Pool Time

Pool Time

The pool at the magic hour. #nofilter

The summer of 2012 was defined for me by trips to the city pool. I went with the girls to the pool at least 25 times this summer. If we averaged two hours per trip (a few trips were shorter, many were longer), that’s about two days worth of time at the pool, soaking up the sun and lounging in the water. Shannon probably took the girls to the pool at least twice that many times, so the girls probably spent something like 150 hours at the pool. Not bad for one summer!
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We went so often because the girls loved it. The summers of 2010 and even 2011 were a little rocky, since the girls were younger and less sure in the water. This summer everything came together. Julia is a really good swimmer, thanks to lessons and her own growing willingness to just get in the water and *swim*. She even started doing “laps” between various points int the pool, which was impressive.

Vivi quit her lessons last winter, but she picked up some skills from Julia and can motor around pretty well. Julia continued to jump off the diving board, a feat she accomplished first last summer, and Vivi decided to brave the board – and the deep water – this summer, too. She was always the smallest human in the line for the board, but by golly she jumped off like there was no tomorrow.

Swimming and diving were just part of the fun. The girls played endlessly with the friends who were usually at the pool with us, inventing all kinds crazy games with them or just horsing around.
Sadly, the pool's chlorination has left the girls unable to distinguish up from down.

They even did some poolside relaxing.
I guess they're done swimming.

And of course I played quite a bit with them, too – though not as much as they would have liked, which was 100% of the time. (Sometimes my old knees demanded that I get out of the water: all that crouching is hard on ’em.) The funniest part of the whole summer came today when I begged off of another round of “monster” (i.e., chasing them around the water and throwing them into the air when I caught them). The both protested, “Noooooo, Daddy! You have to stay in! We don’t want to play by ourselves!” I asked, “What do you do when Mama’s at the pool with you by herself? Doesn’t she come in and play with you?” The looked at me like I was crazy. “No, she just sits on the side and talks with the other moms.”

I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m glad there’s a niche for me at the pool next year.
The pool at rest...

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