Rewind: Spring Swimming Lessons

Approximately 2 1/2 months ago I was good enough to put together a collage (okay...Picasa did the dirty work) of pictures of my kids on the last day of their pre-summer swimming lessons. Then I let the collage sit and never did a post. Can you tell how fabulously organized and focused I am these days? Yeah. I amaze even myself.

So here I now sit, all geared up and ready to do vacations posts and I suddenly realized I never did get that one about swimming lessons done... I'm going to try to keep this short (HA!) so I can actually move forward and get some more recent stuff on here.

Starting back in the spring, I put Hudson back into swimming lessons and took one session of Parent & Tot lessons with Claire. Hudson has always been happy to get in the water with anyone who will go with him. On the other hand, shy Claire took some coaxing and even with me was a bit nervous about the whole lesson thing at first. Then she realized we were in the water, got comfy, and thought she could swim without my assistance. I tried letting her sink a few times to get the message through and apparently she thought it was some sort of joke because to this day, she still wants to go off on her own. Anyway...at the end of the Parent & Tot session with Claire, our instructor suggested that she be moved up to Preschool Level 1 in spite of her being under age by a few months. The aquatics director approved the move and with Hudson turning 6 around that time (and therefore graduating from the "preschool" aged classes), both kids made a jump into the next level of classes in mid-April.

On the first day of lessons, they were announcing the teachers for each class and, knowing that Claire was the only Preschool Level 1 student, I figured it wouldn't matter who we got because she would basically be getting private lessons. No such luck. As soon as Claire saw that her instructor was - wait for it - A GUY (named Mitch), she buried her head into my legs, begged to be held, and started crying. In spite of the fact that he was sweet as could be, obviously experienced with kids, and nothing more than a huge teddy bear, I'm sure it didn't help that Mitch is probably 6'3" (maybe taller?) and a sold 275+ pounds. It was a battle of epic proportions to get her in the pool that day and in the end, it took Hudson and a girl teacher getting in the water with her to do the trick. She only spent about 1/3 of the time in the water but cried for 3/4 of the time. Super. Supposedly it happens "all the time" but I was thoroughly embarrassed. At the end of the day, they offered to rearrange things a bit and when we came for the next lesson, they had combined two classes so that Claire would be in the water with a GIRL named Lauren (Claire lovingly referred to her as a "babysitter") and Mitch while they jointly taught her and two little boys. Starting that 1st day and all throughout the 5 or 6 week session, Claire would randomly tell me, "I don't want Mitch." Playing with her toys? She didn't want Mitch. Going to bed? She didn't want Mitch. Getting dressed? Going to the store? Eating dinner? She didn't want Mitch. You get the picture. While she never did warm up to poor Mitch (let alone allow him to hold or help her), by the end of the session she did get to the point where she'd actually talk to him or give him "knuckles" or "five". And I even managed to trick her into being in a picture with him. She's going to be repeating Preschool Level 1...precisely ZERO surprise there.

Hudson, on the other hand, was true and faithful to his outgoing nature and was totally thrilled with his two teachers (one of whom was Mitch...time block after Claire's lesson). Really nothing to tell here. He loves the water. He loves swimming. He loves people. He loves being in the water while swimming with people. He graduated to the next level class without batting an eye. The end.

The session ended in the middle of May and neither of my kids have been in lessons since. School was ending, we went on a "2 week" vacation (turned into 4 weeks as previously mentioned), and then when we had been home for 1 week, my sister and her kiddies came to visit. All very much fun and most fantastic but I'm eager to get my kids back in lessons. Hopefully going to get them (re)started next week. We'll see...