(4 years 3 months 1 week 6 days)

Reese and Riley both had their first start of the year swim lessons today. It was great to get to the HEATED pool since it was still hovering around 0 all weekend. But better than the ACTUAL recorded temp of -10 earlier this week.

Reese started her Level 1 class, I didn't have to be in the water, which was nice, though just a reminder how fast she's growing up. This was the class that Reese was supposed to be in last year, but the woman scheduling put her in the Water Exploration Class by accident which is 1/2 of the number of classes with you and the child in the pool and the other 1/2 of the classes with just the instructor. This session I noticed that there were NO Water Exploration Classes and one of the first questions that the instructor asked is if anyone in the class had taken these classes before. Reese said yes, which is true since she's been going since 6 months old. There was ONE other child out of the 5 in her session that had had a class, and it was "when they were an infant."

The instructor started off by asking the kids to walk "safely" down into the water, which was holding onto the railing, Reese does that anyway, so I told her it was ok to walk in, and she did.... the other kids had to be coaxed, parents tempting them and begging them to go in the water. Reese was already sitting chest deep on the step and waiting for about 5 minutes for the other kids to finally get in the pool.

The next part was working on putting their heads in the water, faces, ears, mouth and nose.

Reese was #4 in line.... and ended up being the ONLY one that would come off the step, do exactly what the instructor wanted and show how to do things. Reese liked the floating on her back and I was impressed with her ability to float on her BELLY!! You can see in the photos that Reese has the only wet head.

It was a proud moment for me, but it was also funny that while Reese was waiting for other kids that were crying, or wouldn't budge off the step with their parent behind them nicely begging them to listen to the instructor, would be waving ACROSS the pool to a screaming Riley saying "Hi Reese! Hi Reese! GOOD JOB REESE!" and then in turn Reese would scream back "RILEY! RILEY! Hi! Thanks!" All I could do was laugh.... and then it was also interjected with me telling Reese to stay ON the steps and not try to walk out to the instructor!

Hopefully next week some of the screamers of the class will feel more comfortable with being in the water..... but I'm definitely going to suggest they bring back that Water Exploration Class for those that are too old to be in the Toddlers class, but not quite advanced enough to be in the Level 1 class. Even Scott asked me if Reese was in the right class when I got her out to switch out to get Riley. Reese can't move until the Level 2 class until she turns 6! Maybe we can sneak her in when she turns 5...... but nice thing would be that Reese and Riley will be in the same class next session! Riley should have been in this session, but I wasn't sure she was ready.... oh yeah, she too was ready, even her current instructor told me to look into it. Riley swimming can be seen on her site.