Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Water Girl


My sweet Summer LOVES swimming. I know I've said this before, but she really does. I think it's incredible that they have these young kids out there doing flip turns, the butterfly, diving off starting blocks and competing. Summer likes it because she gets to jump in the pool with her friends each week. Recently she was in a swim meet and had to compete in two events: butterfly and freestyle. In her mind, butterfly is her best stroke. She makes it look completely easy with very little effort. The gun went off and Summer dove in and swam her little heart out. When she tagged the wall at the end she suddenly realized that she had come in second place. I immediately saw her eyes begin to fill with tears even before she got out of the pool. My heart sank. She grabbed her towel and buried her face in the chair. David was so sweet and immediately went to her side to give her a pep talk. He's really good at those. She was crying and so, so sad. Her time actually improved by quite a bit from the last meet but she just happened to be paired with one really fast swimmer. We talked about how it's just about having fun and I then chimed in with a funny and true story of me almost making my high school cheerleading team by only one point. That made her laugh but she still proclaimed that she would never get in the pool again. All of her little swim friends came and gave her hugs and lots of encouragement. She was so nervous because her next event was freestyle which she thought was her worst. Well, we convinced her to just try her best and to go for it. It worked and my cute little Summer got right back out there and ended up coming in first place in that event. I was so proud of her. I think it was a good learning experience for her but things like that are so hard to watch as a parent. First or second place she was our very favorite swimmer out there that day.