One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish but No Blue Fish

We made it.

Safely :)

And we've been in the pool ever since.

Well, not quite but it certainly feels like it! Even after over 15 hours of traveling on Saturday the kids were asking to go in the pool! Like good parents (er, exhausted parents) we made them wait until Sunday after church AND after lunch. I think they were close to bursting by the time we actually let them loose.

As expected Kaitlyn and Caleb took to the water like the fish they are :)

One Fish.



Two Fish.



But this year I get to add a few "red fish" to the bunch:



I knew there would be a difference in swimming desire and skill and I wasn't wrong. In the first few minutes I feared that it would take a good week before any of the girls got acclimated enough to the pool to swim "on their own" - meaning I wasn't holding them every single time they left the steps.

Within an hour Julianna proved me wrong. Yea! I was so proud of her.



It took a little pursuasion but she got it pretty quickly and after a few times of me holding on to her was able to tell me that I could let go.

An hour later she was brave enough to take her life jacket off and swim with just the noodles.



As of today (day 2) Rachel was quite content to play in on the stairs with the water toys. We've coaxed her out a bit - swimming a bit with me and going down the slide just once with Kirk but otherwise she's just happy to hang out.



And Alyssa. Well, she's just different all around! I figured we'd never get her out of the shallow end - my efforts yesterday were thwarted but today she went down the slide with dad over and over again and as soon as she learned she could jump into the pool (a skill only Julianna knew how to do last year and the only one to try it yesterday) she jumped over and over and over again. At one point she even jumped straight in to no one :) She's not as "brave" as Julianna to swim by herself away from me but she has learned to swim from me or Kirk to the steps.



So it looks like we have 5 happy fishes. I'm fascinated to see how the triplets change over the next month and whether or not Rachel comes out of her shell this year and gives swimming a try (it's okay if she doesn't).

Fortunately we have no blue fish since the water is already quite warm and none of us are shivering while we're swimming :)