Another Summer First

In the months leading up to summer this year I had both excitement and dread brewing in my mind in anticipation of opening Mom and Dad's pool. I insisted that they buy locks for the gates back in the spring after Maggie and Kate let themselves into the pool area by opening a gate that I would have never guessed they could open. We were playing outside that day, the girls, Kelli, and I, and Ella and I were having a heart to heart discussion... about what I can't remember. Kelli was cutting up some fruit for the wee three, and by the time I looked up and saw them, Maggie had walked out onto the pool cover. She was wet up to her knees in her jeans and tennis shoes standing out in the middle of the pool. I screamed, they both screamed, and then she ran back across the cover. Fortunately everything turned out fine that day. My mind was immediately set into horror mode, however, and thus began the dread of what an ordeal it was going to be to keep the girls safe around the pool this summer.

I investigated yet again the possibility of signing them all four up for ISR swimming lessons that so many of my triplet mom friends swear by highly recommend, but the expense is huge for something like that times 4 and the closest instructor is quite far away for a drive we'd be making 5 days a week for four to six weeks. I realize too that the girls are all still too young for most of the traditional types of swimming lessons and didn't think that trying to find those would be of any real benefit. Ultimately we decided that locks on the pool gates and a favorable adult to child ratio would be necessary for us to swim at Mimi and Pop's pool less than a mile away from home. We've been going every single day and sometimes twice a day since the pool opened. I have to say that it hasn't been nearly as bad or stressful as my mind would have had me believe back in the spring.

In every one of our trips to the pool and more recently to the lake, we've put swimmies or water wings as some people call them on the girls as their "required equipment". However, until today Ella was the only one who could actually float and keep herself up in the water with them.

Today, for the first time, all four girls managed to "swim" on their own. I was so thrilled! Don't get me wrong, it still takes at least one other adult besides myself in order for my kids to go near the water, but now it is so much more enjoyable.

They all love the water. Thanks in part to bath time with my aunt Donna every evening, they don't seem to mind having water in their faces at all either. Now we'll begin working on back floating and getting those little feet out behind us with our faces in to swim. It's not ISR (which I would have loved to do), but I'm grateful it seems to be working for us!!