So, as any long-term readers know, we live in an apartment. We don’t live on the ground floor, and our building’s courtyard, while spacious, is not fenced in and we don’t have a pool for the building either. All of our close friends live in houses and they all have pools in various sizes for the kids. What’s nice is that we do get routinely invited over to swim – Hayley went to her friend’s house today and swam this afternoon in between storms.

However, there are times when it’s hot and sunny and we want to splash around but no one is home. And we wondered why we kept feeling like we couldn’t have a pool too, just because of an apartment lifestyle.

So we got one. Granted, we’ll never be able to have a huge pool to actually swim in, and it’s not like we could set up a water slide or diving board unless we were willing to take our lives in our hands, but a little pool? Why not?

And in the end, the “little” pool wasn’t that little anyway. It’s wide enough for both kids, easily, and they can enjoy themselves. I can stick my feet in too, while I read out at the table beside them.

It’s quite nice, actually. George filled it up with a lot of stock pots of water, and once it was halfway it was enough for them to get in, while still leaving a high enough wall that water wasn’t constantly sloshing out to annoy the neighbors downstairs. I have to frequently remind them not to purposely splash or throw the water out of the pool but so far it’s working out well. They get to have fun, cool off, I get to read, and surprisingly it tires them out enough to get them to sleep relatively easy at night.

We may not have a yard, but dammit, we have a pool and it’s working for us!

Speaking of pools, we went to the public pool for the first time on Friday. It was a lot of fun. I wasn’t sure what to expect with two young kids and a crowd of people in a huge pool, but they have free life jackets and it wasn’t as packed as I had anticipated, despite the warm, sunny day. Hayley finally got brave enough to lift her feet up (we convinced her the life jacket will not let her sink under, even if she wanted to) and she did a dog paddle all over the pool, even going out to areas where she could no longer touch the ground.

Breanna still wanted to be held unless she was on the steps, but she did jump in once. She also fell in. I had gone in to the washroom so George was sitting on the side while Hayley paddled around. Breanna leaned over to see the water and being top heavy with the life jacket, she just lost her balance and went in, her face hitting the water and everything. She didn’t cry – I think she was too shocked to be able to. She has talked about it ever since though. “I fall in the pool!”

It was unfortunate that we needed to eat supper, because it was very nice to just swim around, but alas we had to leave to get groceries and come home to cook something. We’re hoping to go back tomorrow if it’s nice enough. The forecast is calling for “periods of rain” so we’ll have to see.

And if not, at least we have our private pool on the balcony!