It's official, our boy is a swimmer...well, he's a water dweller of some sort. I called to find out info about the swim school we were referred to from a friend. We knew we wanted to get him in as young as we could since babies are natural swimmers and born with the natural ability. According to the website, he'd have to be 3 months old. Well he was a few weeks shy so I thought I had some time to wrap my mind around this post baby body in a swimsuit, because really, no one wants that. Any way, turns out they were more than happy to take him into the classes they were starting the next week...ummm OK. Begin mad scramble to purchase swim suits for both Ellis and myself (since the last time either of use were in one was a while ago) and swim diapers for Finn. Thank goodness for Target's fast shipping and off season prices! Well...swim diapers get here and they are huge! Thankfully we decided to switch days which gave me two days to hunt down some swim trunks for our fella. Thank goodness for the Amazon Prime trial membership with free 2 day shipping. Sadly, swim trunks came while we were at class so he had to stick with too big swim diapers. Anyway....(aren't you glad you know all that now?) onto class.
We signed up for an evening class so that Ellis could go too and have his turn in the water with him. So...here we are, class is starting a half hour before Finn's used to getting his bath so he's pretty tired, he's in a new environment (the pool), with a ton of new people around an LOTS of new, loud noises. Add that with us thinking that it's best for him to just jump right in and go full on (which means dunking, which is why Ellis took him first) and the poor kid was almost miserable! He cried and looked freaked out just about the whole half hour. So when week 2 rolled around and we decided I'd take him to the morning class (since it was on Halloween) I spent the entire week anxious that he would be miserable again, I didn't think I could do it to him and was completely ready to pull him from the class.
**Let me pause here and explain that 'class' is really more of a 'get acclimated to the water' class as opposed to a 'learn to swim' class. We sing songs and get them used to floating on their backs and kicking.**
Continuing...thankfully I got there early and was able to talk to the owner. He guaranteed me that it's perfectly normal for him to be that way at his age and to not dunk him at all this first 6 weeks. He was very reassuring and made me feel so much better. So imagine how happy I was to get him in the pool and have him actually appear to enjoy himself on a few occasions. He still looked a little freaked out most of the time but he did great!! He floated on his back with no fussing, which I guess most kids hate, and he started kicking a little. He did happen to find a little rubber ducky friend that he held onto for dear life for a while but other than that he was great! I feel so much better bringing him back and am so happy we found a class time that works. I really think it was just too much in the evening class. Sadly, this means that Ellis has to work and won't make it to class. We're hoping he can take a few hours that he works over one week and come watch but we'll see. Anyway, we only have pictures from the first class (when he had a rough time) but they're still so cute!
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| His acclimation to the water before really getting wet. |
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| A little bit of back floating |
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| The "mom, please help me" looks I kept getting |
And....the money shot! Poor, poor fella! Thankfully he slept good that night.
PS: I forgot to add our handsome fella in his fancy swim trunks!
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