Swimming Lessons

This week Travis started taking swimming lessons. I decided it was time, both for him and for me, that he learn to swim. We signed up back in May and he has been telling everyone that he is going to be taking lessons, but when the first day of lessons came he kicked and screamed and cried and begged not to go. I nearly had to carry him into the car to go the lesson! The cried for about 20 minutes of the 30 minute lesson, sitting on the stairs wailing pitifully. I was beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake! I have committed us to every day lessons for the entire month! But I talked with Travis about how important it is to learn how to swim, and if there were other lessons he didn't want to attend, that could be discussed, but swimming wasn't one of them. And each day was a little better throughout the week. Wednesday he cried, but he stopped within about 5 minutes and then actually participated. And by Friday he was getting in trouble for talking too much and not listening to the teacher. This is all much better than when I took swimming lessons as a child. I cried during every class until the very last one. I did everything the teacher asked, but I cried the entire time. So my mom threatened me with more lessons if I didn't behave during the last class. Darned if I wasn't the happiest child in the class that day!

There are three other kids in Travis' class. Here is the class discussing that you swim with spoon hands, not fork hands.



And doing "reach and pull".

Kick, kick, kick! Travis actually kicks with fairly straight legs most of the time.

And his favorite part is jumping in to Miss Michelle and "swimming" back to the wall. The other kids are much better swimmers than him, but it gives him great encouragement.

Travis likes sitting next to one of the girls, Isabella. Mostly because they are the two who get in trouble together. So they usually get separated. But the funny thing is that he calls her Grizabella because that's the name of Ami (my sister's) cat. I keep correcting him, but it hasn't sunk in yet. It's a good thing she's too young to know to be offended!