My younger nephew, who clowns a fair amount, once sat in his car seat trying out jokes. Poop! Barf! Wiener! Barf on my wiener! He was cracking himself up, but he'd still stop to ask us, 'that funny?' It was hard to explain about knowing your audience and the importance of timing.
If an audience doesn't find "Barf on my wiener" funny, you find a different audience.
My ex wife had these twin cousins who were the most diabolical 4 year olds ever. Among many examples: the aunt, their Mom, brought over for dinner an important African-American client, and the four year olds starting shouting "Mommy mommy you told is not to eat with people with dark skin" (of course she hadn't). Then they cackled.
"Mommy mommy you told is not to eat with people with dark skin" (of course she hadn't).
Of course she claims she hadn't.
I had my two-year-old cousin in the checkout line at the grocery store one summer and he (unprovoked) shouted "I want a milkshake and beer, beer, beer, right now!". Everyone glared at me (probably partly because I was 17, with a 2-year-old).
Perhaps she's an OPINIONATED CANNIBAL and they inserted the "with."
We taught a classmate's little brother to say, "I'm going out for a beer with the boys." Now that I'm older, I understand why his mom wasn't happy with us.
It wasn't really me who taught him. I just laughed at it afterward. Still, everyone agreed it was hilarious when the kid would say, "Inconceivable," just like Vizzini.
Oh, hey, I don't see Confederate flags often but apparently a write-in candidate crashed the 4th of July parade in my parents' town carrying a sign advertising his with Jews we lose slogan. Yikes.
In day care, the kids were taught that if a stranger tried to approach them, they should shout YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER, run away, and tell the teacher. My son started doing this whenever anyone who wasn't his mother tried to take him home. Like his father.
So far, the best thing I've gotten my kid to say regularly is to refer to The Man With The Yellow Hat as "colonialist swine."
My son started doing this whenever anyone who wasn't his mother tried to take him home. Like his father.
xox.
YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER
I use "Not my parent" when my wife is trying to drag me somewhere.
My little sister was at the grocery store with our aunt -- she must have been 3 or so -- and the aunt decided to try to win her over by picking up a bag of peanut M&Ms at the counter, to which my sister responded in a piercing voice audible across the street: "PEEEEENIS M&Ms? I can't eat PENIS M&M's! I am a GIRL! I have a VULVA!" until presumably my aunt lay down and died.
Lesson: three-year-olds should not be taking their nieces on trips to the grocery store.
There was also the time when he just figured out how rhyming worked, and developed an amazing ability to shout out the most inappropriate rhymes in public places. In the grocery store: "Look daddy, there's Tigger! Jigger, Kigger, Ligger, Migger . . ."
xelA is still mostly pre-verbal* but he has mastered the inappropriate public tantrum. He had a catastrophic meltdown in Mothercare last weekend, headbanging and screaming and I couldn't get him strapped back into his buggy (i.e. stroller). I could feel the scornful patronising stares of all the mums in the shop. As if I was some barely competent dad struggling to do childcare away from omniscient mommy-supervision.
The urge was to shout 'I look after him all the fucking time.** He never does this!' ...
* current fave word 'Babu' which seems to mean 'yellow things which I want' (generalised from bananas to include lemons and other similar things). He can say 'No' or 'dadeh nononononono' just fine, though.
** more than 50% of the time, anyway.
Our nearest toddler has just discovered the joys of nutting adults with his rocky little skull. We think he found it independently, though the likeliest teacher is the worst sufferer, so hey, maybe karma.
Yeah, xelA does that. He sometimed grabs both your ears to do it. Half the time he grabs you don 't know if you'll get a kiss, or get nutted.
Either xelA has amazingly long arms or "nutting" doesn't mean what I think it means.
Re: 23
Head-butting. It's in his genetic heritage.
I just realized that my kid has a girl in his class named Xela. Pronounced Shayla.
Another move that the most diabolical twin 4 year old twin cousins ever would make (this one I saw): in a restaurant, one would shout "HE LIKES TO TOUCH MY PENIS" and the other one would shout "I LIKE TO TOUCH HIS PENIS." It was amazing. Then more cackles.
Apparently another time one shouted out "Dad likes to touch my brother's penis" in a public space.
They really were the masters of this.
And they were also super-climbers; the first time I met them, one was literally swinging from the rafters while the exasperated aunt ran around panicked below.
Are you trying to switch sides and become a screenwriter?
