So, we have been going for several weeks now and the kids wear their regular bathing suits. Or, "baby suits" as Carl calls them. He also refers to the pool as "MY swimming" as in, "I want to go to my car seat. I want to go to my swimming" which you can hear him utter about every time he spots his "baby suit" around the house. Well, today we added a bit of fun. I picked up a swim vest for Carl at a consignment shop and Grammie sent Gretchen a bathing suit with foam inserts in it this week! Now, we could see if these kids float! (We tried swimmies, but the lifeguard wouldn't let us use them. Don't ask me why they let one kid today wear his...)
Gretchen's suit fit perfectly lengthwise. Good! But, once she got in the water, the floating parts kind of rode up around her face. And, it didn't hold her fully up. But, it wasn't like we planned to toss 'em in and leave 'em, so she was doing fine with the extra support. Carl said "no thank you" to me as I attempted to put the vest on him. Once on, he quickly seemed to forget it was there. It kind of held him upright with the water hitting his chin, but he cried any time I tried to let go to see how well it really worked.
Until..... the tunnel slide! The pool is split into 3 sections divided only by floating lane dividers. First goes from 2' to about 4'. The second is 4' to 5' and then then deepest part plummets to 9' and has the tunnel slide on one side. It has an angled ladder/staircase getting up to it. No problem for the kids. Gretchen went first while I was treading water at the end and Lew was holding the side also right at the end. She didn't hesitate at all and came flying down, hit in almost a "hiney whopper" (growing up family reference... picture jumping into the pool with your legs up and hitting well, hiney first) and dunked slightly under the water. She announced she did not like that... and proceeded right back to the pool ladder to climb out and race up to the top of the slide again! This child has the common sense of her father. By now, Carl had flown down into the water as well. His vest held him up a bit better, but his face still went under. He surfaced smiling like a fool and announced quickly, "I climb that ladder again!" OK, now Gretchen was coming down for her second run and I was able to catch her enough to keep her face from going under. She promptly thanked me! Funny kid! And they continued to take turns for many more runs down the slide.
Gretchen eventually wanted to go back to the shallow end where she likes to dance in the water. Not Carl. He spent 95% of the 2+ hours there simply going back up that slide and plopping down into the water at top speed. Lew quickly figured out how to sort of grab Carl's arm to get him back to the side of the pool, but Carl didn't really need much more help than that. He loved dunking that little bit and Lew said he could tell Carl was even kicking his feet to keep himself from going more deep as he hit the surface. Carl came up smiling every single time and didn't cough or sputter once! He did tell Lew every time that he was going to climb the ladder again. And, he was even doing a doggy paddle to help get himself back to the side.
And then Chase showed up! A cute little 5 yr old boy who could really swim. Well, he and Carl hit it off immediately and started a sort of game of tag - simply following each other down the slide and back again. But, being older and bolder - Chase could go down on his tummy, face first. Carl, having apparently no fear decided he too could go down head first on his belly. And he loved it. And Lew put an immediate stop to it! I heard him tell Carl, "If you come down on your belly again, we are done. You sit to slide." and Carl cried! Now, don't get all mushy. No one feels sorry for a little boy swimming in a fun pool! And, he sat down to slide!
We had the hardest time getting Carl to leave so we could go get lunch! So far, nap has been going on for
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