The Swimming Lesson

Today marked Jonah's first "swimming lesson." Sure, he's been to the ocean and even been in a pool before, but this was his first organized swimming activity with other kids complete with instructor.

The first problem was deciding who got to go in the pool with Jonah, because both of us wanted to (it was a lot of fun the last time we did it in September). So Michelle and I resorted to rock-paper-scissors. After tying the first two rounds on scissors, I took the third round with paper over her rock and chose to be in the pool with Jonah, leaving her to play photographer.

We arrived at Bay View High School (the lessons are organized through the city) a little later than we intended, but found out where to go to get to the pool and get changed. We got into the pool area just as the instructor was getting everyone ready, so Jonah and I needed to get in the water quickly.

As soon as we hit the water, Jonah was saying "All done!!" He wanted no part of it. He thought the water was cold and didn't want to spend any time in it. I tried to calm him and keep us moving in the hopes he would get used to the water temperature, but he never completely got over it (perhaps some bad memories from the cold water in his pool on his birthday?)

"All done!!"

"Get me outta here!"

The class began with some activities that didn't seem appropriate for Jonah's age (jumping into the pool - he still hasn't figured out jumping on solid ground yet), but he seemed to be the youngest in the group and most of the others didn't have issues jumping in. Most of the first half of the lesson for us was trying to get Jonah calm enough to be able to try some of the activities (and hear what the instructor was saying).

Finally, I grabbed a rubber duckie from a bucket of toys they had on the side of the pool in the hopes that would help. Success!

Jonah was finally distracted enough from the water, that he was able to at least kind of participate in the activities.

Rubber duckie, you're the one! You make pool time so much fun!

The rest of the class got to pick toys at this point, too. We played a little game where we tossed to toy away and the kids got to "swim" for it. Jonah opted to exchange duckie for a "dur-dal" (turtle).

Sorry, duckie. You've been traded.

Chasing the turtle.

More turtle chasing.

After that we did the Hokey Pokey, played some other games that Jonah couldn't really do, and everyone else sang some other song we had never heard before.

This will probably be more fun in the future, but at least Jonah is getting used to being in the water. More pictures are posted to our family web album.