Abbey has always loved the water. Swimming is one of her favorite things to do. Every time she was in the water, you could see her grinning from ear to ear.
So, she was so excited for swim meets to start.
She loves hanging out with her buddies...
And of course, she loves taking her mark..
And swimming!
If you know our kids, it's quite surprising to see a D kid doing backstroke and doing it pretty well.
This year, Abbey was fast enough to be in first heats at our meets. First heat is the scoring heat. At first, she didn't like this at all, because the first heat swimmers weren't immediately rewarded with a ribbon. They had to wait until the next practice to get their little tags of glory. There also was the small, (to me), but tremendous,(to Abbey), matter of the color of the ribbon. First heat ribbons were blue, red, yellow, pink and white, in order of 1st through 6th place. Here is a sample of our conversations regarding ribbons: "Abbey, you got a blue ribbon!" Then I notice the frown, and ask, "What's wrong?" She explains, "I wanted the pretty rainbow ribbon!" (The rainbow were heat ribbons and didn't indicate scoring.)
Eventually, she got it and discovered/developed a side that I've seen very little of from her...competitiveness. The last few meets, she'd get out of the pool and say, "How many points did I score?" When Daniel would scout the competition and tell her she would be swimming against a fast girl, she'd take all the advice and say, "I bet that girl doesn't know all that!" We'd laugh to see her behind the blocks with a look of concentration. She would then proceed to give it her all in the pool, and that time she was ecstatic to get a blue ribbon. The ribbons weren't always blue, she got a few red and one yellow, but she had a blast doing her favorite thing...swimming!
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