When Alastair is taking care of the girls while I'm at work, a popular indoor activity -- which I think a reader may have actually suggested -- is the pool party. It's sort of like a bath -- OK, it is a bath -- but the girls wear their bathing suits, Alastair puts on Led Zeppelin or some other pool-party-appropriate music, and dumps more bath toys and tupperware containers than usual into the tub. There is bubble-blowing, too. And lots of shouting "pool party!" Needless to say, the girls love it. (Amazing how much more fun something is when you call it a party, isn't it? I think tonight A and I are going to have an applying to refinance our mortgage party. Woo hoo!)
So, yesterday, E & C were very excited to find out that we were taking them to their first *real* pool party. (AKA tot swim class.) They were definitely taken aback when we first got to the pool. An indoor pool, particularly when filled with children of various shapes and sizes, is an intense sight for the uninitiated. The smell of chlorine, the echoey noise, the damp floor -- all quite foreign and a little bit intimidating. (And I may be projecting a bit here; I was always a tad freaked by the pool at my local YMCA as a kid.) But once Elsa saw the kids in the class before ours going down little plastic slides into the water, she was sold. I had to hold her back as she attempted to make a break for the stairs into the pool. Clio, meanwhile, not surprisingly, was more hesitant.
Clearly, for most families, Saturday morning tot swim lessons are Daddy's job -- I was one of only three moms (or women guardians, I guess) in the class. But for us parents of twins, swim lessons -- like so many things -- are a two-parent undertaking. I held Elsa and Alastair held Clio, and we kicked and splashed and sang songs and practiced "swimming" by reaching for floating toys. Elsa seemed to love every minute. And if she weren't there blazing the trail, I doubt we could have gotten Clio into the pool at all. Clio still didn't seem to have a particularly good time -- she did a lot of crying and whimpering. But I think that as time goes by, she'll get more comfortable in the water, which is, of course, the point.
Elsa, having no sense of danger or her own mortality, would have tried to start doing laps if I weren't holding her. As it was, she had one sub-aquatic adventure, but it was totally my fault. At the end of class she wanted to go down one of the toy slides into the water, so I let her climb up, and waited there at the end of the slide in the water to catch her. Except, I didn't quite succeed. I caught her, but she was coming so fast and was so slippery that I didn't quite manage to keep her above the water, so in she went, for a brief, underwater dunk. Doh! She was fine, of course, only under for a fraction of a second, and I had her the whole time, but I sure felt like an ass. Elsa seemed a little stunned by the experience, but not in the least bit traumatized.
I really enjoyed the chance to spend some one-on-one time with her in such a close, physical way (when I wasn't inadvertently drowning her, that is.) There's a sweet kind of intimacy, holding a toddler close to you in the water, keeping her safe, helping her learn. And, of course, it's one of those rare opportunities to have some one-on-one time. Next week, I assume we'll swap and I'll take Clio -- who, incidentally, immediately after we left the pool started acting like she'd had the time of her life. ("Clio swim! Clio go pool party!")
We didn't manage to take any pictures, I'm sorry to say -- it was enough of a feat just managing to pack up everything we needed in terms of clothes, towels, bathing suits, diapers, etc. (I still can't believe we didn't forget anything.) But now that we know the routine, maybe next time we can capture the bathing beauties on film.
Until then: does anyone happen to know what "gaby gaba, gobey gabo, gaby goba" means? Clio keeps saying it, in a sing-songy sort of way, with a twinkle in her eye, and I have no idea what she's talking about. (She very clearly does.)
