Kid Magically Learns To Swim On Her Very Own

Those of you who have been with us since before the days of the newsletter editions will remember Kina’s early trials with potty training, in which her parents connived to trick her into pooping in the toilet with all sorts of enticements. Ultimately, as the top headline of April 14, 2020 tells us, “Small Poop Seen In Potty”1, which suggests that nothing that either Laurea or I offered her in exchange for civil pooping did anything at all, and the thing we probably should have just committed to was… waiting.

So, too, it goes with swimming, apparently. We took Kina to swim lessons in the dank basement pool of a condo building in Ridgewood back in 2019, and boy did that not take. Year after year, I tried to get her to swim in the ocean while I held onto her, but it was only this year that she discovered the joys of dunking, which seems to have unlocked all the other skills necessary to actually propel herself through the water unaided (and without floaties!)

I was not at the actual pool to witness this event, so Kina has made a separate date with me in exactly one week to reproduce it. Let’s see if she’s as good at swimming as she is… at…

The analogy breaks down, I freely acknowledge.

While I have you—have you noticed that Kina has been drawing, like, all the illustrations lately? She’s very eager to contribute these days, and I’m particularly proud of how she manages to capture my every uncomfortable emotion.2

What a glorious Parade! Mommy helped here just a little bit, by drawing the little swimmers in Kina’s cerulean swimming pool. The rest, as always—and especially the rainbows—is by the publisher herself.

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