Putting the POO in POOL

I've tried to take the kids to the park as much as possible this summer--not so much for their sake as for my sanity.  The park I prefer to go to happens to be right next to the city pool.  Inside the pool area is a child-sized water park with a slide, water canons, and all other kinds of things that shoot water directly at your toddler's face.  It's amazing...except for when I take the kids to the park and all they want to do is go to the pool.

  Pay no attention to the small print.

One of my goals for this summer is to say "Yes" to the kids more often.  While this rule does not apply to breakfast food choices ("No Leah, you can not have ice cream for breakfast"), I have been trying to follow the rule when the kids make other requests.  Since they ask to go to the pool every time we go to the park, I finally said yes.

The only reason I had said 'No' for so long was because I dreaded the thought of having to watch all three of them at the pool by myself.  How hard could it be though, right?

The problems started before we even left the house.  Caleb had outgrown his swimming trunks, so we had to settle for a pair of sweat-shorts.  I'm not sure what sweat-shorts are made of, but I'm pretty sure it's the same stuff they use to make sponges.   He picked up at least twenty pounds with those soggy shorts, and with no way to tie them, it was an interesting day at the pool.  I don't usually mind seeing a little butt-crack at the pool...as long as it's not my son's.  I kept waiting for one of the Lifeguards to ask us to leave.

"Sir, you put sweat-shorts on your son and now he's mooning everybody.  We're going to have to ask you to leave, but not until we've contacted DCFS and the police."

My son actually was told to leave the pool.  It wasn't because of his mooning though.  It was his height:

  Pay not attention to the extremely large print.

Feeling rejected, his 47-inch frame wandered over to the edge of the pool, where I sat playing with Libby.  I was relieved to know that I would no longer have to worry about his pants falling down.  But, what was he supposed to do now?  I couldn't let him go to the big pool by himself and we hadn't been there long enough to justify going home already.  Libby would soon solve our little problem.

The three of us were sitting on the edge of the pool, playing nicely, when suddenly...it happened.  There is really no way to describe the horror of what I saw, perhaps a video would help.


That's about right.  I guess we need to buy the next size up in Swim Diapers.  At least I was justified in taking the kids home now.