It's autumn time! It's autumn time!

It was 93°F today (33°C) and the pool is still open, so we went to the pool this afternoon (just me and the four youngest). Phoebe was so upset about her finger (and the accompanying bandaid) that she could hardly sleep last night and was a bit of a cranky mess today. So naturally she tripped over Alexander in the parking lot and scraped up her knee. She was just about the saddest little girl in the whole world.

"Why does it hurt???" she wailed. "My finger already hurts!"

That's like double jeopardy or something, right? You can't get hurt twice in a 24-hour period.

I washed her knee off and then put a bandaid on it for a few minutes, which Phoebe did not appreciate. She screamed out all sorts of threatening things at me ("It's healed! It's healed! It's already healed! Take if off right now!") while I rubbed sunscreen on her arms and legs. And then I finally ripped the bandaid back off.

"Thank you!" she sniffed and then started howling again. "Why does it still hurt?!"

The logic (that so many of my children have had) is that it isn't the injury hurting them. It's those cursèd bandaid. If they can just get rid of that bandaid, they will miraculously be healed. 

It's upsetting when that's not the case (and it is so often not the case). 

But, her knee stopped bleeding (it wasn't such a terrible scrape after all) and she was soon distracted by the pool, which is cooler than we're used to in the middle of summer, but which felt really quite lovely on a sweltering fall day like today.

Here are the kids doing some jumping in the pool:

And here they are doing some jumping into the pool:

We stayed for nearly two hours, which was well worth it because our hot fall days aren't over...but this is the last week the pool is open! On a very technical level, I have so many projects coming up that going to the pool felt a little frivolous. But on the other hand, I finished all the work I told the kids I needed to finish before we could do something fun...so it wasn't as if we hadn't earned our time at the pool. 

Here are the kids just before we left:

I will miss these pool days—I'm already counting down until May!