Fun was had (eventually)

I had been wanting to take E to the local pool for a while now. I decided to take him yesterday because school gets out today and I figured it would be better to go when it wasn’t super crowded–you know, in case he freaked out. Which he did.

I honestly thought he would really like it. E loves taking baths. Anytime I turn on the water in the laundry sink that we use for his baths (it is super deep so he still fits) he runs into the room and hopefully starts tossing his bath toys into the sink. When he realizes that no, we aren’t taking a bath right now, he usually has a mini tantrum.

Anyway, the whole experience started out poorly. E was totally freaked out by the swim diaper. He did not want to wear it and kept trying to take it off. I changed him at home because E hates public restrooms (he is afraid of loud toilets) and so I figured the less time spent in the locker room the better. But, novice that I am, I forgot that swim diapers don’t really absorb anything: they’re just there to catch poop. So when we’re walking through the lobby and E slips and trips on some water on the floor I was first annoyed at someone having split something and not having cleaned it up but then very quickly the annoyance turned to embarrassment as I realized that E had probably um, made the water himself. But they were very nice about it. (Lesson learned–change into swim diaper at the pool.)

E was fascinated by the pool and the people in it but the fascination quickly turned to horror when it became apparent that, surprise, surprise, we were going in the water. The pool includes a little toddler section where the water’s only 6-12 inches deep and there are two small water slides. My friend Kristin and her little boy were meeting us at the pool and were already in the water when we arrived. As soon as I carried E into the water he started freaking out. He was terrified. When I sat down in the water he scrambled around in my lap trying to climb up me so the water wouldn’t touch any part of him. I was seriously thinking that we might have to leave. But little by little we splashed around and he got more and more comfortable in the water. After 15 minutes or so he was okay sitting in the water by himself and even going down the water slide on his stomach.

We ended up staying for about an hour and a half and E cried and cried when we left. I loved swimming when I was a kid and I’d like him to be comfortable in the water so I think I’m going to try and take him to the pool maybe once every other week or so. Hopefully next time we’ll skip all the histrionics and go right to the fun part.