Pool Party

A few weeks ago, Allison Clare discovered that she can see down into the neighbor's pool if she is standing on the radiator cover (i.e., if Mommy holds her up there) and looking out her bedroom window. " There it is! Right there!" she'll tell me. "Blue one!" she'll add, just to make sure we're both seeing the same thing. Then she'll ask if she can go in, and I'll say no (we don't know those neighbors very well).

This daily ritual finally motivated me to venture out to the public pool, which turned out to be pretty nice. Our babysitter April came along, since I wouldn't have been able to watch Gillian and be in the pool with Allison Clare (the baby pool is closed, so it's just the big pool right now). The skies were cloudy, and it started raining as soon as we got there, but only some sprinkles for a few minutes. Allison Clare was, typically, really really really excited, but also cautious. She wanted to go in that big blue pool so badly, but as soon as April tried to help her into the water, she suddenly wanted to just stand on the side. Eventually we coaxed her in, and she loved being tossed in the air and swished around in the water.

The pool opens at noon, and we had brought sandwiches, but Allison Clare could not be persuaded to leave the poolside to eat. By the end, she had gotten so tired (it was way past naptime too) that she was just sitting on the side of the pool with her feet dangling; she's so little that they didn't even reach the water. But she wouldn't leave--I'd ask her, "Don't you want to go get a sandwich?" And she would say, "No. I sitting right now." As time passed, she got cold because she was soaking wet, and her little lips turned blue, but she kept sitting there, shivering away and looking somberly all around, taking it all in--I'd ask her, "Don't you want to go get wrapped in a big fluffy towel and snuggle?"

And she would say, "N-n-n-o s-s-s-snuggle t-t-towel right now. B-b-b--busy s-s-s-itting."