24: Ahh. I take it the word is in analogy to conkers?
26.1: That's hilarious.
How old are the 4-year-olds now, and which correctional facility can I visit them in?
23: Also headbutts to the nads, but that's less surprising in one so short. We can't figure out why he isn't coming apart at the fontanelle when he hits our faces. (ew.)
25: Xela is the local colloquial name for Quetzaltenango, the second-largest city in Guatemala. I did a Spanish language school there, across the street from the military base.
Can anyone find the "look, daddy, I have a pen in my pocket" thread in TFA? It really is one of the all-time greats.
20: Φ is still entirely pre-walking. (She likes to slowly, tentatively stand up, then clap for herself standing, which makes her fall back down.) We seem to have some sort of parallel competition going on.
Zardoz is largely pre-verbal ("dog", "ball" and "done" are what she has, pretty much) but a pretty fast runner and quite taken with flights of stairs. Also, she has learned to do the beebly-beebly thing where you flick your lips with your finger and now does that when she's particularly upset.
Φ's favorite word right now is "Baby!" which means you should start swaddling her dolls and not stop until you've made it through all of them, bears, dogs and franchised characters. Mrs. K-sky is in her room right now with a circle of fifteen swaddled plusies.
26 et. al.
4 seems a bit old to do that unknowingly. They sound like sociopaths.
My brother was a very early talker, and at age 18 months or so, some of the young women at church taught him to say, "whip me, beat me, make me suffer" and had him say it to all the old sour Norwegian women. They also taught him to say "the old cow's gone dry" if people asked him if he was still nursing.
Four-year-olds are sociopaths. It's just that they usually suck at it.
Our girl is fitting the stereotype of girls being much more verbal than boys. We took a trip when the oldest was the same age she is now (22 months) and he was learning to call birds "tweet tweets" whereas she was saying things last week like "Go beach now?" and "Where brothers go?" We dropped her brother off at camp and she carried her water bottle around saying "-name-'s water! -name-'s water!" and another kid in the cabin thought that was cute then a few minutes later asked, "Wait, who's -name-?"
When she gets upset, though, she says something totally unintelligible but always the same sounds- like "Ya ya! Ya ya!" I have no idea what that could be- it doesn't change with the context of what she wants. Maybe it's just random upset sound but I feel like it could be generic angry expression, like her brothers are always saying "Not fair!" when they're mad.
Let's see, tonight Selah (almost 23 months) pulled down my shirt and hit my bra and yelled BREASTS while I was the parent rep interviewing a prospective PE/Health teacher. Then she got home, took one look at Lee and announced MINE BEER in the clearest voice ever. We are trying to convince the big girls that her teachers would not find the latter story as hilarious as they do and so they don't have to share it in the morning.
30 -- don't really know, since they were part of my ex's family. They're about 13 now and athletic blonds, and she told me a year ago that they'd been kicked out of an expensive private school.
33: it wasn't here, it was something Apo linked. Wasn't it? Maybe it was here.
I'm currently helping with newborn care in a culture where everyone hand washes cloth diapers. It's surprisingly not that gross. I've only washed 3 so far, but I could do this for my own baby in the future.
I am also pretty relaxed about infants, but there's something about watching a newborn sleep fitfully that brings out the neuroses. I'm also trying to balance what I know about babies and local cultural norms. Luckily the mom is open to not bundling the baby in a quilt in 90 degree weather. I'm making sure to keep the stomach covered and the baby out of any possible breeze.
41: you might be right. I will look elsewhere.
42: oh yes. The night φ came home from the hospital I had Mrs. K-sky double check the bassinet to be sure she was alive.
41: Maybe at apo's place? Which is no longer.
Is this the babysplosion update thread? Teapot finally started walking around six weeks ago, at the 15-month mark, fully six months after he'd started doing quite independent circuits up the stairs and down the slide at the playground. He started talking around 15 months too; I think we're now at about a dozen words (including—child of my heart—"tea" and, for "book", "booh") and a couple of signs, although when he gets agitated he seems to use the signs interchangeably to mean I HAVE SOMETHING I WISH TO COMMUNICATE URGENTLY. (More! More! All done! More! All done! No! More! Unbuckle! More!)
In general he's been on the slow end of nothing-to-worry-about for motor and verbal milestones, but he's intent on figuring out spatial relations, and astonished me a few weeks ago by spending a solid 45 minutes focusing on a set of nesting cups. Lord knows where he got that attention span; it certainly wasn't from either of us.
