About a week or so ago Max and I got to go swim with some friends from church. Thanks to the Doutres for making it happen, by the way!
We got there and the pool was huge with two big old diving boards and two huge slides.
The first thing Max did was hurry over and jump off a big diving board straight into the cold water. Brrrr. In some things he's seriously fearless. Water seems to be one of them. He's so confident it's scary. He really thinks he can swim, though without the water wings he really can't. All he can do is barely tread water. So I have to keep a tight eye on him and make sure he doesn't overstretch himself. At least he likes his water wings. That's a good thing.
Anyway, he did lots of jumping off the boards, but there was this monster slide down at the deep end that Max had his eye on. It was really really tall and steep. Tall and steep enough that I definitely didn't want to go on it.
But Max did. So he went for it.
He climbed up to the top then froze. For like 5 minutes with this scared look on his face. I started to get worried about him, but he snapped out of it, got up to the top and went for it. He looked really scared all the way down. Then when he came back up out of the water he was like, "That was AWESOME!!".
He went down a million more times--making me nervous every time.
He loved it.
Sometimes it's really fun to have a fearless kid--in situations like this where there are fun challenging things to do. Not so fun when he likes to run away from us in any situation though, and he's not scared he'll ever get lost or get in trouble. Argh.
But he's such an adventurous swimmer and we're super proud of him. Go Max!
4 comments:
awesome action shots.
i'll never forget the time josh jumped into the pool when my back was turned. i got him out quick, and he was not scared, but i was terrified that nat had seen it.
that looked like a beautiful pool. and cute kid, of course.
It's a strange experience to have your kid discover, finally, how harsh the world can be - for that bravery to blow up in his or her face. What happens after that can determine how the rest of that kid's life goes - and sometimes can determine whether there's going to be a rest of the life. Sometimes it doesn't happen until the kid is a teenager. Sometimes even later. We hope they learn. But not learn too much - I wonder how things look from HF's perspective? I wonder if I'm the kid, still cruising for a taste of reality?
Great shots! I'd love to swim in that pool right about now. Sounds good to me!
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