Saturna

wednesday evening jah isaac and i went with stasa to hang out at my unkle kevin's house. my cousin Joey was in town with her two kids and they were having a pool party and cookout. when we first got there, isaac was hesitant to get into the pool, but would get in if stasa or i held him. then over the course of the next hour or two he expressed some interest in jumping off the diving board.

only he wanted to not wear any floatation devices, because of course, none of the big boy were wearing them! i insisted he wear this suit that i bought for him last year that has the float things within it. he would stand at the end of the board and hestitate, until finally my mom kind of helped him off, him jumping to either stasa or me.

i tell you, i can tread water for a long time by myself. i have had so many life-threatening experiences in water that i think i naturally have trained myself how to tread while exerting the least amount of energy possible. it is a skill that can come in handy when you are, for instance, swept out into the ocean or something, hah! but treading water while supporting even a 40 lb child is an entirely different story. made me want to take a life saving course to build up my endurance.

after isaac jumping with help for several times, we all got out of the pool to eat dinner. he wolfed down a veggie hot dog and a mass amount of potato salad, and then followed all the kids back to the pool. he had on this floatation suit as well as some floaties on his arms. before i know it i see him running to the diving board, jumping on it, running to the end and jumping into the deep end of the pool with no one there to catch him. stasa and i run to the edge of the pool, our hearts in our throats, and he pops up with a huge grin on his face and then swims to the edge of the pool, all by himself!

he then proceeded to spend the next hour jumping from the diving board and swimming the length of the pool to the shallow end, climbing up the stairs and repeating. suffice it to say that he slept really well wednesday night. my unkle kevin swears he will be swimming on his own with no floaties by the end of the summer if i take him out there twice a week and let kevin work with him.

it was so amazing to watch his transformation from timid to outright in control of his own actions in the pool. i will be taking him swimming a lot this summer, and letting him work with unkle kevin. i have always been a fish in the water and have still almost died twice in the water, so i will be relieved once jah isaac has a better understanding and mastery of the water.

photos to come soon, i forgot my camera. we are probably going again today and if so i will also shoot some video of him jumping.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 6:56 am and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.