The thought of swimming…

And so to Saturday again.  Swimming.

We love swimming now (after almost a year of hating it and having serious water wobbles from N and me), so I have to be careful in the morning not to shout too much about the fact we’re going.  If I mention it and he picks up on it, all I get is “swimming” all day.  I have to tell him exactly what we’re doing before going swimming and he gets it eventually.  This morning we drove in the swimming direction to go elsewhere, and he started shouting ‘swimming’ at the top of his voice. Hm no, not til later.

I always think the thought of swimming is worse than the actual activity itself once you’ve arrived.  The thought of having to strip off, get changed, find a swimming costume that doesn’t make you look horrendous (thank god for tummy support nowadays), and manage your child at the same time is just a terrible prospect.

Bear a thought for one of the mums today who forgot to pack her costume, and with a 30 minute class there’s no time to get home and back again in time.  She had to borrow one from lost property at the school we swim at.

Swimming lessons for toddlers is like returning to school again…and the first time you go swimming classes after having a baby it’s hard not to compare each other in the changing rooms.  There’s always someone in the class whose got a younger baby than you with an amazing figure; now N’s older, there’s always someone who’s on baby number two and has lost all their baby weight.

Thankfully once you’re in the water no-one sees anyway, plus everyone’s more concerned with keeping their child from running and slipping, or from jumping in without them, than checking out what everyone looks like.

Today our usual teacher Lynsey was getting married, so we had Karen teaching.  N doesn’t seem phased by teacher changes having been taught by a few different ones since he started.  He was quite happy to do his 1,2,3 swim to her, high fiving and I was really pleased to see him do his first underwater turn.  After about a year of trying, I think it works better with someone else holding him; if I do it, he just grabs hold of me and I can’t get him off me.  But with Karen, although he knew an underwater exercise was coming up having seen the other toddlers have their turn, he did it with no problems.  Little tike!  Wish he’d just do it with me.  Maybe he will in future.

It was swimming on backs today and we had a new exercise.  So far it’s usually been with a woggle, and he’s good with that underneath his back.  But today we started with a float behind their head and the child holding it and kicking.  Well I couldn’t work that out at all, and N wasn’t having any of it, just wanting to turn over onto his front.  What’s good about Water Babies teachers is that if they see a child not getting on with a certain exercise, then they can show the parent an alternative to try.  So N could hold the float on his chest instead.  Of course, he didn’t want to do that either, but we’d moved onto woggles then and he was happier.

There were a few new exercises this week to learn, so I’m sure he’ll get used to the new ones and continue to get more confidence in those he’s not so keen on.

We swim with Water Babies and are now one of their bloggers.