Monday, June 6, 2011

Thank Goodness for Our Pool Pass!

So it has been wicked hot here in the midwest! Today it was 95 before the heat index which I thought I heard pushed it up over 100! But we didn't notice that much because Evie and I spent the afternoon at the pool :) We have been "swimming" 4 or 5 times already since the pool opened the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. We have 2 aquatic centers here now. The older one has a beach entry for the little ones but then is only separated from the deeper waters by ropes. It has a toddler/kid friendly slide and fountains plus a splash park for when they are doing pool checks every hour. The newer one has a separate kid pool area with 3 different degrees of slides for the younger ones and more fountains and a huge bucket that dumps when it gets full. It also has a lazy river which I took Evie on yesterday when we went and she LOVES it! The rest is like a mini waterpark with quite a few different slides but who cares since I only get to do what Evie does ;)

So, I decided that I wanted to get a pool pass and get Evie to the water a lot this summer for a couple of reasons.
1. so that we would spend more time doing things outside (even when it is horribly hot like it gets here in Iowa) and,
2. so that she would get more acclimated to the water and maybe not be afraid to go under all the way by the end of the summer.
I didn't realize that I cared about this at all until towards the end of last summer when we went swimming with some friends and Evie's little buddy was diving under and trying to swim. Evie wasn't even wanting to jump off the edge of the pool to me. I didn't like that she was that afraid of getting her head wet and wanted to get her used to being around the water before she got old enough to really be afraid.

So back to this year... so far each time, she has not wanted to go down any of the slides and would not jump to either D or myself from the edge. She likes going in the deeper water and holding on to the edge or us and today while we were over there something happened... she watched as a boy a little bigger than her jumped to what appeared to be his older sister and she caught him! Evie looked at me and said "did you see that? she has her arms out and caught him!" I guess in that moment, something clicked and then she decided she wanted to give it a try after all. So, I was instructed to stand basically at the edge with my arms raised up to catch her. She jumped. I caught her. She thought it was great! So little by little she instructed me to back up a teensy bit until I was about 3-4 feet from the edge. She continued to jump and jump and jump, all the while having a fabulous time! Her face was even going in a little some of the times and she wasn't concerned in the least! BREAKTHROUGH! Then, not only was she jumping to me, she started getting creative! She did spinning jumps and dive-ish jumps, and cannonball jumps! We did that for 20-30 minutes before we had to get out! I was so proud of her and it reminded me of what my mom had said to me this weekend. She told me that by the end of the summer I was going to be wondering what I had been so worried about :) Hmmm, should I be surprised that she was right already? I had been so concerned because my daring daughter was not at all daring in the water, till today! So lesson learned, now I just have to remember that ha ha! I am so excited to see what the rest of the summer brings!

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