Every time my family moved when I was growing up, my parents would take off for a weekend to go look for and buy a home. They let us all make requests but of course they made the final decision. I always begged for a pool and they tell me that every time they went there was a house with a pool that was in the final 3 but they never ended up picking it. Tragic. Amazingly I married into a swimming family where all the kids grew up swimming competitively or playing water polo and they even have a pool in the backyard. Yeah! Can it get any better than that? I don't even have to take care of it!
Ethan has always loved the pool and has never had any fear of it.
Does Isaac look like he agrees? Absolutely not. For whatever reason Isaac is a complete daredevil on land. He climbs out of his crib, climbs on top of tables and couches and anything else that looks like a challenge to him and he has lots of bumps and bruises to prove it. We just assumed he'd love the water and be jumping in every chance he got. Instead, for no explainable reason, the water absolutely terrifies him. He love baths, but the pool, even the hot tub that's smaller and less deep, just freaks him out. 
Even riding on Taylor and being carried around the pool brings on tears and screaming and as you can see, begging to get out of the pool. He's happy to walk around the outside though and help Oscar bring his ball.
The only thing Taylor was able to convince him to do was jump in to him but if you let him land in the water at all instead of just catching him he goes nuts and won't do it anymore.
Only the buttons on the side of the hot tub hold any appeal for him. Oh well, we'll try again next summer.
Ethan is the polar opposite of this so we put him in some swimming classes this summer. He loved every minute of it and was pretty funny to watch. He's so skinny- poor thing- that even at noon in 100 temperatures, when the teacher would have them stand on the side with their arms in the air to practice how to dive in, you could see him shaking like a leaf from across the pool. No complaints of course from him. 
As a reward they let the kids jump off the diving board at the end of the class. Ethan instantly fell in love with this and now has lots of motivation to learn to swim without floaties so he can jump by himself.
He made some good progress learning to kick off the wall, dive in, and stroke instead of doggy paddle, but he still doesn't get the whole "it-would-be-good-to-pick-up-my-head-and-breathe" concept. Instead he'll swim underwater literally forever until he can reach the side. Oh well, something to work on next year.
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Ian is the same way. Shivering away as he waits his turn for the diving board.
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