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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Reagan's Kryptonite

I've found the one thing that terrifies Reagan: swimming pools. For the most part, she is pretty fearless. But, swimming pools . . . uh, uh, no way!!

When we went to Wild River Country a few weeks ago, she cried the entire hour & a half we were there. She had a death grip on me and would not let go. I thought maybe she was tired. It was really loud and there were lots of kids. I made lots of excuses.

Monday afternoon, we decided to go play in the swimming pool at my parents' hotel. (Yes, they stayed with us most of the trip, but they got a hotel the last night.) Reagan was so excited as we put on her Elmo swimsuit. She was running down the hall of the hotel. Then, we came to the glass doors that lead to the pool. She froze, then turned and ran the other direction screaming. What?! Who is this child? I caught her and took her outside. She ran to the corner of the area - as far from the pool as possible - screaming and crying. She got so worked up she started choking and gagging. I picked her up to try to comfort her and she started throwing up! I have never seen her so worked up about anything. I climbed into the pool with her clinging to me for dear life and bawling her head off. Her head was glued to my shoulder and her fingers were digging into my arms, but we were in the water. She stopped sobbing after about 30 minutes, and actually started interacting some with Nana & Pops. Now, don't get me wrong, her head was still stuck to my shoulder, but the tears were gone. My parents would push a floatie across the water to her and she would gently nudge it back to them. This was major progress!! She even started splashing (or pretending to splash) them. After another 20 minutes or so of this, her head came up off my shoulder. Hallelujah!! Then, she really started having fun. She wouldn't go to either of my parents, but she was laughing, splashing and blowing bubbles. We ended up playing in there for another hour after that, and she had a great time. She wouldn't leave my hip, but that was okay. It was major progress compared to the beginning.

Shots from the last hour - you'd hardly know how rough the first hour was from these pics

4 comments:

jrh1953 said...

Oh, I remember it well. Just get her back on that horse (or in the pool) soon. She is such a cutie.

Holly Heston said...

So fun....I want to play in the pool with Reagan.....maybe if she can take care of Payton in the pool, she will feel like a big girl and like it.

Iris said...

wasn't she in a pool on her first birthday invitation pictures? what happened? poor thing...

Chris and Rebecca Lee said...

i think her in our neighborhood pool yesterday was major progress compared to this story. y'all will have to come back soon. :)