I love water and swimming, and so do both of the kids.  Here is some water frolicking:

I’m glad they are so comfortable in the water, but I really want them to learn to swim independently as quickly as possible.  A couple of months ago, Rosy had a somewhat-near drowning incident that rattled me badly.  We were at our farm, and for “farm school” that day we took the tractor down to the Snoqualmie River to wade in the water.  I had Alden and Rosy and I was also watching my friend’s son, pictured below.

Rosy and Nolan ran along the shore for a while, then he got tired of that and played in the sand.  I couldn’t help myself, I had to strip Alden down and let him play in the murky water too.

I was still keeping a close eye on Rosalind, but she was only wading shin deep so I didn’t have my hyper-aware mama senses turned up, as you can see in this picture.

Still, in a little while I noticed she was getting a little farther away than I was comfortable with, maybe 5 yards distant.  I opened my mouth to call her back, and all of a sudden–she disappeared.  It was terrifying,  but still at first I assumed she’d just tripped.  Clutching my wet slippery baby to me with one arm, I bounded towards her.  I saw her head break the surface as her arms flailed.  I reached her, I grabbed her, and I realized I was in the water up to my chest.  There was a big hole.  In fact, if you look at the pictures of the river carefully, you can see it–the water changes color from brown to dark green, near the log detritus.

When I floundered out of the water back to the beach, a now-wailing baby in one arm and a screaming girl in the other, I saw none of the other many adults on the beach had noticed a thing.

Rosy was completely fine, she hadn’t swallowed any water and although she was hysterical at first, I was able to reassure her immediately that she did the right thing, she swam a little bit and then I came to save her.  I believe I’ve seen that she’s a bit more cautious around water now, but she still has fun in it.  But I am still shaken, two months later.  It would have been so easy not to see her, for the ordinary day to turn into something I can’t even think about.

Life is unpredictable and I can’t really protect my children, or myself, from the randomness of it.  But if I can teach them to swim at a young age, at least that’s something.

Alden sat up so early, I was sure he was going to start crawling when he was six months old.  But he sassed me–his first tentative forward momentum came on October 4, the day he turned *seven* months.  Here’s what he could do on October 8, sufficiently motivated:

He’s a true digital native.

Recently I’ve been getting into some pretty heavy theological discussions with Rosalind.  I am tempted to take this responsibility very seriously.  I want her to be aware of spiritual things; I want her to have an optimistic and hopeful view of the universe; I want to be careful not to “program” her into any particular creed or away of thinking (even if that way of thinking is the absence of a creed.)

But then I actually talk to her and I realize my concerns are totally moot.  After all, I can’t even explain to her why Monday is a preschool day, how I am going to prejudice her notion of God?  She’s going to construct her own strange reality based on bits of pieces of words I don’t even remember saying.  And in fact, that’s what is happenning.

The first talk I had with her, we were about to leave on a longish trip when some missionaries came to the door.  I shooed them away, but I could only get Rosy in the car by telling her I’d explain about the men while we were driving.  Here’s a summary of what I said, although I’m sure it was even less articulate at the time:

“Some people [I use "some people" all the time when talking about religion, but Rosy doesn't notice at all] wonder why there are people, and animals, and the sky, and the water.  Why are these things here?  And some people think, someone must have made them.  And that was God.  And God is in everything, in the sky, in your hand, in the trees and plants and animals.  And some people have some stories about God, and those men wanted to tell me about their stories, but I said ‘No thank you’ because I don’t think their stories are true.  People have all different stories and sometimes they get in a big fight: ‘God had a son named Jesus!’  ‘NO!  God had a prophet named Mohammed!’  ‘NO!  God had a son named Jesus!’ And then they get really mad and try to hurt each other.”

All right, maybe I didn’t need to introduce the concept of religious wars just yet.  But it seemed to capture her imagination, and the whole way to the farm she continued to ask, “Tell me that story again about the guys who get mad.”  But when Nathan got home at night and I asked her to tell him what she learned about God, this is how she distilled it: “Dod is in my fingers!  And the sky!  But we tan’t see Dod.”

That all seemed like a reasonable place to end.  But the ideas are still percolating around in her head.  The other day, several weeks after our initial discussion, I was giving her her nightly bedtime massage and she asked for Dod.

“What?”

“I want Dod.”  She gestured with her hand.

“Uh..  You mean Gollum?”  This is what she was gesturing towards:

I gave it to her, shaking my head.

“This is Dod.  Dod is my friend.  He makes it rain, and also not rain.”