Survival Swim Lessons

This week our house got a little crazy as we hosted infant swim lessons nearly every afternoon.

The first day was nothing if not traumatizing, watching the babies struggle to figure out what to do, and having a chorus of nine little ones screaming for their lives.

Thankfully, our instructor, Ms. Beth, has been doing this for 30 years, and kept her cool while the mommies, daddies, and babies all nearly lost it.

I would love to say it got easier each day, but as each day came, we pushed the babies more and more, offering help less and less, so it continued to be stressful.

Luckily, we did it with a great group of people, both from my work and from Daniel's.  It was great to go through the lessons with friends

This was day one, where we focused on teaching them to catch a breath before going under

At first, Xander thought the dunking was hilarious, and was actually having a lot of fun.  It wasn't until I let go of everything but a light touch under his head that he got scared and joined the other babies in the choral scream.

Here's our second dunk under on the first day.  He actually thought this part was kind of fun.

Xander and Harper having a good chat before getting into the pool

Great play time while we waited for class to start

During our third and fourth class, Xander promptly fell asleep on my shoulder after his turn.  On Friday, our class started late because Ms. Beth had late patients at her nursing job.  It was passed Xander's bedtime by the time we were done, and with all the rain we've been getting, it was pretty cold in the water.  He went from falling asleep on my shoulder, to turning yellow...

Though many of the ladies were a bit freaked out, considering calling 911 and researching what it could be, Daniel and I kept our cool, taking him out of the water, warming him up, feeding him and putting him to bed.  he got his color back quickly.  He slept well and woke up happy- he was just WORN OUT.

The bigger babies learned to swim to a wall, while the younger one focused on flipping to their backs.  By the last day, they had all made so much progress!

The test- real clothes, real diaper

So proud of our survival swimmer!

After class each day, we spent time re-pairing the pool (reestablishing motivation) so it does not lose its appeal

Classes were exhausting!

Even though it was hard, I'm so glad we did this.  We'll be doing swim lessons every summer!

Milestone
We have a survival swimmer!
On the night of our first class, Xander clapped for the first time!  He has been clapping ever since, though not on command.  He claps when he's excited and sometimes along to his favorite song.
Not surprisingly, his favorite song is, 'If you're happy and you know it'
He is teething like a mad man- lots of drool and sticking his tongue over where a third bottom tooth is coming in

 Tooth teething