Having said that the best part of the weekend was Monday afternoon. We threw the canoe on the car and headed for the river. This is where the adventure began. Normally in the canoe Liam is very interested in the watching the water go by and sticking his hand in the water. Today he seemed very docile, which seemed odd. I gave him some toys to play with and he perked up a bit. Before long he was hanging his arms and toys over the edge into the water.
It didn't take long for Liam to feel comfortable. He started moving around the boat as he often does. Usually when this happens one of us is on balance duty. That person's job is to counteract Liam's often sudden movements. This has always been a very unofficial duty. One of us just does it and we've never had any trouble with that arrangement. Liam began climbing around the boat as he often does. He made his way from the stern where I was to the bow where Sarah was . There were a number of occasions when Sarah stopped paddling in order to get a grip on Liam. I had no problem with this at all. In fact, we always go out with the expectation that one of us may not be able to paddle. After a while Liam settled down and Sarah started paddling again. With Sarah in front of me and Liam in front of her I didn't see exactly what happened next.
Sarah stopped paddling for a little bit. I assumed that she was going to stop Liam from climbing on the bow or something like that. The next thing I saw was Liam falling face first from the canoe into the water. The next thing I saw was Sarah moving as quickly as possible to rescue Liam. I figured that it wouldn't be a big deal the boat was moving forward and within a second or two Liam would be in my grasp. Sarah's instinct kicked in and she grabbed the first thing she could. She managed to grab one of his ankles as it was on the way out of the boat. The good news was that she had a grip of Liam and he wasn't going anywhere. The bad news was that because she was holding his ankle, his head was underwater. All of this takes a long time to describe, but it all happened within seconds. Sarah grabbed the top of Liam's life jacket and let go of his ankle. In a flash, out came Liam. He was a little shocked, grasped for air, coughed and then cried a little. After 30 seconds of being out of the water he was making his way around the boat again and was sticking his arm back in the water as if nothing ever happened. I think Sarah was more shocked and frightened by the whole experience than Liam was.
Sarah and I first thought that we should get back to the car as quickly as possible so that we could get Liam into some dry clothes. After a couple of minutes, we realized that it was warm enough outside that there wasn't really any rush. We thought that this was perhaps the beginning of the a new tradition: The Thanksgiving Swim! We can't wait until next year to see if it becomes an annual tradition.
Here's a shot of Liam after he was in dry clothes again.
2 comments:
At the rate Liam is growing I think that by next Thanksgiving Liam will be baptizing the two of you in the river... "Take me to the River-r-r-r-r-r..Wash me down!..The Commitments.ps.. Please excuse my pathetic sense of humour..I am in the midst of doing report cards and am losing it as you can tell..
I'm sure next year he will be able to tip us if we're not careful. A new tradition for all of us then!
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