Well, I'm failing my mantra miserably this summer because I have enrolled the kids in swim lessons not once, but twice. And my kids (Penny) HATE the water. Hate it. Hate it more than she hates any food that is not a PBJ or a dinosaur chicken nugget. So of course I feel that it is important to somehow magically turn this hate into a passionate love for the water, preferably through swim lessons.
Now Penny doesn't come by this hate spontaneously- she gets it genetically. Somewhere on the 8th chromosome of the X whateverthingy, is an extreme fear of the water. It all started with my great, great, great, great, great grandmother who drowned at Plymouth Rock. My mom never learned to swim and doesn't want to and I have very vivid memories of pure terror during my own swim lessons. I took swim (I feel like it should be swimming) lessons for an embarrassingly long time- we're talking high school. It was bad. I was being taught by other high schoolers. At my own high school. Which may explain why I never shot up to the popular status that we all now know I so deeply deserved. But I did learn to dive, which has been oh-so useful in my day-in, day-out life, I find myself in situations where I need to dive about zero times every twenty-five years.
But enough about my amazing skills, back to the kids. The last two summers we took private lessons in my friend's pool. This is the part where it gets really confusing so stay with me. It was my friend Heather's pool and my other friend Heather was the lifeguard/teacher. So two Heather's. Heather the lifeguard was an excellent teacher and the other Heather's kids made great progress. Because they don't have the genetic disorder of crippling water fear like my kids do. My kids spent most of the lesson clinging to me as if their little lives depended on it and when they had to be separated to actually LEARN something, they screamed and cried. It was a great time for everyone!
So this summer I decided to get out of the private pool, and go somewhere where I could drop my kids off and 'leave' (hide in the bathroom or anywhere out of sight), figuring I was a big part of the problem. I'm just so amazing that my kids fall to pieces when they're away from me, I really need to work on being less awesome. The first try was at Maryland Heights Aquaport and was pretty much a bust. The original evening class I signed them up for had 14 kids in it, so I switched to the morning class which had one kid in it. Even though they were 2/3rds of the class, they still didn't do much. Harry did 'swim' around with a kickboard, and scooped his hands....that's about it. Penny wandered around aimlessly and got in a little more than ankle deep. (It was a zero-entry pool). But I wasn't going to force the issue with the lifeguard/teacher, she was very sweet but I doubt she gets paid enough to listen to a four-year-old scream and cry in her ear for a half hour.
And now we are currently taking lessons at the Y. I got a bonus at work and decided to use it to very generously buy my family a YMCA membership (remember how awesome I am?) so that the kids could once again take swim lessons for cheap and Jamie and I could work out our way back to our pre-marriage bodies. Like a huge dork I grilled the aquatics director before I joined, and she GUARANTEED me that if I made them stick with it, they would learn to swim. She also told me that they had no problem letting kids cry the entire lesson, because eventually, there will be some lesson where they don't cry the entire time, and that is what we will call success. Who knew the YMCA were such heartless bastards? I LOVE THEM!
Last week was our first lesson and Penny cried the entire time. The. entire. time. I went to work out, and apparently someone came to look for me but couldn't find me on the front row of the treadmills (?), but they were only coming to tell me that she was still crying in case I grew a heart and would have came to her rescue or something an attachment parent would have done. But they misunderestimated me, because I would have just said okaythanksforlettingmeknow and continued
This week was our second lesson, and while it started off with both kids crying at the top of their lungs and having to be forcefully removed from my body just like last week, it had a different ending. When I went to pick them up, Penny was 'SWIMMING' with the aquatics director with a floatie and a noodle, but she wasn't crying!!!!!! And Harrison was 'swimming' with just a floatie thing and some teenager teacher. (They have yet to actually go to their class which is taught by Grandma Betty, who is as the name implies, an actual grandma. I am very worried about getting a bill for two weeks worth of private lessons.) So I start celebrating like a lunatic, and they each get their three gummy worms that I bribe them with, and everyone is happy. Oh so happy, we are like that Pharrell song. Penny starts spouting off all sorts of made-up shit like how she went under (her hair was completely dry past the tips), and how she jumped off the side, and how she LOVES swim lessons. I just want to put that on the record here. We have three more weeks of this session, then the pool closes for a couple weeks for some deep cleaning, and then we'll start again. Swimming by Christmas sounds like a realistic goal. Because really, is there a better time to know how to swim then in the winter?
I may have timed it badly but I'm going to stay optimistic. Stay tuned, I see this as the first in a 25 part series called 'Things that I never thought I would spend so much time thinking about, talking about, blogging about OR What has my life become?'
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