The First Swim

As soon as her feet hit the ground when Heather lifted her out of the van coming home from work yesterday she immediately started asking and pleading to play. I had to spend a little quality time on the porcelain, so I told her she had to wait a few minutes. She surprisingly patiently waited for me to finish before pleading her case again.

The Playground:
We left the apartment and before we reached the playground she quickly remembered and began crying out, "car, car" so I turned around with her and opened the door and she ran inside jumped on her toy Cadillac Escalade and began pushing herself out the door. When we got to the playground it was in the upper 90's so we started walking with Hannah towards the pool where a few kids were splishing and splashing away in the pool. I took off my shoes and decided to walk around in the water to see how it felt, and it was GOOD!

Her First Steps:
Hannah reluctantly got off her car, and made her way to the pool, where she leaned over and touched the water with her hand first, then Heather tried picking her up and letting her stand in the water, and she began to cry, so we sat her down on the edge, and she slowly began to kick her feet in the water, then slowly she decided to stand up and slowly inch her way over to me.

We jumped on this chance and ran back to the house and got her in a swimsuit, and I myself decided to dust off the old Nike swimsuit and go for a dip. When we came back we repeated the same routine, and before you knew it she was splishing and splashing away as she laughed and laughed.

And Then Came the Confidence…
Well I grew tired of sitting in 6 inches of water and made my way to the deeper section of the pool to fully immerse myself in the soothing water, it was surprisingly warmer in the deeper section of the pool. So I decided I was going to stay there, and slowly Hannah worked her way over to me, and there is first a step down, and it took her some time to grow up enough courage to make that next step, but as soon as she did it once, she loved it, then she I was able to slowly but surely hold her and swim around the rest of the pool, until she grew so comfortable with that, that she decided she didn't need me to hold her anymore, and she could do it herself, and tried pushing and kicking herself away from me. I held on tight and tried explaining that she wasn't THAT big yet. She has yet to believe me thus far.

Heather ran and grabbed a floatey tube thing that we bought her last year, so we put her in that, and at first she loved it, and began kicking and laughing and playing, I was pushing her around the pool and spinning her around in circles, and then all of a sudden the tube began to be too restricting for her, so she began to cry out, "help, help, help." as she began to lean forward and try and work her way out of this floating device. She saw that other kids were able to maneuver around without problem, and her father was also doing the same, and no one was using these silly floating devices, so why should she.

We then made our way back to the 6 inches of water we started with, and the old saying, "give some one an inch and they will want to be a ruler" (or something like that.) became all too true with Hannah.