Water Rats

I took the kids to the pool today. And there was only one thing that could have made that trip more difficult: Diarrhoea. But since that didn't occur, I'll tentatively consider the trip a success.

Talk about exhausting! My kids are Water Rats, loving the water and desperate to be as independent as they can be. There's only one problem: they're not safe enough to be independent.

There's a deep end, there's a shallow end, and it's heated. It's probably too hot for swimming laps, but it's perfect for those doing hydrotherapy, those with injuries and those with small children who get cold quickly. Because of the many people with disabilities who use the pool, there's a long pool-length ramp that starts at the deep end and goes down towards the shallow end with hand-rails on either side, getting deeper all the way.

Smoochy Girl no longer wants to be touched. It's a sign of weakness. She screams "No! Go WAY! I dooit!" so loud that elderly people in the pool look my way and smile at me. So I let her 'dooit' herself, and off she floats happily with her floaties, bobbing around.

Then: "Howp! HOWP! HOWP MEE!"

Sigh. Seems she can't quite 'dooit' all by herself then. I rush over so people don't think I'm not supervising her and try to help her.

"Go WAY!"

Fine.

Sonny is really quite safe with his floaties on and I feel quite confident of his skills in the water. But of course, at nearly-four, he 'doesn't need' floaties anymore, does he? Problem: without them, he will drown.

Today he became adamant that he didn't need floaties and he wanted me to take them off. Well, I decided it was probably okay if the two kids stayed close together and within arm's reach of me, so I took them off for him and OWWW! That was Sonny swimming from the side of the pool towards me, and grabbing a chunk of grabbable flesh on my arm and pinching hard while he struggled to take a breath.

It's an interesting phenomenon that two children, who at home are compelled to need the toys each other is playing with, compelled to co-habit the same space and who both need to squeeze together to be the first in any activity, all of a sudden need to be as far away from each other as possible once they're both in need of arm's-reach supervision from one tired, heavy, pregnant parent.

Smoochy climbed out of the pool herself and took off at a run to the deep end. Sonny remained in the shallow end, swimming from one safe spot to another with a startling propensity to start sinking between the beginning and end-points.

Should I rush off and grab her? Should I stay with him?

And this began my morning of making snap decisions regarding which of my offspring was in most danger of drowning.

At one point, they both took off to the deep end and as I hurried to catch them, I saw Sonny making moves to jump into the deepest part of the pool. He often does this and is perfectly safe with his floaties on. Without them, he would go down, down, down.

Yelling to him not to jump in because he had no floaties only made me look more out-of control, but I did it. I reached them both and as I was corraling Sonny and persuading him to come back to the shallow end, Smoochy herself started wading down the long ramp towards the shallow end.

Sonny, who won't accept assistance if a more self-sufficient method can be followed decided to make his way to the shallow end by walking along and holding onto the hand-rail that separated the deep end from the shallowest point of the ramp.

So here we were again: Smoochy with floaties walking down the ramp into rapidly deepening water, Sonny without floaties whose body was fully out of the water but who was performing daredevil stunts without thought to the risk of death by drowning.

While I stood there trying to work out who was in the most danger, the question was answered by Sonny letting go of the handrail and falling into 6 foot deep water, going down, down, down.

I jumped in and pulled him towards the surface, by which time he was nearly at the surface himself, reaching for the side of the pool. The scare was enough to make him realise that Mummy was right, after all.

Sonny decided that Mummy wasn't the only person on whom he could rely to save him from drowning after feats of independent non-floaties swimming. He started chatting to an elderly man (who confided to me that he couldn't swim.) Thereafter he chose to launch from the ramp towards this gentleman as he walked in the shallower water, expecting to be caught. The man didn't know what to do. I explained to Sonny that people would get a fright if they saw an unknown boy swiming towards them, and would most likely get out of the way, not catch him.

"It's alright Mum, I'll just say, 'I'm Sonny,'" he said, as if introducing himself would then allow him to expect strangers to catch him.

"No sweetheart, seriously, people will think that you're OWWWW!!" - this as he grabbed another easily-grabbed piece of his mother - okay it was my boob - and squeezed hard as he tried to save himself yet again.

Is this the last swimming I'll do with my kids? I can't keep this up as I get more heavily pregnant, and once I have three children, they will out number my arms.