Personality Soundtrack

I’ve been asked before to write a post or two (or four) that explores the uniqueness of each of my kids. Last weekend I shot some really terrible video of the kids swimming at our mini-vacation (the real one is coming up next week). Dan and I actually laugh about the quality of the video. (Don’t blame me – iPhone doesn’t believe in service to my corner of the world, and I don’t have a fancy Flip. Blackberry is all I’ve got for impromptu moments like this!)

But despite being a grainy, fuzzy mess of a video, it is actually quite useful as a personality display. Here is the video and below is a description of what you might have missed the first time through. : )

swimming from danieljohn on Vimeo.

So, first of all, this is a five foot pool all around. But my kids are not swimmers and are not five feet tall, and so it might as well have been a hundred foot pool! Ada is in the yellow BabyFloat in the middle. Ada is six. Ada likes to be in control. After spending most of her time crying she was so nervous about the water, Dan tried to help her “overcome” her fear by putting her in the unsinkable, immovable baby floatie. No one is going to make a baby floatie that tips over, Ada, you are perfectly safe!

00:05 She is still nervous, but Ada starts bossing telling Dan that Macy needs help swimming to me (Mama).

You can see Dan towards the middle there. Macy is wearing blue water wings and a blue duckie floatie around her middle. She is the bravest of them all. With her arms draped over the duckie body she flops and floats all over the pool. I’m not sure why Ada thought she needed help from Dan, but earlier she was crying because she thought Macy was going to drown (with the two water wings and an inflatable duck around her middle!), so this is a better approach. The big pink blob is a huge inner tube that Jesse is lounged on – wearing Dan’s sunglasses.

00:19 Instead of helping her to the ladder, Dan grabs Macy’s feet and starts spinning her around in the water. This is his normal dad reaction. Why be boring? Let’s do it the fun way!

00:30 Claire makes her appearance. She has her arms wrapped around two pool noodles and is kicking her legs like crazy. Her activity in the pool is like her activity in life: constant motion. Seriously, we swam for about two hours each of the two days we were there and Claire was moving like this the entire time. No wonder she’s such a skinny shrimp! : )

00:46 Classic Jesse: “Can you make it, Macy?” He is the big brother I always dreamed of!

00:50 Classic Macy: animal noises and monster sounds. I have no explanation for this.

01:07 More Classic Macy. Me: “Say, ‘I made it!” Macy: “No, no, I need get swim to the steps!” She has her own ideas and her ideas are best. (My dad claims he lived with a little girl like this about 32 years ago, but I think he’s fibbing.)

01:15 Background noise: Ada singing, “A wed-ding toda-ay! A wed-ding toda-ay!” It was true. We were there for a wedding, but around our house it could be anything, “It’s rain-ing today-ay!” Almost anything can bring on a song!