Summertime

Light of my life is not the greatest swimmer of all but I believe she's probably the most enthusiastic. She LOVES to swim. She talks about going to the pool every day and pretty much does.

That said, she has always been wary of the deep end. She won't even go in it with me.

To be fair, she has not grown up with a pool or even a place where she could really take lessons. Mostly due to lack of money but also because we would have had to drive all over the place just to gain access to a decent pool.

After Katrina, when we were evacuated and living in an apartment, we had access to a pool 24/7. We moved into the apartment complex at the end of September and it was still warm enough to hit the pool for a couple of weeks. As soon as winter was over (and yes, we were still not living in our home in New Orleans) and it became spring, all she wanted to do was go to the pool. As soon as I picked her up from after-care, we would go back to the apartment, put on our suits and hit the pool. She turned into quite the little fish once she had constant access. She would finally get in the deep end (albeit with a ring around her waist and full on goggles...sorry Tracey) and started jumping off the sides in the shallow end.

Then, we moved back to New Orleans and there went the pool access.

When we moved up here, we discovered that a bunch of citizens started a private club and took over the care of the city pool which had been shut down. You have to be voted in and pay dues, but so far, it's been worth it. She's been pretty much every day since we got our key.

They have a diving board at the pool. She has never jumped off of a diving board before. When I was young, I used to belong to a country club that had a pool with a diving board. I used to love jumping, diving, running and cannon balling (heh, heh, I said balling) off of both the low and high board.

Well, I decided to jump off this board and she watched with great interest. I did a few tricks including diving (which I will NEVER do again...why didn't someone tell me that diving hurts when you have big ta-tas?). She watched all this but would refuse to jump off the side of the pool in the deep end let alone the diving board.

I told her that I wanted her to be able to jump off the diving board at least once by the end of the summer. She tentatively agreed and I left it at that.

Well, yesterday, after mom dropped her off at the pool (there is a life guard and people there that know her so she's well taken care of), mom got a phone call a couple of hours later and light of my life asked her to bring her camera with her when she came to pick her up.

My mom went and got her at about 5 or so and the below pictures tells quite a story:




Here she is in the deep end pushing off the side.

Here she is on the diving board...

...crouching down...

...and jumping in!!!!!!!

She loved it! She said once she did it the first time, it was like a flood gate opened and that's pretty much all she did the rest of the afternoon.

I'm so proud of her for doing this...especially for doing this on her own without anyone convincing her or talking her into it or pressuring her. She faced a fear and conquered it...with STYLE.

This is a picture (on a different day) of light of my life and her "boyfriend" S making funny faces.

They're so cute together. He pretty much claimed his stake on her on the first day of school and will tell anybody and everybody that she's his girlfriend.

Ahhhh...summer love.

Have a good weekend. I'm off tomorrow! I may check in...or not.

Later,

Mama Dawg