sun princess

I have been having a hard time keeping Sydney in the house the last several days! Not that I want her stuck in the house, but she needs a serious break from the sun and heat! She is one tired girl. She wants to play with her friend/neighbor Emily constantly. Constantly. Which has amounted to my giving her a little more independance than I thought I would let her have at this age. But she and Emily (who is 6, but first grade) have the best time playing on Emily's porch, riding scooters in the culdesac, playing over at Emily's Granny's house (our other next door neighbor), and now swimming! Saturday we got out our little hard plastic pool. The awesome plastic Walmart pool with the slide that Jamie and Michele got us last year! It's pink and gets almost a foot deep;) Sydney and Mollie both have been really excited about it truly being hot enough to play in it. The water gets really warm after the sun heats it a little.

Well, Emily's family got a BIG pool for their back yard. It's one you take down every year, but very big and can be 3 ft. This completely freaked me out. I have fears about Sydney over there unsupervised swimming with bigger kids and drowning! But she is obsessed with it. Not to mention that I have a hard time getting her to come in after hours of play, but now we add something really fun and cool to the mix. Mollie was napping yesterday and Emily wanted Sydney to come swim. I tried to have a really serious talk with her during the day about swimming and water and how it can be dangerous and she always had to have an adult watching, etc. Like, not an adult just home, but actually sitting out there watching the whole time. I walked her over and Emily's Granny was on the screened porch watching Emily and her 2 brothers. They did put a lock on the gate and she said that they have a rule about never swimming without adult supervision. That made me feel a little better. Oh, and that it wasn't filled all the way up, it was just over waist high on Sydney. I made her wear her life jacket at first, but then let her take it off and wear Emily's swimmies. Sydney is a decent beginning swimmer. But goodness, she's 5! Thank GOD they are signed up for swimming lessons starting next week.
So aside from the water safety issues, I am having issues already with her wanting to do things that I'm not 100% comfortable with and getting the "ugh, mom, but THEY'RE doing it!"
And this is going to be a daily battle. Oh, and Emily is tracked out now. She's in week 2, but after next week she'll go back to school. I love Emily, she is a good very nice, good girl. But this sort of stresses me out!
Our neighborhood pool will probably open around the end of May and then I can take them all up there. That will be nice. And we can bum some YMCA passes off my friends:)

As a side note, I found them a swim class at the Triangle Aquatic Center in May that is indoors. I was really trying to find one before summer started. Sydney has had swimming lessons every year since 3. This will be Mollie's first year. And they can be in the same class. They might end up moving Sydney up, but according to the class descriptions, they both fit preschool level 2 based on comfort level and skill so far.