Today was a birthday party for our friend's daughter. She's turning 6 this week and had a pool party. The house reminded me HARD of our house in Guerry when we moved in there; there was a pool in the backyard, and a separate pool house out back, with the man-world within, including a bathroom and a wetbar. Man it made me sort of homesick... but not really. We never "blinged out" our Jake room like these guys did (It was finished, and furnished with a biliiards table and leather furniture. Unlike our Jake room, they had a woodstove, not an a/c unit) and we took down the pool without ever using it.
The birthday girl was FUNNY. She's hearing impaired, about 50 percent deaf. With the waterworks and ringing voices of so many children she was, as her Mom put it, "deaf as a doorknob." She had a blast, just swimming and leaping and smiling at everyone. She was the perfect birthday girl.
G had some issues. I was lucky enough to leave the boys home with P-Daddy, but we left L'il Bit's noodle by the front door. When we first got there, all the kiddies were willing to share nicely, but towards the end there was kicking and pushing for the available pool floaties. It felt like G was the only one who couldn't swim, even to me, so for her it had to be terrible. She hasn't been in a real pool since the one time early last year in Federal Way, and her swimlessons were the year before that.
She played, "swam," splashed and even came down the giant slide, but she has a very specific stark terror of submerging her face. She feels like she will inhale, even though everyone else knows to hold their breathe. She is sure that she will not be able to do that. Hopefully we will be able to get her into swim classes next month as planned. I want her to get past this, and not carry this fear into teenage years as I did.
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