Embarassing!

Today I took my three to the Y to go swimming since they just reopened the pool. We were having a fine time. Owen was swimming around throwing his Spiderman diving sticks. Blake and Sadie found out quickly that the newly painted pool was too slippery to walk on, so Mommy did a lot (I mean a whole lot!) of scooping up babies and moving them to a shallower area. It's funny that it's easier to walk around the deep end holding both of them than it is to try to let them play in the shallow end.

All was fine for 45 minutes, although I know at times I looked like I had too many kids to juggle. I really was fine. Sadie started to throw a fit because she wanted to get out at the side and crawl away, which I wouldn't let her do. It had been a long enough swim, so I told Owen it was time to get out. He was in deeper water and started to whine about leaving. I tried to tell him to swim to me so I could talk to him, but he didn't want to leave his dive stick out there in the middle.

So...He starts to have a temper tantrum while swimming in water above his head. I call out to him to swim to the side first, and when the lifeguard hears me, he jumps into action. I know Owen and his swimming abilities. He can swim a lap independently. He had been getting his dive sticks off of the bottom of 4 1/2 feet of water. He can dolphin kick across the pool. He was not a swimmer in distress. As soon as his face went under, he would have just swam the 3 feet to the side and continued crying about the dive stick. BUT, the lifeguard wasn't listening to me when I said that he wasn't drowning. He jumped in. Almost on top of a little boy with significant disabilities and his adults.

Having been a lifeguard for 10 years, it is embarassing to me that someone jumped in to rescue my son. It's embarassing that the lifeguard must have been looking at me like some mother who didn't know enough about water safety to keep her kids out of danger. As soon as he got to the side (all of 3 seconds later), he cried to the lifeguard that he didn't want to leave his dive stick where someone else would take it. By this time, I had been able to pick it up with my toes and went over to apologize to the guy who no longer had a nice dry shirt to sit in for the rest of his rotation. I also made Owen thank him and apologize for throwing a fit that made the lifeguard think he needed saving. I wonder what will go through that guy's head when we show up again later this week.

Just one more thing. Owen, should he ever read this when he is older, will be mortified, but I was embarassed enough for us both today when it happened. I'm sharing. While changing out of our wet suits, I was in the shower stall area of the family locker room while Owen got dressed on the other side of the baby stroller. I hear, "Look Blake, I can just hang my goggles on my weiner!" And that is exactly what he was demonstrating for his brother. Strange, but not a huge deal. I gave him a "stop that" and a "hurry up" and eventually we made it out of the locker room. The kicker is while passing the front desk, Owen says quite loudly, "My weiner is itching! It's allergic to goggles. You should only hang goggles on your weiner when you're a grown up and not allergic." Yep, we got some looks.