Fingers crossed, we’re over the bumpy swimming patch

After last week’s stroppiness and ensuing nightmare swimming lesson, I have to admit I was a bit concerned at how it would go this week.

I made sure we talked about getting ready to go swimming early on in the day as I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a surprise for N.  Saturdays do tend to have a routine (jobs and nip to the library in the morning, maybe the bakers and butchers, then home for lunch and swimming), so I think that helps N work out when he’s doing what and where swimming fits in.  He seemed really happy as per normal, chatting about going swimming, and that Lynsey (his teacher) would be swimming too.

Nothing was different to last week so I was still a little on edge.  Then he made the announcement that

“I don’t want to sleep before swimming”.

He doesn’t tend to have naps anymore, having dropped them before Christmas, but if we’re late back for lunch he’ll often have a snooze in the car, or will sometimes have a sleep if we head straight to swimming from being out somewhere.  It’s never worried him before, but this week he’d decided that there wouldn’t be naptime.  Of course, that didn’t quite go to plan, as he did have a 5 minute snooze in the car on the way back home for lunch.  But no sleep after that and before swimming.

We also called on Granny to come along and watch for the first time as he’d been asking for a long time for Daddy (fat chance, he’s not a swimming fan) and Granny to come swimming, so  I think the combination of the two helped him.  He was a bit concerned that Granny was only watching and not actually getting in the water though.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago how I wasn’t sure how taking along loads of people to watch is a good idea, but N loved having his Gran there.  He was trying to chat to her, telling her what swimming he was doing, and it was almost as though he was showing off.

It ended up being a really good lesson.  He did everything as asked, we had a star float (quick attempt), he even agreed to try sitting on the bottom of the pool.  I have no idea why he likes this so much when usually he hates swimming underwater.  I can’t say his ‘tiger arms’ are that great.  He’s definitely a doggy paddler (maybe even with tiny breaststroke arm action) rather than front crawl!

And of course, he enjoyed chatting away, commentating on everything that they’re doing, and singing away to the hokey cokey, twinkle twinkle and row row.  Nothing like a multi-tasking little swimmer.

He was also so pleased that there was someone else who could come and watch.  My only concern is that we’ll run out of people to come along (I can’t quite see his uncle joining us to watch a swimming lesson!).

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Disclosure: We blog for Water Babies, but all topics, writing and opinions are our own.