6835/19755
Cycled back to the cycle store with my daughter first thing and we changed my bike for one with a trailer on the back and it’s already worth the extra £48 (how much?) that that cost us as we can now get round the site as a family without too much frustration. Ernie loves being chauffeured and we can get Phoebe in there too when she doesn’t feel like cycling (but she’s pretty adept on her bike) and it’s a good work out trying to get both of them up the steep hills. Game changer.
We had a fun day with only a couple of moments of peril. Today’s swimming session was mainly fun. The wave machine was working again and came on every half hour. The third time Phoebe wanted to go right into the corner where the waves were strongest and it was fun, until we found ourselves being sucked into the wave mechanism. There was a big grill underwater on the wall and the holes were big enough for my feet to get inside and my shins were bashed around a bit. Phoebe also nearly lost a foot in there. We somehow managed to scramble our way out of the heavy sucking mechanism (and it certainly made me think twice about investing in mechanical devices with a strong milking grip) and get to safety. Another dad saw we were in mild distress and asked if I needed help, but I managed to save my own kid on this occasion.
We were having fun and nearing the end of the session. Phoebe started shooting water at us from the pirate ship and I managed to position myself so that I’d be hit. Catie and Ernie were right next to me. Or so I thought, because one second after looking at Ernie, Catie turned back from watching me getting splashed to see Ernie had disappeared.
I wasn’t too concerned. He literally had a one second start on us and so we had to find him.
But we couldn’t find him. I checked behind the pirate ship and Catie looked in the nearby pools, but our boy had vanished. We told the lifeguard and they were right on it, though I wasn’t sure how they were going to spot a 3 year old in one of the Center Parc life jackets, because that was nearly every kid there. But little ones aren’t meant to be unaccompanied, so that was something.
Ernie is pretty nervous of the water, or at least has been til recently and so I thought he’d be on the walkway or in the shallows somewhere, but a couple of minutes had passed now and I was suddenly gripped with proper fear. Surely it was impossible that even the cockiest child abductor would be audacious enough to do their business so openly, but how else could we explain this vanishing trick. More realistically, what if he’d somehow got into deep water or one of the more dangerous slides or something. Or found his way out of the pool somehow.
None of it seemed possible, but equally it seemed impossible that he’d disappeared.
His mum had had a look in the wave machine pool but not seen anything, but I got up on the platform above it and who did I see happily bobbing around on his own in the deep end. An oblivious Ernie Herring. Clearly no longer scared of water or bothered about being near one of his parents and much further out than his mum could ever have thought was possible. He was having the time of his life.
I raced round and told Catie and got the lifeguards to call off the search. When she got to shore she was being lightly chastised by a life guard for letting a 3 year old in the pool alone which was against the rules and she was explaining that it hadn’t been on purpose.
Phoebe said, with a little too much glee, “It’s lucky that the wave machine wasn’t on or Ernie could have died.” She thought of the world where she got our full attention again and never had to deal with her occasionally annoying sibling and it seemed like a Utopia.
And she had a point. She’d nearly come to harm even with an adult with her and if my legs were going into the mechanism then I dread to think what could have happened to a disorientated Ernie.
Luckily all ended happily, but we had what felt like 15 minutes of panic (but was probably no more than 3 minutes) and went through that awful nausea and fear that most parents will experience at some point, nearly always with a happy resolution.
That was enough nearly killing my kids for the day for me though. Ernie said he thought he had been playing tag with me (which we’d been doing earlier) though I explained that he needed to tell me if that was happening, or at least see that I was in the vicinity.
In many ways I was impressed with the speed of his departure and his bravery and calmness as he bobbed alone in the deep part of the pool. But mostly I feel sick imagining where his devil may care attitude will lead him in future exploits.
We’ve got five more pool trips to go, so good luck to us.
Somehow we got through an afternoon session on the lake on an electric boat without too much incident, even with the kids insisting on taking over the controls. Ernie only tried to steer us into the bank once.
I had a bit too much Italian food for dinner, but I am assuming that the constant movement and adrenaline from almost killing my family will be enough to burn off half a tiramisu. Everyone fell asleep pretty easily tonight.
