And yesterday was Swimming Pool Day.
Fladungen has a large public Schwimmbad, and an all-season family pass is only 36 Euros. (Which is more than $50 at the moment, thanks to the weak US dollar, but that's still pretty cheap.) It opened this week. So, Friday after school, Alan and David and I went swimming. Jacob was over at Oma's house -- those two have an intense love affair -- and Claudia got to rest for an hour.
And it was fun. What's to say about a public swimming pool? It was a warm sunny Friday afternoon, so pretty crowded. Alan can swim just fine with floaties. My sinister plan is to, day by day, inflate the floaties less and less until he's swimming without them. This is in marked contrast to how I learned to swim (viz., being pushed into the deep end). No accident! But anyway, he's very comfortable in the water.
David can almost swim, but on this day he didn't want to. I can make David do things he doesn't want to do, but on this day I didn't want to. So he dabbled in the shallow end and we splashed each other now and then and everyone had a good time.
Later we split a portion of French fries. Then we walked home and watched part of a David Attenborough BBC nature video. (Wolf versus caribou! Who... will... win!?)
Then Mommy, who had gone to pick up Jacob, came home with pizza. Pizza!
And that was our Friday afternoon.
-- Does it sound idyllic? Maybe a little. I should probably mention the rough bits more. Like, when Jacob goes to his grandmother's house? They have so much fun that Jacob doesn't nap. So when he comes home at the end of the day, between not-napping and missing Oma he is SO DAMN CRANKY. Or that Alan and David are going through a "start fights over trivia" phase -- this morning it was "My spoon is bigger than yours!"
Still, it's not a bad time in our lives.
-- Noel upbraided me for posting stuff on the Fistful that should be over here. Well, okay. Here are links to a couple of my recent posts: one on liveblogging the Eurovision song contest, and another on larks, and why they are awesome.
Next up: kindergartenfest, celebrating all the kids who are finishing kindergarten soon and will be going on to real school in September. That'll be most of Saturday.
It feels wonderful to have a free day spent on swimming, no? At times, it feels so hectic for the parents when the kids are so excited, but in the end, it's all worth it. All that fun and excitement make wonderful memories...
Posted by: Shanae Buckner | January 17, 2012 at 11:52 PM