In news of family trolls, Scomber mix's parents are still in a snit about the name thing. Christmas was a little tense, though my mother-in-law did unbend enough to offer me food after about a day and a half, so hey, progress. But wow are we never ever going to plan that long a visit again. Let meeee ouuuuuuuut.
26, 30 How old are the 4-year-olds now, and which correctional facility can I visit them their father in?
Ok, I've now washed 12 diapers. Doable, but not exactly fun. According to the mom diapers he's peed on just need to be rinsed and not washed with soap.
So far today I've googled:
newborn breathing
newborn skin conditions
newborn spit up what's normal
newborn temperature regulation
re: 34 / 45 et al
xelA does the weebly-weebly thing. But he thinks it's funny.
In terms of words, he has 'no' [or more often 'nononononehnehnheNEH!'], 'yeah!', 'apple', 'nana [for banana]', 'mummy', 'daddy', 'shoe', 'cat', 'car', 'guitar', and a couple of others I'm probably forgetting.
However, that probably gives the impression he's more verbal than he is. He doesn't babble much, and mostly he gets what he wants by pointing and going 'uuuugh'. And if he doesn't get what he wants the pointing gets bigger and bigger [until it looks like a Hollywood Roman/fascist salute] and he shouts louder and louder. Verbally, he's definitely on the slow side of normal for his peer group, I think, judging by his little friends at nursery, and my wife's friends' kids. Although not freakishly so. We did worry quite a bit until he turned about 1, though, as he wasn't even really babbling. But it's evening out now.
Motor-wise, though, he's been walking properly since he was 11 months and cruising round furniture since he was about 6 or 7 months. He was pretty early for most motor things. He's able to do quite sneaky/intricate things like open locks on gates, open screw caps, and generally go through most child-proofing like it's not there. He can strum my guitar with a plectrum, if I watch him to make sure he doesn't stick the plectrum in his mouth to show off.
I came into the living room the other day after changing his nappy -- delayed because I was cleaning shit off the side of the bath -- to find he'd climbed up on the sofa, then over the back of one of the dining table chairs to get onto the table, then reached for my coffee cup where I'd placed it 'out of reach'. He got a fright when I came in and caught him -- he had the mug in one hand, held by the handle, about to take a drink -- and tipped the whole thing over our white sofa.
re: 38
Yeah. My niece was like that. To be fair, both my sister's kids were quite precociously verbal. But the little girl very much so. They had a health visitor come to do some kind of assessment of her language skills. I can't remember how old she was. Around 2, I think. Maybe a tad older.
Door bell rings.
Health visitor enters.
Health visitor: 'Hi, I'm here to assess X.'
X: 'Mummy, is this lady who is here to see about my words?'
Health visitor: 'I can see I don't really need to do this.'
48
You're raising him bilingual, right? That can delay speech acquisition slightly.
he seems to use the signs interchangeably to mean I HAVE SOMETHING I WISH TO COMMUNICATE URGENTLY.
it's okay, this is mostly how I use them too.
The newborn at my house will be one week old tomorrow. It's pretty fun to stare at him but I'm looking forward to when he is awake some of the time.
He's able to do quite sneaky/intricate things like open locks on gates, open screw caps, and generally go through most child-proofing like it's not there.
We forgot to put the latch back on the cabinet with the cleaning products the other day, and came in to find Zardoz (very) quietly and carefully taking out each of them individually and putting them on the floor. It was clear both that she knew she wasn't supposed to be playing with this stuff (she was being extra quiet) and that she knew she should be very gentle with it.
51
The newborn I'm helping to care for is now 8 days. For the first 7 days he's been a complete sloth. He sleeps through anything, and falls asleep as soon as his immediate need is met. He'll fall asleep during a diaper change and during feeding. He's just started to be awake and active (flailing arms and legs) for very short periods of time when he isn't actively hungry or pooping.
On another note, the mom and I got yelled at during the home check up by the public health officials for only keeping in in a diaper and covered by a light blanket in our 90 degree weather. When we protested that it was 90 and he was getting too hot with anything more on, they told us to bundle him up and turn on the air conditioning.
48 is one of the great vignettes of child care
When we protested that it was 90 and he was getting too hot with anything more on, they told us to bundle him up and turn on the air conditioning.
