Swim lessons

Between Emily and Jared, we've spent many a fall evening, and many a summer morning, at the local high school pools, paying lots of money, and getting very little results (less to do with the quality of the lessons, and more to do with the willingness--or lack of willingness--on the part of my children). We ended up taking a long (two year) break from swim lessons, hoping maybe as the kids got older, they'd have more of an interest in learning how to swim, and we'd get better results for our money.

Fast forward two years, and Connor started expressing an interest in having lessons (due to the disasterous attempts with his older siblings, we've never actually tried him in lessons yet). After a few weeks, he was still pushing the idea of having swim lessons, so we decided to take him seriously and signed him up at the YMCA and signed up for lessons (we picked the YMCA over the local high school pool programs because he can do morning swim lessons before heading to afternoon preschool, which saves us from having MORE evening activities for now!). He didn't love gymnastics, soccer season was torturous (for us) and he didn't love it either, and swim lessons seemed as good as anything else to try out.

He had his first lesson yesterday, and he did GREAT. He was full of smiles, he was a good listener, was cooperative, and patient. He did everything the swim teacher asked him to do (including sticking his face in the water AND laying on his back in the water with his ears below the surface of the water). AND... AND, he even happily jumped into the water into his swim teacher's arms!!! I was BLOWN away. This was night and day from how swim lessons with Emily and Jared went (typically, lots of crying and loud refusals to put faces near water or jump off the edge, etc). It was also night and day to how he behaved in my friend's pool over the summer (screamed bloody murder and clung to my arm while I attempted to show him that he could float in the water while wearing a life jacket).

When Connor puts his mind to doing something, he typically goes right ahead and does it, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he charged forth and fully participated today. I'm still a little nervous about how his next class will go, but yesterday's was a huge success, and I was/am ONE SERIOUSLY PROUD MAMA!!! GO CONNOR!!!