snow days | These Are The Days

My girls don’t always get along.

Their seven year age difference is part of the reason. But when they do get along it makes my heart happy.

We’ve had way too much snow recently and it’s resulted in either school cancellations or two hour delayed openings for big sister. The most recent two-hour delay day happened to fall on the day little sister has her swimming class. So we all piled into the car and headed to the Y with plans to go to swim class and then rush home to get big sister on the school bus by 10am.

She wasn’t happy about having to rush. She wanted to stay home in her jammies for a bit longer and play on the latest tween obsession “Wee World.” Don’t ask.

But off we went. We sat on the bleachers alongside the pool, sweating and breathing in the humidity. We watched my little one practice her kicks and put her face in the water to blow bubbles. The class is only 30 minutes, but my older daughter’s face looked like she’d been there for days.

But then something cool happened. The teacher asked her class of toddlers if they wanted to swim the length of the pool to the deep end using their little floaties. Their eyes widened for a second before they all squealed and shouted, “Yay! Yay!”

The class slowly began kicking, making their way out of the shallow end. They swam in the crookedest line ever, but it was really cute. There are only three of them, but they each had a little cheering section on the bleachers. Kick. Kick. Kick. They were in the middle of the pool – headed straight for the deep end – when big sister got up and ran alongside the pool to the deep end. (Note: the lifeguards yelled at her for running, but she didn’t care.) She crouched down at the edge of the pool and started cheering and cheering and cheering for her little sister. “C’mon you can do it! You’re almost there!”

When the little one finally made it – all red-faced and breathless – it was her big sister who jumped up as if she had just won the kid lottery. And then she told her, “You did it! I’m so proud of you!” And my heart swooned.

Of course, on the way home, they fought about who was allowed to sing the Frozen songs. (For the record, my little one prefers to sing ALL BY HERSELF. Holy high maintenance.)

But I didn’t let it ruin my moment.

p.s. Cell phones aren’t permitted in the pool area so I failed to get a shot of little one kicking her heart out. So I include this one instead.