Not a good day for a swim

At 3:30pm, the phone rang just as I got the last of our stuff loaded on the stroller to head to the pool. I ran back inside the house to answer it. It was Annaliese, one of the Oaks Pool lifeguards and Ian's swim teacher. Our lesson was scheduled for 4:00pm and she was calling to let me know that a kid just threw up in the pool causing it be shut down for 2 hours. "Oh Man!" was my reaction. Annaliese offered to give Ian his lesson at 5:30pm. We accepted the new time and I asked her if the baby pool was still open during these next two hours. She said yes. Already loaded and ready to go, we made our way to the Oaks Pool. Some say I overpack for the pool, but I am ready for any situation. We can be at the pool for 1 hour or 10, it is the same amount of crap being schlepped. The pool is a 3 minute walk (at best) from our house and I am an extraordinary packer when it comes to utilizing any bit of free space on the stroller -- the basket, handle bar, and above the canopy are all fair game. I've got beach towels, dry clothes for each of the kids to change in to, snacks, drinks, back-up swim diapers, multiple cans of sunscreen (you never know when one will run out), pool toys, arm floaties, float for Sam, goggles, kick board, etc. Yes, it is crazy, but if one of the kids needs something, you need to be ready.

We actually had a nice afternoon at the baby pool. A mommy friend who has kids Ian's age arrived and we had a pleasant time chatting while the kids played. It eventually got to be 5:30pm and time for Ian's swim lesson. The big thing you need to know is that we've done many, many sessions of swim lessons in the past and Ian has never gotten his head wet. Ever! Annaliese is the first teacher to have gotten as far as she has to actually getting Ian to swim on his own. It is very exciting and one reason I didn't want to miss a lesson. I feel like we've got good momentum and I want to keep it going.

Everyone was excited to finally go into the big pool. People had arrived over the course of the 2 hours and was counting down the minutes until they could get wet. At a quarter to the hour, every hour, it is an all-adult swim for 15 minutes. I wholeheartedly disagree with the lifeguard blowing his whistle and making the kids get out at 5:45pm. Talk about being unfair; these kids had only been in for 15 minutes after most of them had been waiting up to 2 hours. Fortunately Ian was able to continue his lesson during this time. Just when the whistle blew to signal the adult swim was over, and everyone was making their way back in the pool, Ian swallowed a little pool water. He started coughing and, you guessed it, threw-up in the pool. With the pool only officially being open for 15 minutes for the kids, Ian managed to shut it down again for another two hours. Ian got the whole 30 minutes of his lesson in and was pretty much done when the incident occurred. I am not entirely certain he fully understood what happened, because he got out of the big pool and returned to the baby pool. He was ready to start playing again.

We had to have set a record for shutting a pool down again so quickly after it finally reopened. I am just thankful all we saw was Ian's snack come back up and not the dinner he was about to eat.

Below is video of Ian learning to swim. If I kept it recording even 2 minutes longer, it would've been video of something else too!