My toddler daughter and I attended the third birthday party of her twin friends recently. The party was at a community center with an incredible indoor pool. The shallow end didn’t have a drop; it was a shoreline like being at the beach. When Jessie saw the water she was going to go right in fully dressed. I had to stop her from getting her clothes wet and she still went in with her shoes on.
We went into the party room long enough to say hi to all my friends, especially the hosts, and drop off the baby before going to the locker rooms to change into our swimsuits and take advantage of the water. We might as well have been in Jessie’s blow-up pool the way she threw herself in the water with wild abandon. She loved the jets that shot up and had no fear about wading into deeper water.
There was a large spiral water chute off to the side that emptied into a separate deeper pool. This slide fascinated Jessie. She kept dragging me to the slide’s stairs thinking that she’d just climb up and see what was at the top. I had to keep telling her that there was a height minimum of 48 inches to slide the slide and that mommy was barely tall enough to do it. She was undeterred and kept trying. My little girl is without fear too; she walked off the deck into the pool at the bottom of the slide. I just reached in, grabbed her armpit, and pulled her out like it was the most natural thing. The lifeguard looked like she was having kittens.
There was a roofed platform in the middle of the pool where Jessie played with a smaller slide. Jessie did not want to go down that slide. Toddlers are funny.