First Day of Swimming Lessons

Today was finally the day of Bubby's first swimming lessons. I have been a little nervous about it, but I decided that I would make myself excited so that he wouldn't be scared.

I put on his new swimming suit that he got for his birthday, only to find that it was WAY too big! After taking a few steps, the thing was around his ankles, so I dug out his old size 12 month swimming suit, and thankfully it fit! Poor kid is just WAY too skinny. I wish I had that problem! :(

While we were driving to the pool I told him about swimming and about getting to be a little fish. He seemed pretty excited to go by the time we got there. We walked in and found our little class. I took his hand and headed over to the pool. We got to the edge, and he all of the sudden started to panic. He was trying to get away and was screaming "NO!" I picked him up and we went into the pool together. He was far from happy about being in there and cried and hung onto me for probably the first 5 mins! I was sitting there thinking why in the world did I sign up for this? But I know in the end it will be good for him and for me! :)

We were in the shallow shallow end, like 1 ft deep or something, so it was basically sitting in the water and getting them used to the water. The first thing they wanted them to do was to blow bubbles. I thought Bubby would like this since he LOVES "Baubles" so much, but he was having nothing to do with it! He liked watching the other parents and kids blowing them, but he didn't want his face to get wet and he for sure didn't want it in the water! Oh well...maybe he'll try it tomorrow.

Then we did the back float. I had a hard time getting him to lie on his back, but eventually the teacher and I found something on the ceiling for him to look at and he floated a little on his back. We parents were supposed to keep them on their backs and then walk around the perimeter of the pool with them floating. He didn't fight me too badly, but the poor kid was shaking like a leaf! I couldn't figure out if he was COLD or SCARED!

We sang some songs, and did some little games in the water. She had us put them up on the edge and have them jump in the water. Keric actually started warming up to jumping in. He LOVES to jump, and he was able to touch the bottom when he jumped in, so he had fun doing that. He never did let go of my hands, but at least he jumped. By the end of the two weeks I'm betting he'll be jumping like a pro which may or may not be a good thing! I just have visions of him jumping into some pool with no one there to catch him!

The last game we did was with some little diving rings. She gave each of the kids a ring and we were supposed to throw it in the water and see if they would try to pick it up off the bottom. Keric LOVED this game! He was pretty tricky in figuring out how he could pick up the ring WITHOUT getting his face wet. He liked it so much that he wouldn't give the ring back to the teacher! It was time to go, and I had to pry it from his little wrinkled raisin fingers!

All in all it was a pretty fun little class. There are only 5 parents and 6 children in the class. One poor mom has twins! I felt bad for her trying to handle both of them, but she didn't seem to want any help from the teacher, so whatever?

Supposedly by Friday the kids are going to get to go down the big water slide with their parents. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this, mainly because I myself don't really like the water slide, but maybe I can talk Chris into taking him to lessons on Friday?? haha