First time swimming in the pool + ISR.

Though Scarlet was born at the start of summer last year, she was just too small during the prime swim season to get her in the pool. But THIS summer is the first year she can start to enjoy the big "cement pond" in our backyard. So just a few days after her 1st birthday this year, we took her out for a relaxing afternoon of fun in the pool. Ma-ma got in with her while Da-da played the roll of photographer - testing out the new camera (and a test it was as Da-da took a lot of the pictures on the wrong white-balance setting and had to fix them after-the-fact). All in all Miss Scarlet had a real good time. She got to ride in her big green & yellow turtle float, then have Ma-ma hold her in the water (an early pre-cursor to swim lessons), and finally play on the steps for a little while.

Speaking of swim lessons, we are now in our third week of taking Scarlet to private lessons to teach her water survival/problem solving. This was something we heard about about a year ago and checked into when Scarlet was a newborn. It is called "Infant Swim Resource" (ISR) and is a specialized program that teaches infants and toddlers to roll over onto their backs to float and breathe. And for children over 12 months old, to teach them to also perodically roll over, open their eyes in the water and look for the edge or a way out of the water (steps, entry area). As pool owners, Ginger and I thought it was a necessity even though we have an alarm that alerts us when a door opens, AND our pool area is fenced off from the backyard/patio area. Sure constant supervision by us is THE absolute best prevention, and then those two barriers are our next two lines of defense. But teaching her what to do if she gets through those (or is over at somebody else's house with a pool) and fell into the water is the very last thing that could save her life. So we're gonna bite the bullet and put her through the course to give her that fighting chance. Here's a link that tells about the program for anyone interested in checking it out: http://www.infantswim.com/home.html. It really is amazing what real little kids can learn to do in a fairly short amount of time. And other than a yearly short refresher course, they seem to retain it for years and years. Also here's a news report about the program with some really good video of what it does and entails.