Water Baby

It's been a pretty hectic last couple of weeks. We've been thrown headlong into the terrible twos -- which feels pretty damn unfair, considering that Sadie's still almost three months away from actually turning two. We can only hope this means that by 2 1/2, she'll have gotten over the hump and transformed into an emotionally stable young lady. Which I'm so sure will happen.

I am finding myself lacking in the energy needed to catalog the many tantrums that we've weathered recently, and they're probably not too interesting to hear about anyway, so I'll stick to the positive stuff.

Sadie likes water.

No, seriously. If this summer has taught us anything, it's that our child has an almost alarming love of large bodies of water. Whereas my greatest fear used to be that my child would choke to death on a grape while I was distracted by something funny on television, my fear is now that she will sneak out in the middle of the night for some moonlight swimming in our neighbor's pool. Which is why we ordered her a "float suit" off Amazon.

We've taken her to swim class several times now; each time the only problem has been trying to keep her out of the pool before class starts, and removing her from it after class has ended. The first two classes, she was content to float around in our arms, splashing and pretending to kick.

I say "pretend" because this is what happens when you instruct Sadie to kick:

Me: Sadie, kick! Kick your legs! Kickkickkickkickkick!

Sadie: *halfheartedly kicks one leg*

As Scott pointed out, she has no incentive to keep kicking. It's not like if she stops, we're going to drop her.

Once you've taken a couple of warm-up classes, the instructors require kids to put their heads under water. I don't remember much about being a very young kid, but I do remember this: putting my head underwater for the first time was terrifying. Because of this, the instructors tried to ease us into it by teaching us to dip first our chins in, then to blow bubbles with our lips, then FINALLY work up to dampening the rest of the face. For big wusses like me, the process took weeks.

At this school, there is no working up. You just dunk them, and that's that. Ava, a girl in Sadie's toddler group who loved swimming until the fateful 3rd class, got dunked and now won't get anywhere near a pool. "No more swim classes for us," her mom told me, sighing and shaking her head.

Yet when the instructor approached us and showed me how to dunk Sadie, I resolved to give it a try. If anything, Sadie is too comfortable around water. Scaring her would be difficult, but it would teach her the important lesson that water can be dangerous -- and maybe it would stop her from hurling herself into pools every time she saw one.

I gripped her by her upper arms, facing me, and swam backwards while pulling her forwards. On a count of three I told her, "We're going under, close your mouth!" She completely ignored me, her mouth hanging open like a fish. I dunked her anyway. One...two...

When I pulled her up, her eyes were huge. She coughed and sputtered as the instructor showed me how to raise one arm, which apparently helps clear the water somehow. I waited for the screaming -- but it didn't come. Instead, she whined briefly, and then...she smiled.

And that was that. We went under maybe a dozen times. Each time, she ignored my instructions and kept her mouth open, ending up with a faceful of dirty pool water. Each time, she burst up blinking and shocked, like she couldn't believe what had just happened, then instantly recovered and got ready to do it again.

Tantrum? Oh sure, there was a tantrum. When I tried to get her out of the pool, at the end of class. So much for teaching her respect for water.

Since then, we've gone to the beach and we've gone, twice, to the public pool at the park nearby our house. If you asked me to write a list of places I felt comfortable saying I'd never need to visit during my lifetime, "the public pool" would fall right between "a train station in India" and "the men's bathroom at the beach in Santa Monica." Now, having been there, I can say, THANK GOD FOR THE PUBLIC POOL. They've got a little wading area for young kids, with a fountain and a foot of water in it, and we spent the majority of this past weekend there.

We know now that swimming lessons for our water baby will be crucial. I'm thrilled that she loves water as much as she does -- her dad and her grandfather share the same love, and when she gets older they will swim, bodysurf, snorkel and even scuba together. But for now she's just a skinny little toddler who has no fear of jumping in the deep end.