This weekend my wife and I took a small break from our normal lives, went to a big box store and bought our son some swimming diapers, and took him to a pool. At one point I was a certified lifeguard (thought that has long since lapsed) but I’ve generally enjoyed the water. My wife also enjoys the water and we both figured this would be a good experience for our son to have before the really hot summer months begin to oppress our neck of the woods.
We were unsure about how he would react to the water. He’s recently become excited about bath time (thanks in large part to floating, water-spitting animals) but a pool is so much bigger than the couple of inches of water in the bathtub he’s used to. Would he be scared? Would he be excited? Only time would tell.
When I was a child my parents took me to have “lessons” with someone in their backyard or something. I was very young and I only have the horrifying memory of gasping for breath as the overly cheerful woman plunged me into and out of the water as some sort of exercise more closely resembling forms of torture than swimming. It’s a miracle I became a lifeguard after that experience. We knew, however, that we wouldn’t be drowning our son. This gave us some sort of peace.
So we got the diapers, we slipped them on (much tighter than normal diapers) and headed to the pool. Mom got in quickly to show him that it was okay. The water wasn’t too cold but Baby and Daddy sat on the edge of the water and slowly dipped our toes into the large pool to “test the waters.” Our son wasn’t too concerned yet but we didn’t know what would happen next. We slowly, carefully lowered ourselves into the water and then…