I jump by myself

Our town has insanely nice pools, and Stephanie gets free admission until she is 4.  So, I bought myself a summer pool pass, and we have been going on my days off.  Until now, she has mostly gone with Kevin (other than one little class we took together) because he has a yearly pool pass.  We all went together on Sunday.  Kevin played with us for while, and then went to swim laps.  After he was gone, she wanted to jump into the pool.  This is nothing new.  Even when she was a baby, she would sit on the edge, close her eyes, turn her head, plop herself forward, and we caught her.  So, we did enough rounds of pool jumping and catching that I felt like I could get some nice looking arms if we did this every pool trip.  And then a little boy (that could swim) jumps in and goes under.  Stephanie looks at me and says, "I jump by myself."  I explained in great detail that if I didn't catch her, she would go under.  "I jump by myself."  So I let her.  She swims like a rock... sank right to the bottom.  I snagged her out, but I had a moment of moderate panic where drowning seemed like a real possibility.  She came out laughing and proceeded to do it over and over again.  I learned to reach down faster so that she did not go all the way to the bottom.  We, of course, told Kevin all about it, and he said that she is more brave with me than with him.  She and I spend a lot of time together, we talk about safety often (she says in parking lots "I hold Mommy's hand, cars no hurt me.") so I think she has developed a sense of trust in me, but really kid, if you want to get brave in the pool, you picked the WRONG parent.  Kevin is far more likely to pull off a water rescue than myself.  But, at a giant public pool with lifeguards only a scream away, I can let her be brave, and hopefully no actual rescue will be needed.