The Amazing Sea Monkey

OK, first off, as a capper to yesterday's post: V for Vendetta was Vital, Visceral, ViVacious, Violent, and Very thought proVoking. I loVed it. And of course, IMAX just made it eVen better.

****************************************

But today was pretty cool too.

Today was proof for me that if you give a child enough exposure to something without hitting them over the head with it, they'll eventually get where they need to be on their own.

Wait, that didn't make sense? Ok, I admit it didn't. Well, here's what I mean.

Ever since I've been a stay-at-home parent, I've been bringing my youngest son to the pool on Wednesday mornings. It's a nice warm kid-size pool and we've had a lot of fun. So for three years, we've played. He progressed from clinging to me like a slime mold, to being totally free and easy and having lots of fun. He eventually liked leaping into the pool into my arms. Never really liked getting dunked in the water. So I never pushed it, since the whole point was just for him to enjoy himself.

TODAY, when his mother and I both were there with him, he decided that he's the Man from Atlantis (remember that old tv show?). Or Aquaman even.

He started dunking himself with his nose plugged, and then without plugging his nose. He started leaping into the water, alone, and then swimming with both his arms and legs. Then I told him how we could try opening our eyes underwater so we could see each other. Then he started doing that. Waving to me while we were both underwater.

All my wife and I could do was just look at each other. Where did this kid come from? After an hour and a half of this, non-stop, we dragged him out of the pool.

All I can figure is that there's some long-buried aquatic gene in our family history that has finally decided to appear. I better check to see if he's developing gills or webbed fingers or something like that.

If you don't have kids, you might have found this post a little boring. Sorry. However, it's pretty impressive to me that, after five kids, they can still manage to surprise me.