Believe it or not, he’s still five!
I keep looking at the portraits from yesterday, and he still seems so much older. He can turn on the floor lamp in the living room now, and for the first time - ever - went into a local wading pool alone. Oh, it took a little convincing - I had to hop in and help him slide in that first time, and give him a pep talk as he did it - but to watch him unfold as the afternoon went on, it was so precious. He started out sitting on the side of the pool, dangling his feet in. Walking over to me, then back to the pool. Watching all the other kids play. He seemed nervous, so I went and sat by him. Dangled my feet in. Stood up in the pool and told him he might feel more confident sliding in backwards, which he did. Then he slowly started walking up and down the shallow end (the “shallow end” of this pool is one foot deep - the deep end is two feet), clinging to the wall. After some fifteen minutes of this he braved the deep end, still hanging on to the wall. He started to “make triangles” as he called it, walking along one edge for ten feet, cutting across to the other edge and then back to the corner. He kept watching the other kids, especially a pair of brothers who, we discovered later, were 7 and almost-5. He started imitating some of the things they were doing. They all started racing back and forth across the pool, crouching down and hopping like frogs, and pretending they were in quicksand. That made it so much fun. JediBoy only got out once everyone else had left.
He’s never had that much fun in a pool. I don’t know if it’s nature or nuture (ah, my favorite discussion) but I’ve never been comfortable swimming either. Now, my discomfort I trace back to my first set of torturous parent-child swimming lessons where they did Ring Around the Rosy and dunked us! Ack! I’ve hated swimming ever since then. But I tried to overcome that for JediBoy. We did about a year and a half of parent-child lessons (they don’t dunk anymore) from the time he was 6 months old. But he’s always disliked water on his head, hated getting his hair washed, and for the last two summers I could barely get him in a pool. His friends have loved the two local wading pools and always invited us along, but he would never go in. Towards the end of last summer he did enjoy going into the big pool, but only if he was clinging to an adult. He had fun in the same way when we were at the hotel pool in August, and started talking then about how much he liked swimming - but each time a new session of swimming lessons started this year - his answer was a resounding NO. Was he picking up on my discomfort, or are we genetically descended from water-fearing folk?
Either way, I was thrilled today to see him really enjoying the wading pool. Since his birthday party on Saturday will be at the same park, I’m glad that he’s comfortable there and I’ll definitely take a suit for him.
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