Little Fish

We put Ella in swim lessons for the first time. She has always liked the water but was kind of timid and never wanted to get her face/head wet. I think the main thing that the lessons did for her was give her confidence. She definitely isn't swimming, but she just has so much more confidence in the water. She now goes under ALL the time. She constantly wants me to watch her as she goes under, and she puts her little fingers up out of the water and counts how long she holds her breath. Her favorite thing to do is to play in the shallow end with NO floaties. As long as she knows she can touch she is fine. She jumps around and will go under and "swim" to you. We just need to work on the kicking and moving her arms when she is under so she could actually get to the edge if she needed to.

They would have the kids float on their back while they sang the ABC's.

They would sing ring around the rosies and then "fall down" into the water. They would also hold their breath for 5 seconds.

She loved getting the diving sticks from the bottom.

I think they called this the "sandwich" where they would put their face in the water and then roll onto their backs.

In no time she was saying, "teacher watch me watch me!" And would swim across the jacuzzi even if it wasn't her turn.

On the last day of the 2 week session they got to go down the water slide. This is Adam at the top. He was all for climbing up there and then once he got there he realized it was really high! He was so funny with his death cry/growl...the first few days Gina and I hid around the side of the house listening to his bellows...but he always did what they asked and after a couple lessons he was totally fine.

Ella on the slide....

and at the bottom you can tell how much she wants to be caught!

Now I really wish I would have put Kash in as well. He is just as advanced as Ella, but has absolutely NO fear. They both play in the shallow end of the pool all the time, but Kash (with his floaties) will jump off of the diving board in the deep end all day and scream "WATCH MOM!" over and over showing off his tricks. He really looks like a skate boarder or something as he tries to grab his feet in the air. The other day he jumped into the deep end and went under and for once I saw some fear in his eyes and I was so HAPPY. I thought, yes! He is capable of feeling fear! Now he will be more cautious! But as soon as we got him out he jumped right back in. They are both actually at a really dangerous stage because they think they can swim but really they can't. It's a little scary for me but they are so dang cute to watch. They are both FISH!