Wading pool (Anna)

I know, I know. We've been extremely absent. Not in our lives - just in our blog posts. We've been back from France for weeks; had a great trip, but haven't found the time to post. Emma is terrific and we've been enjoying her. We've even taken a photo here and there. But no blogging. Oh well, sometimes life wins. Especially during the long evenings of summer. We've had some lovely moments, regardless of whether they were captured and recorded for prosperity.

Today, we set up our paddling pool in our front garden. (The same pool that Emma might have been born in, had our hopes of a home water birth come to fruition.) It took us a while to set it up - we had to retrieve our pump from our friend, borrow a hose, blow the pool up and then fill it. And of course, our main motivation for all this - a hot and sweaty baby and our fantasy about her splashing around in the pool on a very hot Saturday afternoon.

When we first airlifted her into the pool, she cried. Of course, we pulled her out, and decided that she was just responding to the fact that the water was too cold. So we shuttled warm water back and forth from the kitchen in tupperware containers until it was warm enough.

Emma, of course, being an independent sentient human being who doesn't do what we want just because we're (scoff) her parents, still had no interest in getting in.

So, to encourage her, and because we were hot, WE got into the pool.

And that's where our neighbours found us - two adults playing in a paddling pool with a bucket, two spades and a rubber duck while Emma pottered around us industriously making sure we didn't get up to any mischief.

(actually, this is a slight lie - by the time our neighbours found us, Emma has been in the pool with us for a good half hour before deciding to get out again, but that doesn't make such a good story.)