The kids and I have been up in Maine for most of the month and now that we've really gotten into the swing of things I've been trying to do as much outdoors stuff as possible. We're outside a ton up here, but I've wanted to kick it up a notch. It's very easy to just hang in the backyard all day and realize you didn't, oh, go for a nature hike or put your feet in the salt water. There's a small "beach" just down from my parents' house ("beach" because I know what you are picturing is sand and what I want you to picture is jagged rocks) where we've been hanging out a bunch. Gabriel sits happily up to his waist in water putting stones in a bucket and Nora hops all over the place alternatively looking for crabs and telling me she's just going to relax on her towel in the sun. That's my girl.

It's wonderful and I'm so happy that Nora asks to go down there almost constantly.

But there is also a pool here and, damnit, I've been dying to get in it. It's hot and I want to go swimming in an artificially constructed swimming hole without rocks or crabs or seaweed. Just a couple times. Come on.

It's been hard to convince Nora to get to the pool, however, until yesterday when instead of trying to convince her I simply told her we were going (I've learned a lot about child rearing in the past couple years). My mom accompanied us because I wasn't up for taking two children there by myself and we had a great time - as I knew we would. Nora was much braver than I'd anticipated, floating all around the shallow end with the help of swimming noodles, squealing with delight. Gabe mostly wanted to sit on the side and eat grapes, which was fine with me.

And at one point, as I was sitting there in the cool water - finally - and the kids were entertained, my mother right there watching them, I thought, hey! Laps! I never qualified the specifics of that goal! So instead of traditional long laps across the length of a pool, as I'd envisioned, I swam the width of the shallow end a couple times, doing the breast stroke, my favorite, which took all of about 30 seconds. CHECK!