Last night our daughter had one of her swim lessons, normally not a big deal. This time my wife was on call and not able to stay home with our two younger kids while I tool Eloise to swimming. My wife suggested I call a babysitter since swimming doesn’t start until 7pm, that way the babysitter could start putting our other kids to bed. Me, being the frugal guy that I am, decided it would be better (read:cheaper) for me to take all three kids to swimming.
Everything was fine at first, I was able to put my two youngest in the child care area during swimming that way I could watch the lil’ swimmer in action. The problem came towards the end of swimming practice, that’s when I realized child care ended right before swimming ended so I would need to pick up my kids from child care and bring them to the pool while Eloise finished up. Hmm, spending $20 on a sitter wasn’t sounding like such a bad idea after all.
Around 7:50 I picked up my two youngest from child care and we headed to the pool. It was already well past my two-year-old’s bed time and it was quite obvious. Without any regard for her own personal safety she was running full steam for the kid pool. Keeping her corralled during the last five minutes of swimming seemed like an hour, but this adventure was just beginning.
After swimming it was time to go to the family locker room area where my daughter could get cleaned up and change clothes.
The family locker room is great, there are individual rooms that have showers, toilets and sinks. Not being sure if I should just send my daughter in by herself or take the whole crew in, I decided we were all in this together, so in we went, all four of us. The problems started when Eloise couldn’t get the water adjusted correctly for her shower. I ended up in the shower stall trying to help her adjust the temperature. After I had adjusted the shower temp and soaked my jeans in the process, it was time to turn my attention to the littles. My son decided he needed to use the bathroom while were were in there. There’s not much more of an uncomfortable setting than being in a room with three other people, while one of them is showering and another one of them is using the toilet.
At this point, I probably would have paid someone $50 to get me out of this situation.
Luckily my kids found the automatic hand dryer to be the perfect way to pass the rest of this time. They would take turns sticking their heads under the dryer and shrieking like wild animals every time it turned on.
When we left the shower area and returned to the locker room, there were several families looking at us, trying to figure out what exactly was going on inside the little shower room. Or maybe they were staring at us checking to make sure we were all still alive. Regardless, as we walked out the door, Elouise turned to me and summed up our evening perfectly by saying, “Well, that was a freaking disaster.”
Well said, young one, well said.
-Pete
