My Little Fish

Well, tonight was Grace's first night of swimming lessons, and she loves them so much that she wants to marry them. I enrolled her in a parent/child class since this is her first time, and I can already tell that she's only gonna need one session of classes with me before she is more than ready to try them on her own. She happily joined in as class started and the teacher began to sing, "Look Who's Come to Swim Class" (which is a name game in which each kid gets to scream out their name when the teacher points to them).

The first "real" thing the teacher wanted each child to do was to close their eyes and their mouth and bob under the water. Fearlessly, Grace glanced at me, closed her eyes and her mouth, and quickly disappeared under the water while I frantically reached for her to pull her up. As I was reaching for her, she resurfaced, spit out some water she had swallowed, and laughed her head off. She did this a few more times, and soon she was following the teacher around the pool, hanging on to her swimming noodle and kicking her legs out behind her. She learned to (kind of) use her arms to propel herself forward and at the end of class, she showed her bravery again by jumping off the side of the pool and into my arms, giggling the whole way.

All in all, I think swimming lessons are going to go, well, swimmingly. The only problems we had occurred when it was time to get out of the pool (some rather ruffled-looking elderly ladies were waiting for their water aerobics class) and Grace decided she didn't want to leave just yet. I coaxed her out by promising her that we would be coming back next week, to which Grace replied, "Ok, Mama, but I don't want to listen to the teacher. I wanna do my own thing." She's a rebel already.