Pruny Hands

This weekend we discovered that Peter is aquatically-inclined. He had cousins visiting a resort with a water park in Sheboygan and the resort screwed up their reservation and bumped them up to a 4 bedroom condo suite to make up for it. So we were invited up for the night on Saturday.

Everybody went to the water park late Saturday afternoon, but we weren’t sure if we were going to let Peter in the water. He’s had dry skin for a while and even had to have hydrocortisone rubbed into his strawberry mark on his back for a little while because it was getting kind of cracked and scaly. But he was much better at this point, so we were just being nervous parents over-protecting our little guy. After a couple minutes we did get him in his trunks and got him a little damp.

At first he was somewhat confused. The place was pretty loud, what with all the water noises and kids screaming, and all the sound was bouncing off the walls, so it was disorienting, too. But he just wasn’t digging it much. But we knew that he loves playing with water, be it in a sink, in the tub, or in the shower. So we thought maybe if we introduced him to something more familiar he might loosen up. There was a little area that had sprays so we brought him there to ease him into it as if it was just another shower. It worked, he reached out his hand into the sprays and started smiling.

We then let him play a little with fountains that shot up (or burbled, which is more of an accurate term) about 12-18 inches. After that came the big test: the kiddie pool. We had started him out there at first, but it resulted in The Lip instead of gleeful splashing. Now we’d see if we had cracked his steely resolve. His mom sat at the base of the pool with him and… he started reaching out and playing with the water. He got taken a bit further in and sat in the water, and splash splash splash he slapped at the water. She took him out a little deeper still and she stretched him out and he started doing doggie paddle motions with his arms, and even was kicking his legs. Success! He should be ready for the Olympics in 2024, I believe.

We took him back again this morning. He was a little sluggish after 20 minutes or so, so we thought we’d take him home. Then we noticed his swimmer diaper was full. We’re pretty sure he did the deed after we took him out of the water. …Yup, pretty sure…