My Little Fish!

Starting the day we got back from Disney World, the girls have been in swimming lessons. We went four weeks straight -- thats four days a week, 45 minute sessions. The class was at 6:00 so we typically got home around 7:10 and then it was a mad scramble to get the kids fed, bathed and in bed. They weren't going down until 8:45 or 9:00 pm -- when their normal bedtime is 7:45 or 8:00, thats pretty late. Alyssa wasn't sure what to think about swim lessons. The first two days I sat at the side of the pool with her (and got completely soaked!). The next day I went and sat in the shade, but she got out of the pool whenever it wasn't her turn to swim. After that the teacher (who was wonderful!) laid down the law -- no getting out of the pool. And Alyssa actually listened to her! It helped that the last five minutes of the swim lesson is "free time" where the kids get to pick out a toy and play in the pool -- Alyssa's favorite was the fishy -- you see her above in a blue fishy. Normally that would not be acceptable, it would have to be the pink one. But these pictures were taken at the end of the four weeks and by then they were down to a very few fish tubes - so Alyssa got the blue one this particular day (and the amazing thing is she didn't really throw a fit). But the lure of free time kept Alyssa in the pool and listening to the teacher.

They put goggles on the kids. They had Alyssa going under water the first day and by the end of the first week she had figured out how to hold her breath and not get water up her nose (for the most part).

And they even got her to jump off the diving board with a little assistance (the first week or so she decided to jump off with her tube during free time -- but I didn't have my camera for that one).

She was diving off the side of the pool too (with ALOT of assistance from the teacher).

After four weeks she was pretty dang comfortable in the water (and out of it too as you can see from the lounging picture above)

This was Katelyn's third summer of swim lessons -- she started at the age of three. I can now officially say -- KATELYN CAN SWIM!!!! She is doing great. She can swim across the length of the pool unassisted (about once, after that she gets tired and needs help about 2/3rds of the way down). She jumps off the diving board and swims to the shallow end. Its truly amazing to watch.

Here she is doing the breast stroke and frog legs. She has learned freestyle arms and scissor kicks and butterfly arms with dolphin kicks (although she isn't a big fan of dolphin kicks and butterfly arms). She has also started to learn the backstroke.

They had her diving off the diving board (trying to teach her to keep her hands together but as you can see, that one needs a little work):

And on her last day, they introduced her to the fun of the water slide!

The place we take the girls is a private residence but it is KID HEAVEN! They have the pool with the diving board and water slide. They have an in ground trampoline, a huge play structure with swings and slides, a few cool airplane and helicopter teeter-totters, animals (horses, cows and chickens to name a few) and then to top it all off they have an icie machines and other yummy frozen treats. Sometimes it was hard to get the girls off the trampoline to go swimming, but bribery works wonders and if they wanted a snow cone or an ice cream sandwich or whatever, they had to get in the pool. And then once they were in the pool, it was hard to get them out!

We start lessons again on August 3rd for another two weeks and then we are done for the summer but I think we will need to try to take the girls to the YMCA or something every few weeks so they don't loose this newfound love of the water!