In what has recently become a regular Friday ritual, I took the girls over to the local Y tonite for a fun evening. First we walked and ran on the indoor track for a while, then we adjourned to the indoor pool for the Y’s "float fest," which basically consists of them filling the pool up with all kinds of strage and colorful inflatables. They do this every friday for a few hours in the evening, and the girls absolutely love it. It’s also a nice way to cool off after the run.
A few weeks ago when we started doing this, Jenya on her own initiative decided to test for her deep water band. Basically the Y won’t let kids under a certain age go into the deep end of the pool unless they’ve passed this test, for which they receive the little plastic band you can see Jenya displaying on her right ankle in this picture. I was quite impressed – she found out she wasn’t allowed into the deep end, figured out what she needed to do to change that, and did it (a test involving swimming some laps and treading water for several minutes), all entirely on her own without my involvment (or even my knowledge, till the lifeguard came up and wanted me to sign off on it). Pretty neat.
