The Daily Hailey

We lived!!

Today was our first visit to the pool in a really long time, and while I’ll soon post a bunch of cute pictures of my kids, it wasn’t a lot of fun. I won’t sugarcoat it. It was tough. But, from the beginning, as always.

We got the kids up, dressed, fed, and headed out to the city. It was freezing today. I read somewhere that some of the buses weren’t even running. Sooo cold. The perfect day to get the kids wet and take them outside. But we were determined. Dekker clearly felt summery enough, rocking his shades. He didn’t know where we were going.

It was as though he knew exactly what was happening as soon as we entered the change room area. Probably just the wet floor did him in. He was crying and panicking as we were undressing him, and that isn’t usually too tough of a thing to convince him on! Once he was in his trunks, I took him to the pool and Brady got Laela dressed and put our stuff in lockers. Yes, more work, but with a much calmer companion.

Dekker was freaked. He was crying sooo loudly. I got a few sympathetic looks but there were so few people there, and they all seemed to be together, so we all kept to ourselves. I carried him into a cool pool and splashed water up on his toes. Even just that made him so distraught. It was awful. I waded around in there for a while, but then someone turned on that huge, chaotic water display with big fountains and water dumping on heads and spraying water and lots of noise. Not exactly what we needed, as we had limited time there. We retreated to the family hot tub. For those who don’t know, thats just a hot tub that isn’t too hot so its a bit nicer for kids. Even just walking down the stairs, Dekker tightened his death grip around my neck and wailed. Finally, I just bit the bullet and walked all the way in, so he was a good ways into the water. He cried and cried. He was so upset. Luckily, all the noise from the water monstrosity covered his big voice and I could just hold him instead of shush him. I waded into a part of the hot tub with less jets and that seemed to help. Less unknown maybe. I never let go of him. He would hardly even lift his head off my shoulder to look around.

However, finally Brady and Laela appeared. He was happy to have us all together. Also, Laela was incredibly comfortable in the water, so we floated her around and bobbed her up and down and Dekker would watch and smile at her. When Brady would just hold her against him like normal, Dekker would point at her and say “Float! Float! Feeky! Feeky! La Feeky!” Thats ‘Dekker’ for “Laela’s feet.” So we’d lift her back up on her back and he would touch her toes and giggle. So we had a game, anyway.

Finally, the water feature stopped and the jets turned off, and we were just in a warm pool. We had about ten minutes left before we had to leave, and Dekker finally started enjoying himself. He trusted me to hold him and stopped holding on so tight. He looked around and saw other kids. At one point, a man and his kid were in a little pool behind us and Dekker called out “hello!” to them and they greeted him back! It was really sweet. I even just grabbed him by the pits and bounced him in and out of the water. It was starting to work.

Besides the obvious challenge of going swimming, there was a downside thats sort of been bugging me since we left. Now some of you will likely not like what I have to say, and thats fine. I see all sides. When Dekker began to get comfortable with the water, he splashed. He splashed big splashed, got water all over himself, and laughed and laughed. It absolutely warmed my heart. I know that splashing isn’t encouraged, and I know why. Its rude to splash other people. I get it. However, I know the situation my family is in, and while we’re the same as every other family in the long run, Dekker is terrified of water. If he finds a water game that helps him be happy, and no one is around to get splashed, then I don’t see the problem. We were sitting in the hot tub, with only a couple other people way on the other side of it, and that one decent sized group of people behind us sort of. Far enough that they would not have felt any water, but close enough to be within earshot. I wish they weren’t. One of the women commented right out loud how she had taught her kids it was impolite to splash and how she wishes other people would too. She mentioned that when other kids splash, her kids want to, and then she had to tell them not to. Those “splashing kids” are bad influences. And I get it. I do! But it really got under my skin. Without being too ghetto, she doesn’t know me! She has no idea where or what we come from. I thought it was just as rude for her to say that about us when we could obviously hear her, as I’m sure she thought we were rude to let Dekker splash. I don’t know. It ticked me off. We had to leave almost immediately afterwards, which turned out to be a good thing. I might have left anyway. Call me crazy, or sensitive, and you’d be right. This fear of water breaks my heart, and I am doing my best with my kids!!!

A song lyric comes to mind. You gotta keep your head up, but you can let your hair down.

We’re doing our best.