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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Swimming at Sarah's Party

On Sunday, Aunt Laura and Uncle Bryan hosted a party for Hallie's oldest cousin, the newly-minted 8th grade graduate Sarah. (We would have included a picture of Sarah on the blog but we never got one! But we did want to say that we are incredibly proud of how well she did and all of the seven fabulous awards she won at graduation).

Really it was two parties, the first of which was a staid get together for family and the little kids who had a great time swimming in the pool, and the second of which was a much more boisterous event geared toward a gaggle of 14 year old girls and a few boys. Needless to say, the music was both of a different genre and at much varied decibel levels at each of the shindigs.

Given our track record of never being able to get out of the house with all of our gear before around 2 or 3pm, we stayed the night with Sharon's mom, which allowed us to be on time for once. Of course, we had to feed Hallie lunch pretty much upon our arrival, and, though she had the usual distraction of Sesame Street, she watched the kids playing in the pool on the deck longingly. As soon as her lunch settled in her tummy (very important because her system had been upset since Saturday evening when we fed her a potato chip that had probably been cross-contaminated by rice starch---who knew that this was used in a lot of commercial chips?---we changed her into her swimsuit and Sharon got in the pool with her. What's very funny, or at least surprising, is that Hallie kind of thought that she knew how to swim (the pool is around 3 feet deep). Perhaps swimming is a reflexive skill. In any event, she doesn't know how to swim, even if she got into doggie paddle position very instinctively. but it's nice to know that she's not afraid of the water. Indeed, she had a blast, as these pictures demonstrate:






We definitely will look into getting Hallie swim lessons this fall/winter!

All that swimming is pretty hard work, so Hallie and Sharon jumped in the hammock for a nap:


How blissful!

3 comments:

Judith and Jason said...

Looking good Miss Hallie! It is amazing about the swimming...

Billie said...

Looks like fun!

I chuckled when I read that you can't get out of the house before 2 or 3 pm. It's nice to know I'm not the only one:)

I try to schedule our lives around the fact that every meal takes over an hour, and has to be done in a specific manner to get them to eat as much as possible.

Then there's clothes and diapers and hair and all the equipment... Gah. It takes forever!
Billie

Sara Cohen said...

Hey there. Glad Hallie was having fun in the pool! Just wanted to comment on the idea of getting her into swim lessons...and I don't know if she has any respiratory/asthma issues but if she does, be aware...I had Charlie in swim lessons and his asthma was terrible which I attributed to regular winter issues. His pediatrician asked me to remove him from lessons as it is a researched fact that indoor pools make asthma much worse...the chlorine creates fumes that never really get circulated well enough and create a terrible lung irritating environment...just a friendly warning!