Nascar for Babies

We're lucky enough to have this lovely little free public foot-deep pool and park about three blocks from our house.

The trek is just short enough to warrant walking or biking rather than going via automobile, but just long enough for the SYO to get in a few are we there's yet coupled with heavy sighs and rolls of the shoulders in dramatic overture.

Now that the water's warmed a bit, Big loves it as well.

I discovered, however, that he seems to love it in a unique way as compared to not only the other babies there, but also as compared to the other big kids, and it took me a while to figure this out.

The yellow baby floatie, in the last couple of weeks or so, now fits him such that he can actually stand on the floor of the pool while leaning over on the edge of the floatie.

To him, this must be not unlike us wearing a scuba suit or entering into the nonatmosphere of space that enables us to let go of our earthenly weight: In the floatie, he is light enough to experience walking!

At first, he just walked up to the edge and grabbed at toys or at the cement edge.

Then I noticed that he seemed to like the other flotation devices in the pool and would sort of grab at them as another wee one made his or her orbit.

When he noticed one particularly pink one, I noticed him becoming more encroaching-hawkish even-about grabbing at it, in an act that, ultimately, could be described as nothing less than a chase. At one point the little girl in the middle of the pink tube turned around, annoyed, and said to me:

I don't want him grabbing my floatie!!!