When Lyss Is Away

“I miss my friends,” Alyssa lamented last weekend.

I asked her, “What are you going to do about that?”

She gave me a thoughtful look and then grabbed her phone. One guess as to whether she called or texted her friends. Yeah, that’s right. She let her fingers to the talking and managed to get something planned for Tuesday at her friend Sabrina’s house.

Thankfully, Sabrina’s parents are awesome and don’t mind having three extra teenage girls descend upon their house at the spur of the moment.

So Sabrina’s big brother picked Lyss and their other friend Trixie and off they went for the day and night.

When I got home, Tom mentioned that Olivia had been especially destructive without the ever present gaze of her sister to keep her out of trouble.

Of course, in Liv’s defense, when you leave a nine year old alone in the house for up to fifteen minutes at a time (he was outside working on ‘projects’, which deserve a post of their very own) and that nine year old just KNOWS there is candy in the house, you can’t really blame her for seeking it out and eating ALL THE PIECES while Dad’s outside.

I mean, right?

I decided that what Miss O needed (other than more diligent supervision) was a distraction from the fact that her sister was off having loads of fun without her.

So I did a quick search on the hours the local community pool is open, found that it has evening hours, 6pm to 8pm and it only costs $1 to get in during those hours and it was settled. Olivia and I were going swimming. That would show her sister for taking off with friends and leaving us behind.

One benefit, in Olivia’s eyes, to going swimming is that she gets my constant attention the entire time we’re in the water. I mean, duh. The pool, at its shallow end is three and a half feet. Olivia is now four feet seven inches tall, so she does very well in the area of the pool that is four feet deep but it’s very easy to wander into the deeper water and even though there are five life guards at that pool, well, I’m the mama, it’s my job to pay attention to my child while she’s submerged in four feet of water.

So we swam and played and enjoyed one on one time together. And then we went home, had dinner and Liv was sound asleep by 8:30. All that candy combined with sunshine and swimming really knocked her out.

For the record, we did invite Tom to join us, but his ‘projects’ required that he go to Menards when I got home, which is west of our house, while the pool is east. Maybe next time he and Lyssie can join us for a family swim. If not, I’m sure Olivia would be willing to join me anytime. She’s still young enough to not be embarrassed to swim with Mom.