We reached a couple of milestones as a family on Friday. The first one involved Nate, my baby (he would be correcting me right now if he could read..."I'm not a baby mom!"). All he's been able to talk about this summer is being tall enough to go down the big slide at our local pool. Friday was the first opportunity he had to try it out. When we first arrived, he ran up the stairs, got to the top, looked at the slide and promptly walked back down the stairs. He did this a couple of times. Then he jumped into the 4 feet and swam with me. Joe arrived about 15 minutes later and did a little coaxing. They took a couple of trips up and back down...Joe via the slide and Nate via the stairs. Finally, he convinced me to go up (I'm not much of a waterslide fan...the things you do for your kids). His plan was for Joe to go down first, then himself, and then me. His logic was Joe and I would both be available if there was problems. And it worked. I wasn't at the bottom when he arrived, but according to Joe his first words were "That was awesome!" Fortunately, he only required me to go down one more time. After that, except for taking a brief break to go off the diving board twice, he was on the slide...for an hour and a half.
The second milestone was for Joe and I. After we'd been at the pool for over an hour, we were kind of done being in the water. So we found a couple of lounge chairs, took a seat and watched our kids while they swam and took in the thrills of the slide and the diving board. We sat by ourselves and didn't have to worry about any child drowning. For the first time in 10 years, we didn't have to be in the water with our kids. It was kind of like a date by the pool. I love playing with my kids in the water, but the lounge chair is definitely something I can get used to.
