Splishin' and a'Splashin!

I've been meaning to sign Kiersten up for swimming lessons for the last few years, but never seemed to get around to doing it. This year I finally got her signed up (well, actually my friend got her signed up since we were out of town the day of swim lesson sign ups) - I figured that she's 5 and really ought to know something about swimming! And I figured that I should get Tanner going as well. I was hoping that, if nothing else, having Tanner learn to swim might help encourage Kiersten learn to swim! However, Tanner was so young I had to sign up with him - it was a mommy and me class.

Tanner and I spent the two weeks doing "up-downs" where I would let him go farther and farther in the water each time he went up then down. It would have worked much better if Tanner would have stopped laughing and shut his mouth!

We also spent a lot of time trying to get Tanner to kick. He's quite stubborn and refused to do most of what we asked. Usually when I asked him to do anything he would say, "Tanner all done," and move to get out of the pool. While he didn't really want to kick, he'd walk around all the time saying, "kick, kick, kick," and "splash mommy's nose."

Tanner and I were supposed to work on floating on his back and kicking. He wasn't willing to even try if he didn't have a racket in hand and a ball near his feet that moved with every kick.

I had warned Kiersten's swim teacher (who also happened to be in our ward) that I would be really pleased if, at the end of two weeks, Kiersten would put her face in the water. (I was trying to not set my sights too high!) Kiersten loved "doing the monkey bars" around the pool.

Kiersten and her friend, Macy, were the only two girls in their class, which was nice - almost private lessons! (Thankfully Macy is as timid as Kiersten is, so they were pretty much on the same level!) They had a great time learning to float on their backs and kick their legs.

However, Morgan (her teacher) worked wonders and Kiersten actually put her face in the water, even if it was only for a split second at a time. Now Kiersten thinks she's quite the swimmer!
Neither of my kids passed their levels, so we'll be repeating them next summer! For now, we head to the pool at least once a week and practice the things they learned (even though Kiersten cries and tells me she doesn't want to) so we don't have to start at square one again next year! I am just grateful that it's now only once or twice a week, and not every day!