out of there screaming for more swim time and more cousin-love time. They were good and tired after all that, so we had successful naps and early bed times. It’s a bit too far away to go on a regular basis, but that’s not stopping the kids from asking every day if we can go back.

Fun in the Sun

Well, I promised the kiddies a pool day, but the 90 degree weather broke and it wasn’t quite warm enough for soaking in the kiddie pool after all, so instead we filled a bin with water out back, and used buckets, plastic tea pots, and plastic princess cups to splash around. Or that was the idea anyway. It didn’t go quite according to plan, because there were flies outside, and the little one is still insanely terrified of all insects. So she spent the majority of the time clinging to my leg screaming about a fly that kept buzzing around. The older one, insisting it wasn’t too cold to swim, decided to sit in the bin and overflow the water, then complain that there wasn’t enough water anymore.

I got the younger one set up inside with some of her favorite books, and sat just outside the screen door where I could keep an eye on both kids at once. The older one, overly concerned, as always, that her sister might just be having a better time than she was, soon abandoned the buckets of water to go in and harass her sister. They got into some game where they took turns putting one of those little New Year’s noisemaker horns into their mouth, then blew until the horn came flying out, aiming to hit each other with each attempt. They took turns blowing the horn at each other, trails of spit flying in its wake, and laughing hysterically at the situation. So, so much for fun in the sun. Who knew the entertainment of the day would be spitting a toy dug out of the bottom of the toy bin at one another for half an hour?

Heat Wave

Today is the second day with temperatures in the mid 80s, so I broke down and blew up the kiddie pool. Then watched it quickly deflate before my eyes. Through some miracle I dug through one of our many miscellaneous item drawers and found a patch that looked like it might belong to a blow-up pool. Actually, it looked like a small square of clear tape on a backing, but it had some official writing on it that convinced me it would work better than actual tape. Before finding the patch, I was ready to break out the super glue. My husband was lobbying for duct tape, the MacGyver universal solution to every problem.

I patched the holes I could find, inflated the pool again, and watched it deflate again. But slower this time. After several rounds of this, hindered by the two-year old who kept dive-bombing into the empty pool (probably creating new holes as I patched the old ones), I decided it was deflating slowly enough to give my girls the half hour of water time that they wanted. Well, they want a never-ending stream of water time, blue lips and goose-bumped quaking limbs notwithstanding, but I'm only good for about a half hour of water-fight supervision.

In all it took about 40 minutes for the pool's fun quotient to leak all over the ground, slowly traveling over to the rose bushes (a second bonus! A drip watering system). Then, instead of the tantrum I get when pulling frigid kids from a full pool, I had bored wet children ready to head inside for lunch. What better way to finally get them out of the pool than to have it deflate under them, losing all of its water and its appeal? A perfect solution, really. I'm thinking of patenting the idea.