Squirrel Dive
At four and a half months, Lex becomes a risk taker. Last night he was standing on the bed, holding on to my fingers. He looked over his shoulder, looked at me, leaned back and let go. Ba-boom! He fell on the mattress, bounced a little, grinned like a maniac, laughed. I gave him my fingers to pull up on again, and he did the whole routine again.
My favorite part is that he looks over his shoulder first. Daring but cautious. I told him, “That’s right honey, check for rocks.”
There’s a place on Virgin Gorda in the BVIs called The Baths. It is a spectacular collection of boulders big as houses tossed in a heap like giant pebbles. Extremely beautiful water-filled passageways with shafts of sunlight illuminating the caverns. But just outside is one of the most popular features. The jumping rock.
There’s a rope secured to the rock to help you climb. At the top you have a perfect shot to dive into relatively deep water with a sandy bottom. After you jump and dive and cannonball about a hundred times, you start to branch out. The swan dive gives way to a sailor dive. Basically the same but with your arms at your sides, so you hit the water head first.
A squirrel dive is the next iteration. Head-first again, and your arms reach back so you can grab your ankles. You can spend a whole summer doing squirrel dives off jumping rock at The Baths, and it would be time well spent.
The baby did his backwards belly flop on the bed about one hundred more times before we got the video camera. By the time we were recording, he had started dropping into a sitting position first and falling back a shorter distance. Maybe he was getting tired. Or maybe he was working on the next evolution, the half-back gainer with a twist.
I hope when he is big enough to go to jumping rock I can show him how to squirrel dive. I think he will really like it.
