Swimming Fun!

Yesterday was our first swimming lesson at the North Side YMCA. It probably would have been a good picture moment, but not really possible while participating. There are about eight kids ranging in age from eight months to Brendan's age. He is the oldest by maybe six months although the course is open for kids from six to thirty-six months. It is what is traditionally known as a "mommy and me" class although obviously dads are welcome and some will come to future classes from what I hear. The class meets for 30 minutes twice a week which I think will be about right.

Today, we primarily did introductions, worked on being comfortable in the water, and did some minimal group circle activities. We also practiced getting in off the side by trying to set up a safe, routine way to do this. B mostly wanted to throw balls around in the water and climb up and down the ladder. Unfortunately, some ball throwing ended with hitting a little girl on the head unexpectedly so I took away his ball privileges for awhile. (Her mom says she is fine, but this is not a good way to make friends).

He seemed to enjoy the water time and didn't want to leave. He was perfectly adorable in his Thomas swimming suit that he picked out by himself last week. The most complicated bit really is the locker room situation. There are Men's, Women's, Boys' and Girls' locker rooms. He apparently can't change in the Women's or even walk through it. While I, technically, am not supposed to be in the boy's locker room really. That said, I can't exactly send him in to change himself. Only these four locker rooms open onto the pool. I later discovered that there are, in fact, family locker rooms elsewhere, they just don't open directly into the pool area.

I suspect in the future we'll try to use one of the family changing rooms. The problem, of course, is you need a key and there are a limited number of such rooms to serve the many moms of boys and others using the facility so we shall see. Today, we just used the boys' locker rooms as some staff member told me to do and had it all to ourselves which was OK. Appears that changing clothes is even more complicated than I'd guessed.

In any case, I'll let you know how the remaining classes go. I think they will be pretty casual. We have to miss next week as I'm in DC and after my return will probably have to wear ear plugs for awhile when the tubes first go in, but there will always be some complication so we're forging ahead.