Mission Accomplished!

Here's a random thought before this post actually starts. It's sort of a prologue, if you will. Except it doesn't relate to the rest of this post so it's not a proper prologue. Anyway...

Blogger used to auto-fill in the title line if you had used a title before or if you started one with the same words. It doesn't do that anymore and, after over 1300 posts, a) I don't remember if I've used a title before and b) I don't have the time to go through all my past titles to see if I'm repeating them. All that to say I feel like I've used "Mission Accomplished!" as a post title before, but I don't have an easy way to see if that's true. And now on with the actual point of this post...

When I was talking with Dave about why I wanted to join the pool, one thing I mentioned, is that I'd heard that if kids are taking lessons every day, as opposed to once a week, they become comfortable in the water a lot quicker. While our end goal is that our kids can swim on their own, my main goal for this summer is that they become more comfortable in water. And last Friday, on the last day of lessons for that session, I feel like both kids showed me that they had accomplished that.

Rachel has been doing a Parent and Tot class, which she won't "graduate" from until she can stand on her own in the shallow end, which will be in about twelve years. However, on Friday, she was not only kicking on her front, while I held her, and which she has been able to do for ages, but she was also "scooping ice cream" with her arms and blowing bubbles. Seriously! She was practically doing the front crawl. I was so impressed.

We interrupt this blog post to show a picture of Willem and to praise his amazing Sam-watching skills while I was in the pool with Rachel. Willem was a superstar! (Plus, this picture was too awesome to not use it!)

Sam on the other hand, consented to let his instructor dunk him once so he could get his ice cream for the week. However, after his tennis lesson, he wanted to GET BACK IN THE POOL! Did you read that?!?!?! I told him that I wouldn't go in with him and HE WAS FINE WITH THAT! It was a miracle.

And then, he was playing around on a flutterboard and overbalanced and ended up going under. He stood up, saw me standing there (half laughing at him, I must admit), and he asked if he could get out and sit with me. I assumed this was the end of swimming for the day.

After five minutes, he asked if he could get back on the horse in the pool, and even though I wanted to go home, because it was quite late at this point, of course I said, "Yes!!!"

People, I feel like we have turned a corner. We have made great strides. Anything else our kids accomplish in swimming this year is just gravy, but at the rate they're going, I wouldn't be surprised if they're diving into the deep end* by the end of the summer.

*Okay, really I would faint from the shock if that happened but then I'd be thrilled!!!