Swimming

Today I took Jonathan and Abigail to their first day of swimming. Snuggled in my arms was little, round, giggly Elizabeth. I took an extra-large beach towel and a bag full of books and puzzles for Thomas. It was so blissful to sit there with my children enjoying our quiet activities while laughter wafted to us from the pool.

I love where we take swim lessons. The pool is in the middle of a school for people with disabilities. So, while the older children are taking lessons we are enjoying people in wheel chairs, people with mental handicaps, etc... and of course all the people love the children! The teachers are extremely competent. I think they are extra good with the children because they work with such high need people all day.

Jonathan is in the final Tiny Tots class. He is learning to breath with his head tilted to the side, rather than the quick "doggie breath" he is used to taking. There are two other students in his class. They were all swimming half-way across the narrow part of the pool (it is an olympic size pool). The last five minutes they were all diving for toys on the bottom of the 5' area of the pool--an improvment over the 3 1/2' area Jonathan could do last fall!

Abbie was a bit timid the whole time. She had a fun over-sized boogy board that she and her two class-mates (they were 4-year old twins!) kicked out to the center of the pool in. They had different activities that encouraged them to swim from the island in the center of the pool to about three feet away to their teacher. Abbie ended with retrieving toys from a 2' deep area of the pool.

A fun thing that happened at the end was Jonathan's teacher, Eli, was telling me what we could do at home to prepare for lessons. Then he started to talk to me about my children and then asked if I went to Shadow Mountain Community Church. I said "No, but my husband and I met at CHC." He asked if I came from a large family. Well, it turns out he did Fiddler on the Roof with Melodie a few years ago. He was the bottle dancer who had the bottle fall off his head. He knew all my siblings who were in that performance. That was a fun little addition to our day!