1 Mother 2 Another

As we strive to beat the heat this summer, we’ve broken down and gotten ourselves one of those kiddie pools for the back yard.

I’ve always been resistant to them; they kill the grass, they get dirty, they take up space, and you have to empty them after every use or it’s simply an incubator for those West Nile mosquitoes. But I found one that seemed to solve some of those problems and with the heat, the reduced family hours at our local Y, and Maddie’s love of all things aquatic, I broke down and bought it.

Listen up – if you have five feet of available outdoor space, go buy this thing. It’s probably on end-of-season sale now. 

This kiddie pool is awesome; it’s collapsible to a very small size, but doesn’t need an air pump to be inflated. The thing is sprung with wires, like a pop-up tent, so I get small storage space and no inflation. The rim around it requires blowing up, but you can do that by mouth in sixty seconds. And we’ve been putting it on the patio part of our back yard with some of our foam puzzle mats underneath it to cushion from the cement, so I don’t have the dead grass factor.

As for Maddie’s happiness level? Fugghedaboutit.

If she even sees a swimsuit or a glimpse of the pool, she runs to the side door and starts banging on it, begging to go out back and play in the water. We’re in the thing daily, with Brian filling up the pool on his lunchbreak so the water can heat up and be ready for Her Highness after her afternoon nap.

Maddie still isn’t comfortable sitting in it, so she treats it like her own private wading fountain. With a couple of bath toys and a piece of Tupperware to act as a bucket, she splashes and screams and entertains herself for a good half hour. Which, as any parent knows, is like two hours of adult time.

I’ll sit in the pool with Maddie and she’ll climb all over me, pour water on me, boss me around, ignore me: basically all the things she does outside the pool. At least this way, I’m staying cool.

And when we’re finished, it takes maybe ten minutes of an adult with a bucket to empty the pool by watering our back yard plants, so no water’s wasted. Otherwise, there’s a deflate valve for emptying that does the job pretty quickly.

Since the pool’s five feet across, it can accommodate a few toddlers and we’re going to have our first pool party soon with Maddie's park friends. And since it stores so small, we’ll be using it for years to come.

So if you haven’t gotten a kidde pool yet, this is the one to get. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Or come over and check mine out; it’s the house with all the mommies laughing in the back yard, drinking margaritas at 2 in the afternoon.