I awoke with hunger pains this morning and, instead of feeding Livia first, I shut the baby in the bathroom with Jeremy and ran downstairs for bowl of cereal. Halfway through the Grapenut O’s, I heard, “Rebecca, come up here, please!” Something about Jeremy’s tone of voice, and the fact he was using my full name to address me, made me run for the stairs.
What I found in the bathroom was hysterical. My husband, only partially bathed (our old house doesn’t have a shower), standing and holding on to a dripping wet, fully-clothed Livia. My mind needed a few seconds to decipher this picture: Baby still dressed, sopping wet… Okaaaay.
Apparently Livia’s love of walking along the bath’s edge while patting Mommy or Daddy with soapy hands resulted in a full-on bathtub dive. Jeremy tried to stay calm as he described what she looked like under water, eyes and mouth closed, hair waving about her head. All I can say is that I’m glad I wasn’t on duty when the Diving Baby Act took place!
7 Comments
andrew Oct 25, 2005 5:30 PM
i’ve got mixed feelings! i’m glad the little one swims, but that seems kinda scary. i can’t wait to see her doggy paddle when she turns four.
Jeremy Oct 25, 2005 5:36 PM
Damn right it was scary!
I think I doubled my gray hair count in those two seconds. Afterward, I thanked God my little darling held her breath—and I thanked her out loud because I needed something to talk about in order to distract her from the terrified cry that I could see being contemplated behind her eyes.
RT Oct 25, 2005 6:26 PM
Like I said, I’m glad I wasn’t there! I would’ve had a miniature heart attack.
Megan Oct 25, 2005 8:02 PM
Oooo, that’s scary. We’ve had a few go under for the same tiny amount of time you mentioned, each time with one of us right there to pull them out. But it’s like time stops for those two seconds and though you are acting fast, in your memory it is in slow motion and it seems as though they drowned in those seconds. The last time it happened to us it was Millie at the YMCA pool and her eyes were opened which made it even that much more creepy.
Glad she’s okay.
Bethany Oct 25, 2005 11:47 PM
Scary! I have seen two similar water incidents in my life and both scared the shit out of me. The first was when I was about 8, and my mom’s best friend’s oldest daughter, who was about 4, jumped into the deep end of the pool to retrieve a toy of hers that had fallen in. She couldn’t swim, and the few seconds before her mom jumped in to grab her were completely terrifying to me. The second one was even scarier…two summers ago I and some other RUF students were playing in the swimming pool at summer conference with Abigail. Her parents weren’t around, so we were supervising her, and she was swimming around in one of those floaty tube things that go around kid’s waists and then they can sort of paddle around. We were sort of pushing her around in it, but it had become deflated enough that after one particularly vigorous push, the water went up over the front of it, causing it to flip over. So she was stuck upside down, with her legs flailing in the air and her body underwater. She was only about two steps away and I quickly got to her and flipped her upright and took her out of the tube and held her, but the second and a half it took to do that was the longest of my life. It felt like I was moving through cement to get to her. And it didn’t help that as soon as she was righted, she started wailing, “YOU TRIED TO DROWN ME!”
Andy Oct 26, 2005 7:12 AM
LOL. When I read the title I processed it as”The One, the Only, Driving Baby!”
I was pretty impressed upon reading the title and thoroughly confused until I got to the end of the story!
Haley Oct 26, 2005 9:40 PM
That’s what scares me about kids … no concept of danger. Glad Jeremy the Protecter was on hand, even if he will be sporting solid-white hair from now on. :)