She, her friend, and a new friend (a ten-month-old little boy) went to the pool at Hamlin Park with their mommies and daddies yesterday. This is the first time I've been to Hamlin, and I must say that I was impressed. There were a lot of people there. A couple of baseball diamonds were in full and boisterous use with uniformed kids on one of them and a bunch of typsy adults on the other. There was also a very nice playground for which I would have killed when I was a kid.
There was also quite a police presence (at least six uniformed officers around the pool building), which generated a little cognitive dissonance at first. I was supposing that any large gathering of people in the city must just require police supervision. Then I saw a sign indicating that the penalties for gun violence, gang recruitment and drug activities were substantially increased in and around the park, and I thought maybe there was some history of such problems there and that maybe this was the reason for the (what seemed to me ) heavy dose of CPD. As I was mulling this, my reverie was interrupted by an uproar from the adult softball game. A man, who for all appearances should have been an excellent softball-player, had made an extremely clumsy error and his friends were laughing at him with drunken gusto. And that explained the police. This wasn't just any crowd, this was a boozed-up crowd. Ahh, so that's why there were police around - just making sure that no one gets out hand. And I must say that I felt safer. I was there with Abby after all. I basked momentarily in the warm glow of security, my wife, my baby and I shielded from the drunk adult softball game by a wall of blue, kevlar and steel.
In all seriousness, it is probably the case that the police were there for all of the reasons that I mentioned and for others as well. And I do feel safer when they are around. There something about having an infant in arms that makes me want to be able to just scream for help and have people, armed and trained and sworn to protect, come running to my aid. I have become very risk averse. You should see me crossing the street.
So, you child-oriented people out there are probably still wondering and worrying about how I came to find out that Abby doesn't like cold water. (If you had forgotted all about that, shame on you. She's just a little baby!) Well, it's been a cool summer in Chicago this year, and though the Hamlin Park pool stands in direct sunlight almost all day, the water was a tad...chilly. I jumped in first, and Mommy handed Abby down to me. I slowly lowered her into the water. Her reaction was very dramatic. She gasped, groaned and griped. She acclimated to it a little, but she never really got comfortable. I felt bad for her, so we didn't stay in for very long. I don't want her to come to dislike the water, so we'll probably stick to the much warmer indoor pool at the Y.
On a final note, Abby had her first rice cereal yesterday. She liked as much as the sweet potatoes. She has gotten much better at getting the food in and down the hatch, and she only loses a very little bit of it. She absolutely loves to eat, and she gets mad (as in cries out loud) when we are too slow feeding her.
She is in the right town for food. They say that Chicago has the best food in the U.S.
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