swimming!

These early years of a child's life are full of so many milestones, first meals, first teeth, first steps etc. And today was no different. Today was the Little Dude's first swimming lesson.   Sometimes I feel a little bit like I parent in a vacuum, in the sense that I don't have any geographically close mom-friends with kids the same age as me. I have mom-friends who live far away, and mom-friends whose kids are different ages. But no close, talk to them everyday mom friends who would say things like "So have you signed up for swimming lessons yet?", thereby jogging my bad baby-brain memory into doing things like that. It just sort of occured to me the other day, that maybe L.D. should have swimming lessons, you know, since its summer and everything. So I looked up a phone number and called the pool, and wouldn't you know it, summer is pretty much over. I'd missed the boat on signing him up for classes, and there are apparently two whole levels that other little kids his age have already done! Not that I'm overly worried about it, but clearly I was a little behind the eight ball on this one. I felt kind of bummed that we'd missed the lessons and wouldn't be able to go again for a whole year, when the nice lady on the phone told me that there was one more session of private lessons available, and really, they are not much more expensive then the group lessons. So I jumped at the chance. "Which time slot would you like, 8 am or 5:30 pm?" Sheesh! Well I guess late signing up beggars can't be choosers. So we took the 8:00 am time slot. 

And I'll tell you what, we pretty much have the pool all to ourselves at 8 in the morning. Getting out the door was a bit tricky too. I take my hat off to all the two parent working families out there, because I know you all have to leave the house early every day, and much earlier than 7:55, which was when we had to leave (the pool is three minutes away from our house). Our normal routine in that the kids usually wake between 7 and 7:30, (and I like to encourage the 7:30 end of that window). Then we usually take our time waking up. L.D. likes to go upstairs and play while the Baby and I breastfeed. Then we get breakfast on, and eat in a pretty leisurely fashion, and then once breakfast is over L.D. plays again while I shower while the Baby chills out in his little chair in the bathroom. The when I'm done showering I'll get a load of laundry in the machine, and by then its 9:00 am, and time to put the Baby down for his first nap. But with the 8 am swimming lessons things are much different. We really have to bust a move to get out the door with swimming bag packed and breakfast consumed and a clean leaving-the-house-diaper on the Baby and everybody's teeth brushed. I am very impressed by all the working families I know who leave the house by 7:30 or even 6:00 am. You people must be very, very organized.  

Anyhow, this whole swimming lesson thing makes me very nostalgic, because since I (accidently) moved back to my home town we have our swimming lessons in the very same pool where I learned to swim.  Here I am, second from the left. The one with the shaggy blond mop top and the patriotic bathing suit. I wish I had a better picture of that bathing suit. My older sister and I both had one and it was the funniest thing, because it was red and blue with white maple leafs and somehow the white parts were less opaque than the red or blue parts and sun actually got through so when you took your suit off after a long day on the beach you'd have little maple leafs tanned onto your skin. I kind of wish I still had that suit. 

I think I'm four years old in these photos and apparently the pedagogical strategy of swim instructors was a little different back in the day, as it seems that they were literally throwing us into the pool. (that's me surfacing with the grimacing face)

Anyhow, its all very surreal to sit with my little boy at the edge of the same pool and listen to the instructor encouraging him to blow bubbles.   He took his time to warm up to the whole situation, but luckily I'd had the forethought to take him to the pool on Friday for family swim time, so it wasn't a totally alien situation. Even so, he was not entirely enthralled by the whole idea. He was happy to sit on the steps with me, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he's not really a 'joiner'. The nice swimming instructor would say "All right, would you like to sit here on this frog?" and he'd say. "No." and then she'd say, "All right, lets pretend the water is paint and paint our bellies and arms, can you do that?" And he'd say. "No, I don't want to do that." No hysterics or crying or belligerence. He just calmly disinclined every invitation she made for the first 10 minutes or so. Things were exacerbated somewhat by the fact that right next door, on the other side of the privacy hedge there was some construction going on, and he could hear machines and he was pretty sure there was a digger there, or maybe a loader. Possibly a steam roller. Or a forklift. Maybe we should go check? He kept asking "what dat noise". Finally we promised him that if he went with the instructor and kicked his legs and blew bubbles, that we'd go and see the diggers after the lesson was over. Which seemed reasonable to him.
So he kicked. And bubbled. But he drew the line at floating on his back. No worries as we'll have plenty of time to work on that later. The instructor was very patient, and nice, but it was kind of funny, as one imagines that they are trained to praise the kids frequently in order to make this a positive event. However, the result was that she'd ask him to do something, like "Can you blow bubbles like a dolphin does?" and he'd look calmly at her and do.... nothing. And she'd say, "Awesome." Almost every request she made was punctuated by the same, ironically not very enthusiastic "Awesome." I said to Hubs later, "If he doesn't actually know what 'awesome' means, he's going to have a very odd definition of the word from her intonation and context. Basically, he'll think its something you say when you are unimpressed by someone's non-compliance."

But on the whole it was a pretty positive experience. He told me tonight after dinner that next time he is going to jump into the pool and make a big splash! I told him I'm sure he will (though I'll believe it when I see it). But it was nice to be there, at the pool in the cool light of morning, floating in the blue with my Little Dude.

 Just like these two! Another vintage family picture. That lady in the funky bikini is my Mom, and the little carrot top with her is my younger brother, known to some of my readers as Mr. Lemur Boy. Ah, how time flies.