Lea competitive? Puh-lease!!

Lea has a sweet side, and then she has her competitive side. Yesterday at the pool the competitive side came out in spades, double spades maybe.

We invited some friends over to the pool who also have a competitive middle child and that drove Lea to a whole new level, and I might say a good one. We instigated a couple of competitions for the children in order to provide some structured things to do (besides climb on and maul daddy).

The first competition was a contest to jump off the side into the deep end and get judged on two different aspects, style and splash. The other middle child Mateo immediately set a high bar by doing a running forward flip (not bad for a 6 year old!) He got high marks! Lea did a couple of cannon balls and then decided to step up her game. Having never before tried it she did a backwards dive, and executed it nearly perfectly. After some strong jumps by Mateo she came back and did her own forward flip! Mateo gave us a running flying cannon ball which created a huge splash. Again high marks. Lea, not giving up on this one did a back flip off the side, nailed it on the first try! High marks! This was all positive IMO. I am sure that Melissa having left with Nicolas (ear infection) allowed the competition to go to another level as she probably would not have been comfortable watching these first time moves.

The second competition was a swimming relay. I didn't want it to be girl vs. boy so I split Diego and Mateo with Julia and Lea. Julia and Diego started off and the swim lessons over at the Santa Clara swim center clearly showed through as Julia's good free-style stroke put her out in front and gave Mateo a body length or so lead entering the water. Again Leas was not to be denied however. She got in there and executed a nearly flawless stroke (in my un-biased opinion) and erased the lead in the first length (about 10M) and extended the lead to win by a body length!

It was quite a performance by our little Lea, I wish I had video to share.