Got to play swim coach

I always get antsy and tired when I don't have something planned to do with Lucy. Today I decided to take her to the Sandy fun center. It was an awesome bang for the buck though I was unsure how Lucy would do with swimming without her security blanket, Thomas. The other hard part is she has a hard time communicating between two options. Either ors...I finally got her to say yes I want to go swimming, because she kept saying she wanted to go down a slide...I didn't know where she meant. We got her changed and she booked it for the kiddie pool which was only a foot and a half deep...felt deeper when not dressed in a swim suit, as I wasn't...cuz why would I need to if it was only that deep. Lucy found the slide and before I could get to her or be in reach of her ears anymore she plunged down a 4 four water slide into unknown territory. She went under and didn't know how to get up again. She wasn't wearing floaties because I anticipated being right there the whole time...but again she got ahead of me. The life guard was so bored he didn't notice the little girl struggling with a panic to get her sea legs, and she hadn't been taught yet to just stand up. I was able to get through the other parahna kids obliviously playing around her and pull her up for air, to which end she started to cry from a pretty good panic attack. I don't blame her. I don't think I'll ever forget the look on her face.

I sat her down on my lap with a towel, calmed her down, and explained she needs to wait until I'm at the bottom of the slide. She also needed to remember to "find her legs" or stand. This incident happened at least two more times just because she didn't think to make sure it was clear of other kids. Long story short she is fine. In fact after learning from those terrifying moments she became determined to "stick the landing" and then got comfortable to do it with just my supervision and not me catching her. It was cool to see the satisfaction of her discovered, recognized mastery. It was really frustrating that the boredom the lifeguards were experiencing got in the way several times of them not noticing my obviously pre-drowning little girl. On top of that, one of them was wearing full fledge street clothes including shoes and socks.


I wish I wasn't so concerned on that time with getting my clothes wet as I should have been about jumping in and getting her air faster. In a real emergency, more than this one, would I even have the maternal instinct to put it aside and jump in regardless of what happened to me. Perhaps I didn't view it as a huge emergency in my subconscious.  Perhaps it was a tender mercy that I didn't freak out so I could pull her out.