Adventures in swimming

It's been extremely hot* and miserable here the last few days in the Country Music Capital of the World, although it looks beautiful from inside a nice air-conditioned house.

Yesterday morning, David had to work at the clinic, so William and I got up early and made it to the neighborhood pool by around 9:30. We scored one of the few umbrellas, and then we splashed in the baby pool for a little while.

Eventually, William worked up some courage and dragged me off to the big pool, where we spent the next 45 minutes "swimming." For William, "swimming" entails his flinging himself off the side of the pool and my frantic efforts to catch him before his dead weight plummets like an anchor to the bottom. For some reason, he likes to jump down, not out, so it's always an adventure for me, trying to catch him before he goes completely under the water. Then I hold him and propel him around the rest of the pool so he can talk to all his people. He visited Libby the Baby in her floaty thing with her parents in the middle of the pool, the gaggle of shaggy kindergarteners in the shallow end, and the cute bigger girls in between. He also wanted to start a water fight with some of the slightly older boys, but they (thankfully) didn't think that was such a good idea--instead, they waited for him to ask them to squirt him with their water guns and then gently sprayed him on his tummy.

There was a moment of drama when he realized that the Sleeping Beauty figurine that he kept in his bathing suit pocket was missing. We then paddled around the pool frantically looking for it, until a little girl found it and dove down to fetch it for him.

At one point, I hoisted William up to the side of the pool so he could jump off again, but he stopped and studied a small sign on the pool edge. He pointed to the sign, which read "4 ft" and asked "Why does that have a 4 on it?"

I explained, "The water is four feet deep here. You're only a little over three feet tall, so if you stood on the bottom of the pool, the water would be over your head, and you might not want that to happen. So the sign says four feet."

William looked at the sign dubiously. "I have two feet," he said, looking at his two feet and then looking all around, as if he was expecting to see some mythical swimmer with four feet who belonged in this part of the pool.

So we moved off from the four-footed-swimmer's part of the pool, back to the shallow end, to collect the squirty dinosaur toys. Then we sat under our umbrella, ate snacks from Trader Joe's and watched more people show up, even though it was really starting to heat up. We came home, showered, ate lunch, and played SuperWhy games on the computer together. William's getting pretty good at those, too. If he could actually read, he'd be a menace.

It was a really nice morning together, regardless of the heat. I'm glad we went early, too, because it was about 100 degrees by about 4 p.m. and there was no way I would have taken him to the pool then.

(*No, it's not been as hot as it was in 29 Palms. But it is way more humid here.)