Pool days

We went for our first swim at the pool on Sunday. Here's the first picture I took...before I realized that I needed to wipe off the camera lens after going outside (in addition to wiping off my glasses):

And here is another picture post-wipe:

The pool was surprisingly chilly. They definitely pump cold water into the pool on a regular basis (we know this because all the jets shoot out cold water). Here are the kids sitting under cold water spouts in the wading pool:

When we were doing our Arabic word search in the mall yesterday we went into Max, which was a store I liked to peruse when we lived in Jordan. I guess I could have gone when we were in Cairo but I had two little kids and just...never really did. But apparently there's a Max store in the Maadi Grand Mall. The one time I remember going clothes shopping (with the Schillings) we went all the way to a mall in Citystars, which is just...so far...from Maadi. And I don't like clothes shopping that much. 

Anyway, I like Max. So we went in and looked around and Phoebe was dancing around the little girls' section, exclaiming, "This dress would fit me! And this dress would fit me! And this dress would fit me! Everything would fit me! And they're all so cute!"

I kept telling her, "Not today," which is secretly what I say when the answer is flat out "no" but I don't want to have to deal with the meltdown that a flat out "no" might cause. 

"Tomorrow then?"

"We'll see."

"Oh, but look at this swim suit!" Zoë said. 

"Actually..." I said.

A new swim suit for Phoebe has been on my list! I've been stuffing her into 2T swim suits all summer and after multiple seasons of use she was in need of an upgrade. Unfortunately, the cute one that Zoë spotted wasn't available in Phoebe's size, but we did find another cute one that we did get for Phoebe.

It was much easier to fit over her head!

We arrived at the pool in the early afternoon and the lifeguard immediately offered the kids (free) popsicles and popcorn. Phoebe got a mango popsicle and Zoë and Alexander got lemon-mint (Benjamin didn't want anything).

Lemon-mint is a very common flavour here and I love it.

I first had lemonade with mint in Egypt (at a Relief Society brunch at the Tueller's embassy residence)...and I loved it. But here it isn't just lemonade with mint, it's lemon-mint. Really quite minty. Still very tangy. And it's really good.

Anyway, once our popsicles were either in our bellies or melted all over the deck, depending on how capable we were at eating popsicles, we hopped in the pool and enjoyed some swimming.

Phoebe randomly decided that she knows how to do backstroke now. I took a little video of it, but there's music playing in the background and YouTube tends to get upset with me when there's music in the background of my videos...so I took screen shots!

Here she is pushing off the wall:

And here she is kicking her legs and pulling with her arms:

She made it nearly the whole width of the pool (the pool is quite large—I don't know how wide it is, but it's 35 meters long and...not particularly narrow)!

"Well, I can do backstroke now!" she announced when she had finished. 

Absolutely wild that she nearly drowned trying to swim backstroke at the end of the swim team season. I guess all the work she did trying to learn it was just percolating in her mind the last few weeks and something just clicked. 

"How did you figure out how to do the backstroke?" Andrew asked her just before dinner.

"I just...dreamed about it," she said. "And then I did it. After dinner can I draw it?"

"Dream it. Do it. Draw it," I said. "Very motivational."

To be fair, drawing was also on her mind because I had the kids do a drawing lesson after we got back from the pool and before dinner. Phoebe chose to eat a cucumber instead (these tiny cucumbers are one of my favourite snacks) so she was hankering for some drawing time.

Does everyone see those strange wavy lines on my walls? Or is it just me? 

The wallpaper has a bunch of tiny stripes on it and...I don't think it photographs well.

Anyway, back to the pool!

Here are the kids having running races in the wading pool. Running on the deck is dangerous, but running through knee-deep water made the kids move in slow-motion...so it was pretty safe.

In the background you can see the rather iconic Tornado Tower:

Here's Alexander drip-drying in a chair on deck:

Here's a bird's nest that we spotted above the wading pool. I believe it's a laughing dove.

You can kind of see its...comrade...sitting in these branches.

We also saw a myna bird (several, actually) walking around with their beaks hanging open to help them cool off: