Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Jet is doing, well, swimmingly (go ahead and groan, it's ok) in his swim class. For a kid who was terrified of water, he warmed up to it quickly.


On Monday, the first day, we arrived about 10 minutes early, and his teacher was with another class. The lifeguard said we could go try the kiddie pool. Jet wasn't too keen on it, what with about 8 other kids in it, splashing their little hearts out. He wanted to go to the "big boy pool", which surprised me.

We visited a little with kids and parents that were also there for our class. He is the oldest, by quite a bit. Most of them are in the 18-24 month range, and some of those seem to be born for the water!

When we first walked down the steps into the pool, Jet clung to me. As the teacher talked, he began to relax, and quit digging his nails into me each time I pretended to think about moving deeper into the water.

The point of that first class was just to get the kids used to being in the pool. Miss Anjie even had a bag of toys for them to play with. Jet was really excited about that -- he could hardly wait for Miss Anjie to stop talking so he could get to the toys. He ended up selecting a pink ring that was handy for throwing.

By the end of the class, we had a system down. He would throw the ring as far as he could, and then I would ask him to blow bubbles three times. Then he had to float on his tummy and kick his legs as we walked around looking for the ring (it sank to the bottom of the pool). I would scoop the ring toward the top with my foot, and he would reach down to grab it.

It was quite a transformation -- from screaming, "I wanna go HOME!" at about 10:30 a.m., to screaming, "I don't WANNA get out!!!" at 11:15.

Today, he was a little tense as we waded into the water, but quickly began asking about the ring. We added a new step to the routine because he wanted to climb the ladder at the side of the pool. So, he would throw the ring from the side of the pool, jump into my arms, blow bubbles three times, float on his tummy, and kick as we went looking for the ring. Then he'd kick back over to the ladder and do it all over again. Three hundred times.

I'm just so proud of him!!!

Bonus: two-and-a-half-hour naps both days. Yay!