The Moments - Chapter 3: Water, Water Everywhere

                Have you ever met a child who doesn’t like the water?  Unfortunately, you probably have.  There are tales told of little boys and girls who take years to truly have fun with bath time.  And, Heaven forbid that they should ever come near a swimming pool.  That ain’t happening either.  This is not such a tale.  I don’t think “Grimes” means “amphibious” in any language, but Joey may be rewriting the Rosetta Stone one day.  My boy loves the water!  Whether in a pool or in the bath, Joey is virtually always right at home bouncing around sea level. 

                Our trips to the swimming pool have provided some fun and memorable moments in Joey’s, so far, short life.  This is not one of those pieces where I’m going to take something simple and get philosophical with it.  It’s just plain fun.  However, I think it appropriate to note that Joey’s first trip to a swimming pool was on our first Father’s Day (mine as a father, his as the one who made me a father).  Daddy J and Mama Tee (my parents) had come to spend the day with us, and the weather was great for an afternoon visit to the pool at mine and Joey’s apartment.  We knew we couldn’t/shouldn’t keep him out for too long at five-and-a-half months old, but we were all ready to make the most of our fun time there.  We had a fresh pack of swimmer diapers (those things still amaze me) ready for the day, a Joey-sized inflatable float, and my Daddy’s new waterproof digital video camera.  When we got to the pool area, there was the usual 20ish and 30ish crowd who made camping out at the pool a weekly pattern.  They all treated Joey like a star.  I was impressed.  I actually thought if we were the only ones with a child there that my fellow residents would have a little attitude about sharing their turf with a youngster.  They ate it up.  They kept him laughing and he did the same for them.  It was a good show on land or in the water.  Daddy and Mama and I were careful to take things slowly in terms of acclimating Joey to the pool experience, but it wasn’t long before he was living it up in his float and not wanting to leave.  Daddy set him on my shoulders in the water, Mama and I pulled him around in his floating Cadillac, he splashed and kicked and splashed some more.  It was awesome.  Joey even got a little fussy when we proceeded to take him out of the pool for the day.  He handled it so well that I told some folks I wanted to do it every weekend.  But, alas, weather and logistics often prove a foe.  For his first summer, Joey only made one more visit to the pool with me.  Krista and “Uncle” Will and “Aunt” Tali got to join us for that party.  Joey was a few weeks older (at that point, made a big difference) and all the more able to maximize his fun in the water.  It was another great afternoon.  Joey clearly liked the freedom he felt in the water, and I love seeing him really feel the fun in whatever he does.  His second summer included some similar pool days, but those first ones will always stand out because he couldn’t speak yet and completely communicated his enjoyment through his face and actions and attitude.  I hope your kid(s) like the swimming pool.  It’s a great multi-faceted place to bond and have fun.

                Certainly less public but almost as aquatic is Joey’s other favorite water locale – the bathtub.  As with some of the other routine life activities that I realized I take for granted until seeing Joey learn them in his months of early life, I never thought he would make the bathtub the site of regular entertainment.  But, he is a natural entertainer and he loves the water.  It’s an easy combination.  He commonly puts on a show with a decent amount of water, a touch of shampoo, and a few tub toys.  All I really have to do is get him in there and scrub a little.  Getting him in there is even fun.  I imagine all dads have a variation of the routine.  I lift Joey up over the water a bit and make sounds like a submarine diving but pull him back up just before his feet hit the water.  I’ll repeat it a couple times before changing the tune and slowly putting him down in the water.  When he was younger, he acted like it surprised him every time.  Now he makes the sounds for me, but he still wants me to do it.  I love it!  Once he’s in the tub, I help with the washing of his hair and face and body, but he’s really in charge.  He sloshes around a bit and talks to the Elmo faucet cover.  We’ll often break out a few of the songs that we sing together.  Particularly common among the bath tunes are our favorite songs from the Sesame Street movie of my childhood called “Follow That Bird.”  Joey has come to love the movie, and he knows the songs very well.  When we would first sing them, when he was younger, Joey was just able to plug in a key word on certain lines.  It was our routine.  I guess our bathtub singings have served as a kind of gauge for his linguistic skills.  He’s moved up so much in his handling of each song.  Now, he sings the whole chorus of “Ain’t No Road Too Long” after I just sing a verse (actually, he helps with the verses too).  And, he can remember more than I can of the song “Easy Goin’ Day.”  All one of us needs to say is “sing Big Bird” and we belt out the tunes.  We sing other stuff in the bath, but those are the standards.  When one of Joey’s rubber ducks is floating around, I try to manage an Ernie-esque rendition of “Rubber Ducky.”  My son is also a Star Wars fan in training, and bath time is often when some of that gets to shine.  On his last trip to Disney World, Uncle Will bought Joey a set of seven Star Wars bath toys (super cool!).  They quickly became Joey’s favorite playthings in the tub and have even been at the core of some bath-ending father-son feuds (R2-D2 doesn’t need to leave the bathroom if he’s wet).  Joey knows I get a kick out of them too, and he loves showing off how well he already knows the characters by naming them all off to me as he pulls them into the water with him.  They can squirt water, so I sometimes tell Joey that I’ll rinse him “Vader style.”  As a fan of the Weird Al Yankovic Star Wars parody songs, I sometimes serenade one of the Joey’s toys with his song “Yoda” (to the tune of “Lola”).  As with other songs, Joey has gotten in on the act.  When I get the chorus, the little man is gracious enough to join in by singing the “Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda” part.  We may just have to become a pair of travelling singing plumbers.  One of Joey’s funniest recent bathtub routines is his early request for someone to “wash my toes.”  He gets a kick out of a bath sponge tickling his feet.  When he asks for it, I remind him that he needs to wash his body from the top to the bottom.  Who would have thought that a kid would treat getting his feet scrubbed as an incentive?  So far it works, and Joey sticks to business until he is washed.  Can’t have our young people spending all their time footwashing, right?  When the time comes though, Joey sits in the tub, sticks a foot up, and laughs like crazy while I scrub it with the sponge.  Enjoy the little things, my friends.  If a little boy can get cleaned and entertained in the tub, you can’t go wrong.

                Ok, here’s the part where I’ll get a little deep.  For whatever reason, bath time and the beginning of a day’s end have become a common time for Joey to actively seek to bond with me.  When I take him out of the tub and stand him up to dry off, he always seems to be particularly attentive to me.  I goof around with him as I’m drying his hair and wrapping him up in a towel, and he plays along with that, but he also looks over at the mirror and seems to lock in on the image of the two of us together that he sees.  After I have him mostly dried, he usually leans toward me for a hug.  Even if we’re cutting up, I always tell him I love him.  The first time he ever said “I love you” to me was during one of those times.  I had dried him off and he leaned in for a hug.  Granted, that was back when he only said it as a repeat to me, but it sticks out.  It partly sticks out because, later, he first said “I love you, Daddy” without any provocation when I had just taken him out of the bathtub again.  I’m glad that I can keep my boy clean, and I know that, soon enough, he will be taking care of that task completely himself.  But, I enjoy the fun and memorable moments that something as seemingly simple as a bath can provide. 

                I sometimes wish that Joey could already understand the depth of some of the things and events around him.  For him, every day and every experience is just the passage of something new or different or just routine.  I couldn’t give the details of most of the times I have been in or near a swimming pool or any other body of water.  They didn’t matter much.  And, I certainly don’t keep a log of every bath or shower I have taken over the course of 30 years.  But, what a difference Joey has made.  He has made each of those water-based experiences so much more memorable and so valuable.  Here’s to the splashes remembered and the splashes yet to come!