Then they can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. If the kid is neither to hot not too cold, he should have as much freedom of movement as possible. We don't use swaddling bands these days.
mostly he gets what he wants by pointing and going 'uuuugh'.
Ah, my native language!
re: 52
xelA is similarly obsessed by our cleaning cupboard. He can just about force it open enough [with the safety latch on] to reach the dusters we keep at that side. Dangerous stuff is at the back, out of reach. But I spotted him the other day experimenting with the safety catch. So I think that's only a matter of time, and then the cleaning stuff will have to go ... well, somewhere very high.
He loves cleaning in general. We have a microfibre floor mop thing for the laminate floor. And he can literally play at mopping for 30 minutes or more. Cleaning and dancing, basically. Number one activities.
The next Unfogged meet up should have a group baby sitter.
55: Right, but where she is, babies are notoriously bundled.
58: It's like you don't even see J, Robot.
We keep all the cleaning stuff in the cabinet above the sink instead of below and people who come over think that's strange- what if you're reaching up for some bleach and it falls on your head!
The cabinet under the sink is empty. Except for the mouse poison. But that's ok, we don't have any pet mice.
Upon adoption from a third world orphanage one nation over from Buttercup's location, the only specific advice from the orphanage director was to keep the baby thoroughly covered and always wearing a hat as long as we were in the country. Apparently the orphanage had gotten several complaints over the years about First World adoptive parents taking their babies around insufficiently swaddled and hatted.
Upon adoption from a third world orphanage one nation over from Buttercup's location, the only specific advice from the orphanage director was to keep the baby thoroughly covered and always wearing a hat as long as we were in the country. Apparently the orphanage had gotten several complaints over the years about First World adoptive parents taking their babies around insufficiently swaddled and hatted.
My current favorite thing is that Ace goes around muttering "Otay, otay, otay" (okay) under her breath like she's exasperated with all of us.
If the kid is neither to hot not too cold, he should have as much freedom of movement as possible. We don't use swaddling bands these days.
This isn't a universal opinion. Lots of parents will wax on about papooses and African women who wear the babies swaddled tight on their backs for the first year, and so on. There's something to it - they calm down when they're bundled really tight. Fourth trimester and blah blah blah.
where she is, babies are notoriously bundled.
Bethlehem?
Some kids like to be swaddled, some don't. You quickly learn which is which.
61 (or 62 if you prefer): Ideally, you should have been using a yellow hat so that the child could be identified as belonging to Colonialist Swine.
Some kids like to be swaddled, some don't. You quickly learn which is which.
I dunno. Some parents are squeamish about swaddling their fussy baby and then also complain about their fussy baby's unsoothable-ness.
NOT ALL. Not all. I'm just saying I've been around both types of fussy babies - ones where I rolled my eyes at the parents, and ones where I was amazed at what the poor parents had to deal with.
Apparently the orphanage had gotten several complaints over the years about First World adoptive parents taking their babies around insufficiently swaddled and hatted.
When my friend tells people I'm helping her care for her newborn, they give her this look of intense pity and concern. Foreigners are probably only slightly above wolves on the scale of "would you let this animate being* care for your child." In fairness, as a childless woman I'm not an ideal baby nurse, and there are lots of cultural proscriptions I know nothing about, even if I get the general principle of care (yang stuff good, yin stuff bad). Today I accidentally wiped the baby's bottom with a wet wipe without first soaking it in warm water, thus exposing the baby to 'cold.'
*an old woman referred to me as a thing the other day, so apparently I don't have everyone convinced as to my animate status.
If you're soaking the wipes in warm water before using them, why do they need to be 'wet' wipes, rather than paper towels, or something else previously dry?
Baby update: I no longer have to worry about A's weight. She's a whopping 11 pounds at 8 weeks old! I'm supplementing about 1/3-1/2 of the time with formula. But I'm much calmer about it since I've tried everything to produce more milk. It is what it is.
Does anyone have advice for how to entertain her? She really wants my full attention and she seems like she gets bored easily. I will walk her around the house to show her the blinds for a minute until she objects, then repeat with the chandelier, etc. Sometimes I can put her down then and she will mimic my motions and noises. I tried giving her a rattle but I think she was scared of it.
I would like to see a "top ten/bottom ten animate beings to take care of your child" listicle. I think dolphins probably have the highest "some people might consider this a good idea/this would be a good idea" ratio. Maybe wolves but wolves have been downtrending as child rearers for milennia.
