Not counting my chickens before they hatch, but…

Finger’s crossed I’m not jinxing it, but we had a successful swimming session yesterday.

Of course, it was the last lesson before we finished; I cancelled as things seemed to still be getting worse rather than over the wobbles which had been going on since October last year.  I’m not getting too optimistic, but we’re hopefully going to go back and continue rather than stopping given that I want to make sure this isn’t a once off.

If you followed our swimming stories here and here, you might have thought I was mad continuing.  We stopped after his ‘baby’ year of classes because I thought it would be good to have a break, then restarted in September.  He spent most of this terms classes clinging to me (it’s amazing how strong toddlers are, I couldn’t prise him off!) and refusing to do most of what was happening in the class.  He also hated it the time I took him when we were on holiday so it wasn’t that pool, just swimming in general.

We’d missed 4 weeks before this last session due to him  being ill, half term and a birthday party, so I wondered what the session would bring.  Apart from having to persuade him to sit on the mat and actually get into the pool, it was brilliant.  No crying, joining in pretty much every activity and you’d never have believed he’d hated it for the past year.

Highlights that were great were where he had the ‘bubba’ float (obviously named after us here!), holding it out in front of him with me supporting with one had under his chest and he was kicking away across the pool.  He kept saying more.  Then when they sit on the pool side and kick in the water, he wanted me to sit next to him.  And they all sit on a large foam mat while we sing ‘jelly on a plate’ and wobble the mat, letting them then fall off to us.  Usually he doesn’t mind the swimming but hates the mat…yesterday he was quite happy sitting there, and then dropping off towards me.  He wasn’t pleased when the mat was put away.

And doing the hokey cokey at the end he was smiling and singing along.  He didn’t really want to get out of the pool.

So I’m just hoping that next week, the start of the next term he’ll continue to enjoy it and he will turn into a little waterbaby in the pool as well as in the bath.