Water Wars: The Season Finale

All smiles, ready for the boat ride

What began the swimming season as a huge water meltdown for a pilot episode (as told in my post Pool Wars I and II), fizzled down and became more of a manageable dislike of large bodies (natural or man-made) of water. We never took the boys back to the pool or the ocean (read about the ocean here) but they have had several encounters at the lake (read about it here and see pictures here) where I believe small victories have been won. Their desire to stay in the sand on the beach and to do no more than barely poke their toes into the water made it extremely easy to watch them at the lake on our last lake trip of the summer. I remember last year that it took constant vigilance by two people to keep them from toddling into the lake water. I'm a list-maker, so let me break it down for you: 

Water encounters they enjoy:

Hitting golf balls into the water and retrieving them from shore
Washing sand off their hands in the shallowest water possible
Jet skiing
“Steering” the paddle boat
Kayaking
Puddle-stomping
Talking about going to the pool
Talking about when Clark fell off the dock
Throwing pinecorns (acorns) into the lake
Splashing other people with water
Bathing in the tub, but only their tub, not Gammy’s
Drinking water in a cup

Water encounters they still cannot handle without screaming maniacally like crazed monkeys: 

Going into a BBOW (Big Body Of Water) past their shins
Watching Mom jump off the dock
Bathing in someone else’s tub on the first try
Putting a single toe in a kiddie pool
Being splashed by a sprinkler or any other form of water

Overall as you can see, they enjoy more water encounters than they hate. We hope to get them to the indoor pool regularly this winter and start them in swim lessons next summer when they’re three. Baby steps, right? Our Labor Day lake trip was a pretty good season finale after the disastrous pilot episode in June.

Clark beach-golfing

Boat ice cream faces

Calvin went in this far all by himself!