My girls love anything that pertains to water: buckets, squirt guns, ladybug raincoats, rainbow-patterned rubber boots and umbrellas with handles shaped like My Little Ponies.
They love to ride their bikes around in the rain, squirt each other (and me) with the water hose, run through the sprinkler and play on the Slip-n-Slide.
No, it doesn’t matter how big or small the pool (or puddle) is. If there is enough to splash in, it’s enough for them. I guess this is good news, since our "beach fund" is pitifully insufficient this year.
Take the tiny pool in the photos, for instance. It was the main attraction at Adelaide’s birthday party, and it’s barely big enough to hold one toddler. Once the partygoers saw it, however, they crammed themselves in like clowns into a clown car.
We have a little blue baby pool with a built-in slide that makes its debut from the shed every year in May. The kids clean it out themselves with dish soap and rags and then they reward themselves by splashing in the frigid water.
They also like to splash at the spray parks and swim at the YMCA or the Civic Center. They love to stay in hotels just for the indoor pools. They beg to go to waterparks.
When we go south to visit there are 3 giant in-ground pools within a 5 minute radius – my dad’s, my aunt’s, and my uncle’s. The kids pretend to be sharks (Adelaide informs me that she is a nice baby shark named Miss Rose) and mermaids and dolphins and killer whales. Sadie says there are crayfish in the filter; maybe we should have them for lunch. They shoot their water guns at the bees. They straddle the pool floats which magically transform into seahorses.
Adelaide goes under “without even crying.” Josie learns to do a forward flip. Sadie learns to dive without bending her knees. They all yell CANNONBALL and jump as high as they can over the pool before they splash as much as they can out of the pool. Good times.
But I've noticed that swimming (and slipping and sliding and going down waterslides) was a lot more fun for me before I had kids.
All of this splishy splashyness makes me extremely nervous. Water makes kids crazy. Sometimes they forget and run while on the slippery cement. Sometimes they get excited and jump in too early or flip too late.
Sometimes the little brother doesn’t think the water is as deep as it looks so he hops right in and sinks. Everybody snorts water up their nose, gets water in their ears and blinds their eyes with chlorine. They get bee-stung, they get goggle straps stuck in their hair, they fall down the pool stairs and they scrape their elbows when they get out to get the ball.
They trip when they come back from a potty break, they miss the edge of the pool and fall face first into the deep end and then they accidentally kick each other in the stomach as they paddle away.
Sounds fun, right?
Spending the day by the pool used to be so relaxing for me! Now, I’m in a constant state of high alert whenever we are near the water. My dreaded fear of waterslides notwithstanding, I’m still afraid they will slip, fall in, crack their heads on the side of the pool, whack their necks on the springboard or come up too near the wall and knock their teeth out.
Hey, you never know.
The more we're around water this summer, the more I think that maybe I should cash in that beach fund and stick to the hose. That's just as much fun anyway.
-from my 8/5/12 article for www.mentorpatch.com
