Swimming

Oh Frabcious Day, my girls made huge progress swimming this summer! We were able to do three weeks of Mt. Hermon swim lessons, which provides the familiar and comforting chaotic morning scramble of getting down to the pool, remembering all the right gear, doing the dreaded sunscreen smear, snacks snacks snacks, and, of course, swimming lessons. Which has all paid off, dearly beloved, because after years of gritting my teeth and telling myself "It'll click, it'll click: they will swim when they are ready." Eliana is ready! The heavens parted and angels sang as she lifted her feet of the bottom of the pool and first floated, then glided, then paddled and kicked. She's swimming!! Still very hesitantly and for short spurts, but the girl is swimming. Yay!!!! I can stop trying to convince myself, for Eliana anyway, that she'll swim when she's ready. She is ready.

For Adessa, I hesitate to put this on the record books, but I put her in the *wrong class. The whole first two week session, she was in Level 2, doing really easy stuff. I just thought it was a different teacher, and all I firmly remembered was her not passing last year. But it was Level 3 she didn't pass, not Level 2. So, during the week between lesson sessions, we went to the pool in the afternoons to practice. I talked to Adessa as we walked to the pool about side breathing, how to do it, how to keep your chin down and look at the bottom of the pool, etc... all worth mentioning because... she did it! And asked for more help. And listened to the help. And applied my advice! And was coachable! It was exciting times, people! She normally needs to see skills explained a bunch and modeled and be asked to do things and not do them for a frustratingly long time, and then when no one else (me?) is looking or bothering her, she will try the skills out on her own and figure it out. But this time it was direct coaching, which she took. A giant step for Adessa-kind. And Keidi-kind.

*My mom would have immediately seen she belonged in a higher class and moved her, when she was in charge of the pool. Lots of parts of swimming lessons and being at the pool makes me think of my mom. And miss her. I'm trying to think of and explain why the pool is so closely connected with my mom, and I think it's because we really did pretty much only the pool every summer of my childhood. Summer was the pool. And the pool experience was my mom.

Annea didn't want to be in a class with a teacher, so we did Mommy and Me. Again. (It'll click! It'll click!) Eliana was in a class at three because I had Annea in the Ergo as a tiny baby when Eliana was three. But Annea gets to have me, and we had lots of fun, and she did pretty well. She has her own ideas about what she will or won't do in the water, as all my girls did, but left to her own devices, with enough opportunity and routine, she started: blowing bubbles, putting her face in, floating on her back (to make mermaid hair), and doing Chop-Chop Timbers, sometimes with her face in. She lets me "shoot her" to the stairs, which is floating and gliding, so I have hope she'll be swimming, too, before long.

She's ready!

Auntie Lolo came to swim with Annea and watch the big girls' lessons.

Hazards of deck chairs.

Listening to the safety talk.

Now you see her...

... now you don't!

Adessa swimming.

Adessa's thank you card to her teacher.

Hiking home. This was the first year we walked down to the pool (and thereby, back up the mountain on the way home) almost every day. The girls are getting capable, they carry more, there is less gear, we can do more-- I see the light at the end of the baby tunnel!