Haunted

The Water's High, You're Jumping Into It

July 7, 2016

Taylor's POV:

"Archer, please be careful when you splash your sister. Thank you," I say. "Okay!" says my youngest brother. He goes and splashes Joe instead. I'm sitting on the edge of the pool with my feet in it laughing at my brother. Yes I'm in a bathing suit but I'm not in the water right now but I was for a little while earlier.

Joe and I are at my Rhode Island house with the twins. We've been here since July 5th, so two days. Today, we're working on teaching the kids how to swim again. They hadn't been taught before we got them. But that all checks out I guess.

They made a lot of progress over the past two days since we swam practically all day. Today they're doing well enough to have more free play rather than instruction. But of course they're being watched and Joe and I aren't taking our eyes off them for even a second.

The twins get out of the water and jump in together a few times. They have set themes and since I have dry hands right now, I film them. Joe is clapping and calling out the themes as the twins go. They're having so much fun.

They do synchronized cannonballs into the pool and then start swimming for fun again. Archer is more toward the middle of the pool which is four feet deep with Joe watching him like a hawk.

Lexie is swimming some mini laps in the three feet shallow end where I am and I'm smiling at her. My sister pauses her breath strokes and yells to my boyfriend, "Joe! Was that good?" "Yeah! Keep up the good work!" he says. Lexie turns to me and says "I need a second opinion. Was I actually good?" "Yes! You've improved so much! I'm super proud of you!" I say. Lexie beams with pride. "Thanks!" she says.

Then she swims underwater like a mermaid by my feet. She's the cutest mermaid ever in her blue bathing suit with a silver seashell on the front of it.

"SHARK ATTACK!" screams Archer and he power swims to his sister, brings her to standing, and pretends to be a shark attacking her. Instead of faking shark bites, he tickles her.

"Mermaid magic prevents sharks from hurting them!" says Lexie. "I'm the King of Sharks, I'm immune to mermaid magic!" says Archer and he continues to tickle his twin sister. "Hahaha! Joe! Help me!" screeches Lexie as her twin brother keeps tickling her. "You're on your own, kid!" says Joe. "Archerrrrr stoppppp!" says Lexie. "Never!" he says.

My sister's legs and arms are flailing about, and suddenly, she turns around and gets Archer back with tickles. "Mwhahaha," says Lexie. "What are you? A mermaid witch?" asks Archer. "It's Sea Witch, thank you very much!" says Lexie. "Yeah, Archer, we've only watched The Little Mermaid a million times," I say playfully. He splashes me in the face for that. "Okay I deserved that," I say. I'm dripping wet now but it's worth it.

The twins go through two make-believe in the water storylines in thirty minutes. It's actually pretty impressive how fast their games go.

One of them was Archer being a pirate captain searching for treasure in the depths of the ocean, also known as the edge of the five foot deep end of the pool while Lexie was a mermaid princess who was being held captive by the evil sea monster, aka Joe, and needed desperate rescuing. Captain Archer was tragically forced to choose between the very pretty mermaid princess and the shining treasure, aka fake gold coins I found lying around from a St. Patrick's Day party a few years back.

The other story was where they were snorkeling and the giant squid, Joe, was guarding the lost treasure from Atlantis, aka the gold coins plus some plastic rings and other little toys that I had lying around from the party I mentioned earlier plus some other parties over the years in the small bit right before the deep end.