Fun at the Pool

The girls have been ALL ABOUT swimming this week, as our town pool officially opened on Monday.  In fact, we are six for six so far, not missing a single day of swimming since the pool opened.  Since kids are required to pass the Deep Water Test in order to swim beyond the shallow section, the girls are able to wade around happily with other kids around their age, and the deepest water in this section is still deep enough to allow Julia to swim.  After an initial nervous hesitation, she has picked back up where she left off last summer and is able to swim several strokes without needing to put her feet or hands down on the bottom of the pool.  While I am beyond proud of her for swimming on her own (especially knowing her tendency towards reservation and away from daredevilry), she remains critical of her performance.

ME: Julia!  I'm so proud of you that you learned how to really swim without touching the bottom!
JULIA: Mom!  I wasn't swimming!  I was STRUGGLING.

Yeah.  She's not a perfectionist or anything.

While we're at free swim, Madeleine and I get to play all of Julia's made-up games, including "Pizza Baby" (in which we hold hands and turn around in a circle while Julia chants "Pizza Baby, Pizza Baby, woo-woo-woo!"), "Viper Fish, Viper Fish, cross my ocean" (which follows the exact same rules as the non-made-up game "Fishy, Fishy, cross my ocean"), as well as our very own swim lessons (Julia, of course, is the instructor, and Madeleine and I the students.)  Julia even devised her own version of the Deep Water Test for us to take.  Madeleine failed due to non-compliance.  I failed due to my unwillingness to travel far from Madeleine, who has an unnerving tendency to topple head-first under the water due to both the weight of her ginormous head as well as her general klutziness.  Thankfully, Ethan passed the test today, so at least Julia was able to reward ONE of her students.

Madeleine is usually content to wade about the water (with me right on her tail); however, today she decided that it was much more fun to put her hand under the water, then rub various parts of my body with her dripping wet hand.  First it was my legs, then my hips.  When she started rubbing my behind, I thought maybe we should move on to another activity.  Unfortunately, Madeleine was whole-heartedly into her game.  "WAIT!  I need to rub your BUM!" she shouted as I backed away from her.  Oh, hi, other parents in the pool.  Yes, you heard right, my daughter is trying to rub my bum.

Luckily, Madeleine was soon distracted by the bubbles she created by splashing her hands in the water, even interpreting her bubble patterns the way one might look for shapes in the clouds: "Mommy!  I maked a MAN!"  Later in the afternoon, I was able to ward off a near melt-down over wanting goggles which had been left at home by encouraging Madeleine to walk with me towards the rope separating the shallow and deep sections of the pool.  As we touched the buoy attached to the rope, Madeleine, chin-deep in water, announced to me, "Uh, Mommy, we can't go over THERE into the Deep Water Test."

Next week we begin swim lessons for Julia, during which Madeleine and I will sit on the benches and watch her swim.  In the words of another member of the pool, who just happened to work at Julia's preschool and witnessed the daily ritual of me dragging Madeleine kicking and screaming out of the preschool classroom after drop-off, "Ohhhhhh.... OH NO!"  I have already resorted to buying a new, secret coloring book that will just happen to appear during Monday's swim lesson as a potential distraction.  Wish me luck.

The girls at the pool: