Around Town: Robert Livermore Pool and Aquatic Park

Jonathan and I have both been making an effort to get out and explore our little neck of California recently. Forest can now be happily awake for nearly 3 hours in a row (!) which gives us a bit of a wider trajectory for outings. I figured I’ll start featuring these new local discoveries on the blog in a series called 'Around Town' to give y’all some ideas on what the greater Bay Area has to offer. 

I try to get out with Forest at least once every day. He’s easily entertained, so many times our excursions simply consist of a trip to Target or the grocery store. Being a Stay-at-Home Mom (or SAHM as the cool kids call it) can get lonely and weary at times but breaking up our day helps to make the days seem shorter somehow. 

The weather here is pretty good (and VERY good compared to Aberdeen) but the summer afternoons can get quite hot. Whereas we used to just throw Forest (not literally ‘throw’, of course…please don’t call CPS) into the stroller for a trip to the neighborhood swing set, sometimes it’s just too dang hot for that and we have to head indoors or at least to a body of water for some relief. 

Forest and I belong to a pretty sizable playgroup for babies born in the Fall of 2014, and since most of the other mothers are originally from this area and some of them even have older kids, they have a wealth of info for things to do with rambunctious mobile babies like Forest during these hot summer months. 

For instance, the public pools here are really great and serve as little water parks for the non-swimming set. A friend suggested we check out Robert Livermore Pool and Aquatic Park in Livermore so one Saturday, that’s just what we did. Jonathan was stoked to finally take Forest to the pool instead of just supervising him in our lame $10 plastic Walmart baby pool in the backyard (PS. Best $10 we ever spent).   
It was $5 for both Jon and I to enter the park, but babies under 2 get in free. They offer several discounted deals on the weekdays but since we were there on the weekend those deals didn’t apply.  The pool was great and had a shallow beach entry throughout, which was perfect for letting Forest splash around independently. 

The only thing we had to be careful with on the beach entry part of the pool was him trying to army crawl into deeper water. Forest has learned to crawl like a proper baby but still prefers to get around by dragging himself on his tummy most of the time. This is fine at home, but not in a baby pool obviously, so we had to keep a very close eye on him!  

No point in the entire pool was deeper than 3 feet and it was quite a large space which really makes it perfect for young kids. 

It was seriously just one enormous baby pool.  Our baby sure does love the water, but if possible, he loves people watching even more. 

He was in awe of all the kids and toddlers running through the shallow water and playing on the pool playground. In fact, this was one of the only times in his life when he was too captivated by his surrounding to cooperate with having his photo taken. We tried several times to take some cute shots but this was the best we came up with. 

Usually Forest is a gold mine of photo ops but he was just having too much fun to stop and smile for the camera. 

I know Jonathan especially enjoyed this experience with Forest as they are both water babies. 

I’m more of a ‘lay on the beach chair and read a book’ kind of girl so I’m glad Jonathan finally has a buddy to enjoy his water obsession with. 

Right now Forest is still at a stage where he can only handle an hour or two of this sort of experience before he becomes overstimulated. Next summer we’ll have hopefully (?) kicked this morning nap to the curb and will be able to have longer outings as a family. Maybe we’ll even be able to visit the pool long enough for momma to get her tanning and reading on while Jon and Forest swim til their hearts are content.   

We just found out that there is another one of these aquatic parks just 5 miles from our house so hopefully we will get a chance to check it out soon. I’ll keep you posted.