I have also been assisting in the care of a newborn! This time, without the adrenalin of first time parent fear, boredom sets in quicker. How about doing something other than eating sleeping and being cute?
If you're soaking the wipes in warm water before using them, why do they need to be 'wet' wipes, rather than paper towels, or something else previously dry?
I tried using a paper towel-type thing in the warm water, but was told to use a wet wipe. My guess is it's a texture thing? The wet-wipe is softer and more cloth-like.
Also, how bad can it be to use a normal fucking wipe on a newborn? I feel like this one company that is also part of the despicable breast feeding zealot mafia has a monopoly on these little cotton pads that you have to dip in water yourself and are a total PITA.
74: A belated congrats on the baby!
73.3 -- swing, or put her in the ergo/baby Bjorn and walk around but in a manner that gives you hands.
It's a little weird that you filled in "jobs" at the end of comment 80, brain. Why would you do that, brain?
77: She cries in the stroller because she wants to be held. Also, I think it's too hot out because her back will get pretty sweaty. I'm looking forward to September.
78: Congratulations. Also, those little cotton pads are just make-up removing pads. At least the ones we used were. It takes about a dozen for a big shit.
73: Hawaii was like that and it made me a little crazy. Go to a coffee shop where there's new people/motion for her to look at and you can play online. Go to visually new places.
80: I've tried a sling, a Moby Wrap, and the Baby Bjorn. She dislikes all three because she can't see enough. I'm keeping the Baby Bjorn in the hopes that she'll like it once she has enough neck strength for it to be outward facing. The swing will work for five minutes until she gets bored.
84: Good plan. She did enjoy being walked around Target this weekend. She cried when we showed her an Elmo toy, though. Evil Elmo.
74
Top
1. Humans
2. Bonobos
3. Chimpanzees
4. Gorillas (maybe reverse the two)
5. Orangutans
(it's not cheating to list the Great Apes separately, right?)
6. Dolphins (would the kid be underwater?)
7. any Sheep dog breed
8. Pigs (if they didn't eat the kid first, which is kind of unlikely)
9. Maybe some kind of bird?
10. Wolves might not be so bad, as long as they see the kid as part of their pack. Dunno if they make the top 10.
Bottom
1. Pandas
2. Gerbils
3. Mice
(basically all rodents except for rats, who might do an alright job. Based solely on our elementary school pet gerbil, they top my rodent shitlist. It would probably bite the kid, poop, and die.)
4. Large cats, or any sort of cat
5. Fish, insects, etc.
6. Which species have the worst mortality rates? What about polar bears?
Have you tried the sling with her forward-facing? That was Sally's favorite position, peering over the front edge of the sling like "Kilroy was here".
Also, how bad can it be to use a normal fucking wipe on a newborn?
Well, if it's room temp, it disturbs the qi, or something.
88: I should experiment again. I tried it in the first month when everything was terrifying and she was always facing my chest.
87. Animate beings most likely to eat your kid:
1. chimpanzees.
2...
90: Wipes are room temperature, unless you keep them in the fridge or something.
91: You can't put the same baby into the sling twice.
Forward facing sling position like so is what I was thinking of. Eight weeks might be a little too young for it, though.
89, 92
Well, presumably you're going to have to get the chimp mom to accept it as her own first. Same as the wolf principle.
90
That's why you have to put it in warm water first. Room temperature is yin, or something like that.
Yeah, you can forward face in the sling (or fold down the flap on the Bjorn so that she has a nice side view, that might work if you haven't tried it already). If not either hire someone to walk around with her or make your husband do it so you can get a break, and don't worry it's not that long until they can use their heads.
I wonder if there are studies on how human infants can do on other mammals' milk. I know cow milk is now verboten but according to "Babar and his children" they appear to have used it, with a touch of honey, instead of formula in France (or maybe just in the Elephant "kingdom" (nominally independent but clearly under French suzerainty in the form of the old lady)) in the 1930s.
I think you're supposed to use goat milk.
92: helpful data does exist on the relative rates of infanticide among primates, albeit it's in PNAS. http://www.pnas.org/content/110/33/13328.full
73.2: mobiles? music? We spent a lot of time dancing with Teapot in the ktan carrier. Usually worked for 4-5 songs at a stretch.
Generally, what worked for Sally and Newt was brisk forward motion -- loaded up in whatever carrier, and on the march. Meandering around lacksidaisically didn't work, they wanted us walking quickly and purposefully.
