Swimming and sliding

Since Rachel and I aren't getting along so well this morning--I'm not being very patient with her and she's already peed her pants twice and thrown several temper tantrums over everything and anything and bit my face during one of her temper tantrums--I thought I'd write about yesterday, since I haven't yet and yesterday was pretty fun.

Andrew ended up coming home from campus rather early (gotta love the first week of the semester) and since we didn't have playgroup today and it's so incredibly warm here already, we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to go swimming. Rachel has been feeling housebound recently. I think our trip to Spain and Morocco didn't help things any because she was so used to waking up and going outside right away. We didn't spend any mornings harbored up in our hotel rooms. So now that we're home she thinks that we need to be going places all the time.

It's kind of nice to have her reminding me to "GO!" so often. We do tend to stay inside a lot since there isn't really anywhere to just go and play here. Except on Wednesdays, which are free days at the Maadi House.

So we phoned Sara and she agreed to sign us in at the Maadi House because she's nice like that. (Thanks, Sara!)

Rachel was so excited to go swimming and the water was, in my opinion, perfect. The pool is heated, so it's far too warm to swim laps or anything, but it's great for taking a baby swimming in. It felt like a bathtub, nice and warm.

We haven't gone swimming since December sometime, so it had been a while and Rachel was a little shy of the "wawa" (water) at first. Soon, though, she remembered that she loves swimming and started being really brave again.

She usually will kick her legs on command, but yesterday when I told her to "swim" she would do this super rigid prone float, sticking her legs straight behind her and reaching above her head with her hands making a perfect rocket pose. If she had pushed off of me instead of just flipping onto her tummy she probably would have glided across the whole pool!

She would only kick her legs if Daddy was chasing her. He kept swimming under the water and tickling her feet and she kept kicking her legs at him and grabbing his hair and "pushing" him back under the water. They were so funny to watch.

Rachel wanted to go to the "wa" (wall) a lot. She loves playing on the wall because she can go where she wants to go without being carried. She likes to inch her way, hand over hand, across the pool while blowing bubbles in the gutter. She also likes to climb out and jump in. She almost jumped in all by herself, but chickened out at the last minute and made a grab for my hands.

She is not afraid of the water at all, though. The first time I dunked her she was a little upset but when I asked her if she wanted to go under the water again she got all serious and thought about it for a mintue before smiling and saying, "Yeah!"

After we dunked her a few times, she got so brave and started letting go of us and trying to swim to the wall. She can make it, too, if we're about a foot away. She'll just let go of my hands, jump off my knees, and reach for the wall. She keeps her eyes open and kicks her legs until she grabs it and then pulls herself up. She's always so proud when she makes it. She even tried turning around from the wall to try to come back to me by herself, but that was a little too tricky for her.

We also spent a lot of time playing on the stairs. She can sit on the first stair and stand on the second, but the third one goes up to her nose. She kept climbing down onto the third stair and then doing jumping bobs to the other side of the stair until she got to the railing. It was crazy to watch her do this! She's so comfortable in the water!

After swimming for an hour, Rachel decided it was time to go, so Daddy took her out to get her dressed and to use the potty. Then they played at the playground for a while while I, dressed and ready to go, waited for them to come back and find me. I figured, after I had waited for a few minutes that maybe they weren't finished getting dressed yet, so I went to find them and saw Rachel going down the huge slide at the Maadi House playground all by herself.

This child is crazy!

Now she's in her room, singing along to Primary songs. At least she's not screaming anymore. I just hope she falls asleep soon and wakes up happy. We still have the whole afternoon to go. The afternoon may include finding somewhere to get all her little wiggles out.