30 days of 29, day 16: Espen goes swimming.

One of my favourite suggestions for this whole project was Photoknitdog's idea to take Espen somewhere he's never been before. Of course, when he's only four months old and lives out the majority of his little human drama in our living room, that's not too hard to do. We could take him outside the gate in our back yard and it would be a whole new experience for him. But, of course, being his mama, I wanted to make things special and exciting for him, so for the 4th of July weekend, not only did we take him on his very first visit to grandma and grandpa's house, we also introduced him to grandma and grandpa's swimming pool.

People often describe Espen using words like "skeptical", "interested ", "worried" and "curious", and let me assure you that we got the full range of those emotions when we first brought him into the pool. His thoughts seem to go something like this:

"Where are we going now? Whoa! This is cold and wet! But, oh, I like water. There's quite a lot of it in here. Oh, the light is bright. Is that my daddy? I like my daddy! Oh, but I'm cold. But look at all that water! I should touch it. What does it taste like? I'd better kick my legs, just to be sure."

And so on.

Before too long, Espen got cold and shivery in the pool so we got in the hot tub instead. Which sounds like an insane thing to do in Utah in July with a temperature sensitive baby, but fortunately, we were able to control the temperature ourselves, which was nice. And if Espen liked the swimming pool, he loved the hot tub.


Of course, Espen loving something doesn't always look like you or me loving something. He just gets this little look on his face that says "I must not miss a single moment". So we bounced him up and down and swooshed him through the water, and let him touch the waterfall, and he had a grand old time. But I think he most enjoyed relaxing in the shade with me, with his head resting on my chest and his little body floating in the water, while his legs kicked happily.

Bliss.

Added bonus: We discovered that swimming completely wears Espen out, as he couldn't take a nap fast enough both of the times we brought him in the pool. His second, 15-minute swimming adventure resulted in a 4.5 hour nap!

So, yes, we will be going swimming again in the future :)