Loving the pool

I'm still working on birthday pictures.....here's a pool picture in the meantime.

Parker is LOVING pool. This picture really isn't accurate, because she's in the baby pool with goggles on, neither of which she'll do now. She wants to be in the 'big pool', and wants me in with her....no floaties. Last year, she wouldn't go NEAR the big pool if there were other kids there, but this year, she's over that, thankfully. I guess.
The shallow end is low enough for her to touch bottom along the edges, so she spends most of her time bobbing up and down, back and forth along the edges. She's trying to teach herself to swim WITHOUT putting her face in the water, so she's hopping up and bicycling her arms and legs and then landing again. Today she did that for 2 hours, and the bottoms of her toes are raw. She took a great nap though.
Otherwise, she likes me to hold her stomach and swim her around while she kicks and paddles her arms. Still with her head up though. Either way, this is waaaaaaay more time in the pool than I spent all of last year I think.
She is also taking swimming lessons this week and next. These are old-school lessons, where you go under the first day, no matter how much you're screaming. Today was her 4th lesson, and the first day she didn't cry going in and have to be peeled off of me. When we did lessons when she was 2, it was the same way. She hated it at first, but by the second week, she liked it. The trick is going to be convincing her to swim underwater at home, not just at lessons. I told her that as soon as she could swim underwater, she could go down the slide at the pool, and that has really motivated her. Hopefully she'll put it all together soon. Stay tuned.