Making a splash

We had a really relaxed and enjoyable Canada Day yesterday. Kept it very low-key but had a lot of fun. Our friends Cory and Megan are out of town this weekend and told Chad he could use the pool while they’re away. You know him… that’s all he needed to hear. Plus, we thought it would be fun to see how Liam likes the water, given his love affair with the bathtub. And while we typically go to Cory and Megan’s to swim with friends and family several times each summer, those visits always disintegrate into monster games of a Chad and Cory invention called Killer Pool Basketball, which I am sure is not the right time to introduce Liam to the concept of swimming.

We bought him some of those insanely expensive little swim diapers to wear. I don’t understand how a diaper works in the water, but I’ve seen what his bare bottom is capable of in the bathtub and didn’t want to risk repeating that in a pool!… Chad took him in first and swirled him around a little. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. He didn’t hate it but he wasn’t chortling the same way he does in the bathtub, either. He was probably just really confused. The water was a balmy 89 F so it was perfect for dunking a baby in. Because it was sunny we had to call it quits pretty quickly – Chad passed him off to me for a few minutes, and then he was out. We’ll try it again sometime (we still have 11 pairs of swim diapers left, after all…)

Liam passed out shortly after the swimming (all that exercise tires the little guy out, you know), so we left him sleeping while we paddled around a while. When he woke up I took him inside to feed him, and Chad tuned into the Wimbledon broadcast. From his vantage point on the change mat, Liam was completely enthralled – never mind that it was a rebroadcast of a match we’d already seen (nor that more age-appropriate fare like Baby Einstein doesn’t catch his attention in nearly the same way). And of course, Chad was thrilled to no end to have a possible tennis prodigy on his hands. We shall see. :)



We finished the day off by taking a walk downtown while the Canada Day Parade was in full swing. Boy, did that make me feel like I live in a small town. Float after float of nameless, affiliation-less people – here comes a carload of senior citizens singing O Canada! Here comes some woman in a sequinned dress (on a weekday afternoon, no less) singing karaoke – not that she has any talent or qualifications! Oh look, here comes another tractor! But we're parents now - it's our duty to cart our kid around to this schlock - it's the stuff childhood memories are made of.