Our Daughters Turned into Fish

One thing that has always been important to me is that my kids know how to swim. All three were exposed to pools at an early age, and started swim lessons as babies. Charlie tends to get the shaft as the third child. Some days she's lucky she has pants on. But, swimming wasn't something I was going to let slip through the cracks with her.

From the start, Lydia and Audrey enjoyed lessons, but didn't take to the water immediately. They were a bit cautious. Not Charlie. Charlie squeals with delight as soon as she sees the pool and the slide and squirms and kicks until we let her in. She crawls into the zero-depth pool until her head goes under water and then looks up at us from under the water with huge eyes and an even bigger smile until we pull her out by one arm. She scrambles to the top of the kiddy slide and throws herself down as we cautiously spot her. She gets a mischievous look on her face and then lays down on her back and if the water is too deep, her face goes under and she flails her arms and sits back up, laughing. She puts her face in the water and blows bubbles, then inhales what I'm sure adds up to be gallons of water each time we swim. When we have lessons, she screams, and splashes and claps as we sing "The Children on the Bus" and "The Hokey Pokey."

Lydia and Audrey have been making progress with lessons, but tonight they both amazed me with how well they are doing. Audrey started the night by jumping from the side of the pool into my arms and as she landed, I would dunk her under. She loved it and asked me to do it again and again. I kept backing up, and she eventually started jumping in by herself without me catching her. She was ecstatic with her progress. Lydia showed me how she could "swim" under water, which really just consisted of flailing her limbs around and waving her head from side to side, but she did keep her head under the whole time! She sits on the side and does a little half dive thing into the water and tries to glide under the water. It's nice to feel confident that she could play in the pool by herself without me having to constantly keep an eye on her. The first five weeks of lessons, Lydia has had her's first and then we make her sit on the side while we have lesson with Audrey and Charlie, but today we let Lydia play in the pool and she did great and I didn't worry about her.

We have been trying to get Lydia and Audrey to go down the bigger slide at the pool, but both have been afraid. Tonight, we resorted to bribery, starting with Lydia. We offered ice cream, candy, even money and she wouldn't take it. Then Jayson offered her gum, and she was ready. Gum? Seriously? Definitely Jayson's genes. She nervously went down and of course, she loved it and couldn't get enough. Audrey also took the gum bait. It took a bit more cajoling to get her down, but she went! I was a little nervous as I saw her little arms splashing around and Jayson rushing to grab her and bring her to the surface, but she wasn't deterred! She went down several more times, with Jayson having to pull her little smiling wide-eyed face up to the surface, but she loved it. 

The best part? They went to bed with barely a peep. Swimming kids are tired kids.