Water Baby

Here's another picture from our recent trip to a wedding in Aberdeen. It was taken at the open air pool in Stonehaven, just down the coast, and shows G enjoying the heated saltwater. It was never heated when I was young, but then if I remember rightly back then 1p sweets actually cost 1p, and you could still play football in the street without risking being run over.

Mrs J came swimming too, and said because she always takes longer to get ready than me, I should get G changed as well. I've got getting her ready for swimming down to a fine art at our local pool, where there's not one but two proper baby-changing cubicles in the men's changing rooms. I'm possibly the only person that ever uses them, but even so, top marks to Oldham Council for that.

A more traditional pool like Stonehaven isn't quite blessed with the same facilities. On entering the changing room, I realised I was going to have to make do with the bench-type area in the middle. With no strap to keep G tied down, she insisted on crawling about as I struggled to get her out of her clothes and into her fetching new blue cossie.

Much worse was to follow when, after finally getting her into the pool, she took about 3.7 seconds to fill her swim nappy. I trudged back to the changing room with both of us damp, cold and crying. Actually, the last one was just G, but after a good ten minutes trying to get her out of her wet swimsuit and dirty nappy, dried off, and into a clean nappy and her soggy cossie, all to the backdrop of high-decibel screaming, I felt pretty miserable too.

Thankfully it was all forgotten about once we got back into the warm water, and G enjoyed swimming up and down, with a bit of help from me. Next time I go to a different swimming pool I'm going to make sure I scout out the baby changing situation first though. Or I suppose I could just fashion some kind of portable baby restrainer. Possibly out of pipecleaners and chewing gum, like in MacGyver.