First swim meet of the season

The kids had their first swim meet of the season this afternoon. It was drizzling when we arrived and soon started a veritable downpour. The chairs that I brought got completely soaked. All the children's towels were drenched. Everything was soggy.

I had Andrew bring an extra canopy for the kids when he came. I should have brought one when we set out, but ran out of time to grab it. Next time we'll be better prepared. It would probably be good to set up the canopies when it's sunny outside as well, truth be told, so it's good we dug them out.

Here's Alexander doing his warm up (he's adjusting his goggles—you can see "A Heiss" on his back):

Here he is looking back before taking his turn:

After warmups, Zoë sang the national anthem (and she'll probably sing it a couple more times before the season is through since no one else ever volunteers, though Alexander also mentioned wanting to sing it with her, to which she responded, "Please—I will leave you in the dust!" ...as if singing the national anthem is a race of sorts). She sang beautifully!

With three swimmers we are more or less kept on our toes throughout the evening (also helpful was that all our chairs were wet so no one wanted to sit down). I didn't actually even have a job to do this meet—I was "stand-by volunteer 1" but everyone was there to fill their shifts so I didn't have to do anything other than watch my kids. 

And there was quite a lot of watching to do! The kids swam in events 4, 5, 8, 14, 15, 18, 26, 27, 30, 36, 46, 57, 60, 75, and 78.

It felt like by the time one of them had finished swimming another one was called into the staging area. 

Poor Phoebe started feeling a little bit bored:

It reminded me a bit of bored little Benjamin around the same age...

May 2015

Too little to join in...and there's only so much cheering a body can muster...

I snapped Phoebe out of her stupor by taking her on a trash collection walk. She loved feeling useful!

And she was actually quite a good little cheerleader. She cheered for each of her siblings by name, she cheered for "swimmers" and she cheered for "all the people that I know and don't know."

She was soaking wet by from sitting on the ground and splashing in puddles and being rained on, in general, and she didn't flinch at giving her dripping-wet siblings hugs when they climbed out of the pool.

Here she is hugging Benjamin:

And here she is hugging Zoë:

And here she is hugging Alex:

This poor kid fell off his scooter the other night and got banged up and road-rashed all over, but he bravely swam through his pain (I am not sure who helped him with his swim cap, but it definitely wasn't me).

Here she is with Benjamin (whose swim cap I also did not put on):

Grandpa came to watch the meet. He stayed through Alexander's final race—the 50 yard freestyle event—and then headed over to our house to say goodnight to the littles ones and eat some of our leftover chili. Here's Grandpa getting a wet hug after one of Alexander's events:

Here's cute Zoë—whose swim cap I did put on (her armpits are chafed from practicing in her long-sleeved swimsuit—we told her to put on an official practice suit, but did she listen...no...in her defense it was freezing):

And here she is with Phoebe:

We didn't get to see the kids' final times for all the events (we'll find out tomorrow morning how they did for sure), but I do know that they all took time off their backstroke (and more—importantly for Benjamin—didn't DQ on the turn) and, I believe from their freestyle as well. I think Zoë and Benjamin each got third in the medley relays. Alexander swam the 50 yard free for the first time. And Zoë and Benjamin did great in their breaststroke events (though I don't know what their final times were, I don't think either of them got disqualified). So it was a pretty good evening overall. 

I emailed my advisor while we were at the meet to see whether and at what time we had a meeting tomorrow, since this was something she'd mentioned in an email last week. She wrote back to say that she didn't think I needed to be at the meeting—that mostly it was little things that wouldn't involve me. 

I wrote back at the end of the night to say that sounded fine to me—Andrew and I had just been talking about who would take the kids to swim practice in the morning (technically Fun Friday, not a practice...but it's where/when they get all their ribbons and things as well as doughnuts and free time in the pool, so they definitely want to go) and I had told Andrew that I wasn't sure whether or not I had a meeting in the morning. I ended my response with "but I guess this email answers that question!"

And then she wrote back and said, "If you don’t want to take the kids to swimming then you have a meeting" with a big smiley face at the end.

I'm always (or at least am usually) happy to take the kids to swimming. 

As Zoë pointed out this morning, it gives me several hours of (more or less) uninterrupted working time. I just sat at the tennis observation deck (it's covered from the rain but still gets the wifi signal) and worked while the kids swam when it was their turn and milled about when it wasn't, stopping occasionally to put on swim caps or adjust goggle straps or open gates or fetch towels or...

Anyway, I'm happy to take the kids to the pool.