But that doesn't afford anyone a break. That still makes for a grueling day.
Get another adult in the house. It's way easier to enjoy a baby when there's another person to talk to, and your conversation will entertain her. (Or leave the house.)
I went totally nuts that first summer with Hawaii, and it was super excruciatingly hot and I didn't know any parents or any close by friends and Hawaii was always bored. UGH.
(Which really sucked in the middle of the night, let me tell you. They'd be perfectly contented being carried around quickly, but ready to start yowling as soon as my walking speed dropped.)
103 gets it right. Also:
"In France, homes for foundlings often employed large numbers of goats, which were kept on the grounds, as they were considered less problematic than lower-class women when it came to feeding infants. In some institutions, nurses carried the infants to the goats; elsewhere, the goats came to the infants. Alphonse Le Roy described how goats were used at the foundling hospital in Aix-en-Provence in 1775: "The cribs are arranged in a large room in 2 ranks. Each goat which comes to feed enters bleating and goes to hunt the infant which has been given it, pushes back the covering with its horns and straddles the crib to give suck to the infant. Since that time they have raised very large numbers [of infants] in that hospital.""
An infant who suckled at a goat in 1775 would be old enough to have rioted in the streets of Paris in 1792. I'm not saying it's causal, but if I were a social neuroscientist, this would be a fact.
Goats, also notoriously unruly, and probably a bad behavioral influence on the infants in their care.
Is it any mystery that the leaders of the Revolution disposed of their opponents by depriving them of the goat's characteristic weapon -- the head?
A goat-raised infant is our surest defense against tyranny. Who is with me on this business plan? We can just write some copy about African mothers doing this and get some pediatrician to agree, and our goat-based day care can become a reality. Goats work for less than minimum wage!
Sure they do, until you let them get organized and they start demanding health insurance and paid time off.
Fortunately SCOTUS will save us from that hell.
109: Zardoz has a book about farm animals organizing and striking until their demands are met. It's... a little weird, I gotta say.
Cows That Type, or are there several books like that?
Between us, we got the whole title.
The sequel set in an aquarium and the dolphin strikes until he gets a handjob is really not appropriate for kids.
I did get the feeling that Click Clack Moo had been written by someone who made the classic mistake of thinking Animal Farm was a children's book, and then later thought "Why not?"
101: I could see A wanting brisk motion too. She's fine in the car until you hit the first stop light. Then she starts to grumble, and the grumbles increase at every stop light until she's inconsolable. She liked the car so much in the first month, I hope she goes back to liking it someday.
I really think we could disrupt the entire day care industry here with the goat-based cheap child care plan. We need an app based reservation system and collar cams on your infant's goat. Kids2Kids? "Goatsy" would be great if those assholes hadn't stolen the name.
thus exposing the baby to 'cold.'
Oh god, Iran too, with the long list of things, particularly foods, that are "hot" or "cold," which means they can or must not be given, depending on the circumstance. If Iranians were known for their longevity, I might let it slide, but no. Reject.
We just spent the weekend with a friend who is married to a former NFL lineman. Baby is three months old and twenty pounds. It's also content to be put on its back on the floor and happily stare at the ceiling. Is this in any way fair? It is not.
Iranians are known for their beauty. At least it's a thing for guys in Pakistan.
As for goats, we could get more revenue streams.
My friend told me that it's a thing in Norway to start acclimating baby to Xtreme Winter by leaving them out on the doorstep or balcony for a few minutes, and then longer, starting from when they are newborn. Which seemed hilariously reasonable to me.
It works for my tomato seedlings, so why not?
126
Growing up, parents acclimatizing you to being tough about cold was one of those things I assumed was kind of a universal, only to find out later that it really isn't. As a small kid, we used to go to this mountain resort where the "pool" was a glacial run-off pond next to the community sauna. It's main purpose was to provide something really cold to jump into in the summer when there wasn't snow, but during the day all the dads would trot their kids over to swim in it. There was also a hot tub elsewhere, but that was strictly adults only. As a kid I remember learning that very cold water was fine, but very hot water was a little risque and Not For Kids. But anyways, my general experience learning to swim was first learning to tolerate freezing water. First swim lessons were in a unheated pool, and most of my swimming experience is in mountain lakes, rivers, and fjords.
It would take a lot of mayflies to raise a baby.
It would take a lot of mayflies to raise a baby.
They could grip it by the cot!
--Look, it's not a question of where they grip it...