Abigail is 10 months old today, and we celebrated with our first family swim in the backyard pool. The weather is in the 100′s every day now and we gaze longingly at the pool, waiting for the late afternoon shade to come so we can go in without the sun beating down on us. Abigail has dabbled along the first step several times, but this was her first immersion experience. I think it may have been the most fun I’ve had in a pool ever. Her dad jumped into the deep end while she and I got used to the water on our usual first step. When she saw him swimming toward her, she started to laugh and reach for him. She laughed and laughed when he finally arrived and she leapt onto him. Then she realized that she was armpit deep in chilly (well, 83 degree) water– stunned silence for a bit. She came back to me, and we did more of the Dada Swims to Abigail game, with more laughing and hugging. Then we switched to Mama Swims to Abigail.

Soon thereafter Abi was ready to do some swimming herself, so we took turns holding her torso and propelling her through the water. Dada would wait on one side of the pool and I would “swim” Abi over to him; then we’d switch. The first few times she didn’t move her body at all, though I could feel her little heart accelerating as I carried her across the pool. When she was coming to me with her dad, I could see her little face frozen in a happy, scared grin, like the kind people get at the top of the roller coaster. Each time she reached her goal she would climb on to the other parent with a screech of delight, then scramble around and point back the other way, ready to go again. Next she added a frog kick, and experimented a few times with sticking her face in the water. She’d come up gasping and blinking and then start kicking again as if to say, “Nothing to see here! Let’s get going!” Once she had assured herself that water on the face wasn’t so bad, she added her trademark double-arm hand slam to the mix. Dr. G and I laughed again and again as Abi did her butterfly swim across the pool, splashing huge waves of water up into her own face but gasping and laughing all the while. Made it to Dada! Hooray! Quick, turn around! We gotta go back the other way! (Point, point, point! Kick, kick, kick!) We were deluged in a frenzy of happy splashing for a good fifteen minutes, back and forth across the pool, until Abigail started breathing so hard from her efforts that we put an end to it. Even after we got out of the water and were cuddling and drying off, with Abigail’s feet and hands wrinkled from the water and her lip trembling from chill and excitement, she kept pointing eagerly at the pool. I think I have an inkling of how this summer is going to go.