How NOT To Do It

1.  Give in to your daughters' pleas for an inflatable swimming pool.  Agree to get one this very day.  Promise a morning of swimming followed by a picnic.

2.  Drive to the inflatable pool store (the one with the big red bulls eye out front) and fill the cart with approximately 18 items besides the inflatable pool before remembering you need an inflatable pool.

3.  Decide the daughters need new bathing suits, but forget to specify that they may not get the tutu-bottomed, sequin-covered, princess-propaganda'd suits on the corner rack.  Breathe a sigh of relief when they are satisfied with normal, adorable one-pieces. 

4.  Exit the store with eight bags instead of the expected one. 

5.  Walk across the parking lot which is now tented over with dark, rolling clouds.  The sky is choppy and menacing.  Try to keep the wind from whipping your hair into your eyes while steering the cart straight. 

6.  Let each girl hold her new bathing suit on the drive home.  Act pleased when the toddler has inserted her arms into the suit's legholes, and her legs into the suit's armholes.  Disentangle her and escort both children -- hopping with excitement -- into the house.

7.  Listen to the one thousand requests for the pool! the pool! blow up the pool! and try not to raise your voice when requesting patience.

8.  Search the house and garage for a pump, but find nothing.  Wonder why you bought a pool that required so much air to make it work.  Sit down on the floor, and begin to inflate the pool with your own lungs.

9.  Admit that the house is tilting and wonder why you feel drunk so early in the day.  Realize you're lightheaded from a lack of oxygen or a buildup of carbon dioxide or something else that you still wouldn't understand even if you weren't drunk from blowing up a pool in the middle of the morning.

10. Stumble your way out the door to the yard, tripping over the hose and giggling at the super-long snake it appeared to be. 

11. Stop giggling when you feel several sprinkles on your clammy, oxygen (or whatever)-deprived skin.  Notice that the sky is darker and the clouds are moving faster.

12. Stick the hose in the pool, and begin filling it with water. 

13. Back inside, find two naked little girls, trying to put their own bathing suits on.  Praise their independence, but help them turn the suits around so they're less wedgie-inducing.  Slather them with sunscreen, despite the lack of sun outside.  Believe the sun will pop out again soon, as rain was not seriously in the forecast.

14. Clean up a puddle from under your not-yet potty-trained toddler's feet.  Refuse her demands to change into a cleaner suit.  Watch her dissolve into a fit of tears and irrational screaming.  Carry her outside anyway, wet bottom and all.

15. Smile at your happy preschooler, sloshing and splashing in the cold water.  Try very hard to convince the toddler to do the same.  Fail.

16. Stand toddler -- barefooted -- in the grass, and listen to her wail and scream some more from the wet grass sticking to her clean feet.  Rinse her dirty feet off in the clean water, and listen to her wails and screams slowly dissipate into cautious acceptance.  But she still refuses to immerse anything but her feet in the water.

17. Stand back and enjoy the show.  For only 5 minutes, though, before a few hearty raindrops begin to fall.  Take a handful of pictures to prove the summery-ness of your summer for posterity (or blog-sterity).

18. Try to encourage the children to swim despite the few raindrops here and there.  Grow discouraged when the toddler melts down from being splashed too enthusiastically by the preschooler. 

19. Haul the toddler inside, clinging to your hip, neck, and chest like she's been rescued from a sinking ship, rather than an inflatable pool filled with 6 inches of water.  Rest her on a towel and return to dry off the preschooler.

20. Let your daughters have a picnic on the living room floor, naked except for diapers and panties, on an old baby quilt.  Watch the rain fill up the rest of your inflatable pool.  Wonder if the pool was worth the $15 it cost, and decide it was, if for no other reason than the mid-morning buzz it provided you with. 

21. Scold your cynicism.  Enjoy your peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the floor next to your daughters