This has got to be against some kind of fire code, or the general rules of safety.

As a parent, there is nothing that will drive home the IRONY of parenting, like a five-hour swim meet.  You remove the bumpers from their cribs to avoid strangulation, you sleep them on sheets made of organic yak's fur, you tell them not to stick their fingers in electrical outlets (a few thousand times), you prohibit peanut butter for 24 months, and you teach them to look both ways when they cross the street.  


And then you realize that all those lessons designed to keep your kids ALIVE are null-and-void, when they are six-years-old, competing in their second swim meet, and told to jump in a pool that looks like THIS:

Holy hell.  That is a lot of little kids in a deep body of water.  But this is where CHARACTER is formed, friends.  If they can survive the warm up (pictured) and being responsible for themselves for FIVE STRAIGHT HOURS in a bull pen governed by their peers--well, that's gotta mean something, right?


Five. Freaking. Hours.


Totally worth it to see L swim butterfly, though. 


FYI, L DOES NOT know how to swim butterfly.  Now, if it had been G that was in this spot, I would have spent the past two days researching proper butterfly technique; but as this is my third child, I am now well aware that it is ONE LENGTH of the pool, and breathing in a little chlorine never hurt anyone.  Oh wait.