Splish Splash

Noah can swim! Well, not exactly. Or more exactly, not hardly. In actuality Noah didn’t scream in the pool, and he didn’t cry in the pool, but he wasn’t exactly a natural water baby doing laps either. When we first got in the water he was stunned and cold. He was wide eyed and clinging to me for dear life. When I tried to remove him from my bosom he looked panic stricken. We were the first people in the pool, but soon a few other mothers and infants joined us. And once Noah saw them he loosened up. I was then able to bounce, swish and splash him with the occasional smile in response. Most of the time he had his tongue sticking out between his lips and his eyes squinting – but he remained calm. Another mother described him as “peaceful.” In spurts he would get a little excited and start flailing his arms and unfailingly splash himself in the face. This stunned him, made him commence with more squinting and put a damper on the flailing for a couple of minutes. I’m thinking some sort of water goggles might help. All in all I think he enjoyed himself enough to do it again next week.

When we got home we both reeked of chlorine - so we jumped in the shower. Noah's first. He seemed relatively fine while the shower head was mounted, but he kept turning away so as not to get water in his eyes. I detached the shower head so I could better rinse him off - and he was not impressed. He started whining and trying to squirm away from it. For a second I thought maybe it was too hot, but when I turned up the cold he still wanted no parts of it.

It was a wet, watery and eventful afternoon.