Pool Time!

Some of my very favorite childhood memories involve swimming! Like most kids, all I wanted to do ALL the time was swim, and I never wanted to get out of the pool. I was lucky, because my Grandma had this AMAZING pool in her backyard and I spent countless hours swimming in it with my cousins. And not just in the summer! I was blessed to grow up in San Diego, where pool weather really does last ALL year long. I miss that pool!
Here I am, the one on the right, 18 years ago or so swimming with my cousin Jessica!

I still love swimming, and it's one of my favorite things about summer. Although wouldn't it be great if we could still put swimsuits on and feel just like we did when we were little? No little kid feels self-conscious about themselves in a swimsuit! And almost all adults do! Life was so much better before darn puberty hit and we became aware of our bodies.

Swimming with a baby is a very different thing entirely than swimming before you have children. Now I have to worry about swim diapers, the right amount of sunscreen, how to peel a wet swimsuit off a wiggly baby, and a thousand other things. It's enough to make a "relaxing swim" sound not so relaxing! But it's still worth it to see their reactions and take some great pictures.

Here's one of my favorite pictures of Kirsten, in July a year ago in San Diego. She didn't even get in the water other than her feet, but I sure had fun with the camera! She was two months old in these pictures! Wasn't she precious?

And. . . here's Kirsten in the pool a year later, this July. Yeah, she was not so content this time. It was mostly because unlike the private pool in San Diego, this was in our noisy community pool and it was PACKED with kids! Poor Kirsten got really overwhelmed and scared. She kept crying until I took her out of her floaty and held her.

So far, I've only taken Kirsten swimming twice this summer. I would do it much more often though if I knew anyone who had a pool in their backyard and I didn't have to go to the noisy, crowded community pool. But this is Seattle, and NOBODY has pools in their backyards! I guess maybe some people do, but nobody I have met! In San Diego, it's just something that goes with having a nice house. You have a nice house, you have a pool too. But here in the land of endlessly misty, green, and gorgeous, backyard pools seem to be just a thing of my California dreams.