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.

Jonah at the Pool

Wow! We have gotten unbelievably behind in blogging! Almost two months since our last post. Things have been pretty busy. We've got some topics to blog about, though!

Here's a quickie post with a video we got in late July. The neighborhood park has a little wading pool for small children. Unfortunately, the hours weren't great for us to get over there very often, but we did get over there several times over the course of the summer. Jonah usually enjoyed going in and out of the water, but once in a while he would stay in the water. On this particular day, he was having some fun crawling around in the water, chasing us and playing with other kids in the pool.



We think he had a pretty good time. :)

Raising the Water Table

Jonah enjoyed his first birthday weekend with lots of family visiting. We will probably make several posts about the weekend over the next few days, but I wanted to share a little play time from one of his presents that was enjoyed by Jonah, his cousins, and one of my cousins.

Jonah loves bath time and generally anything having to do with water. The one exception being getting his hands and face cleaned after a meal. When this present, a play table with a water wheel, arrived from Uncle Russ and Auntie Shannon, we were looking forward to seeing his reaction. We weren't disappointed.

Playing with the water wheel

Jonah had a good time with Wyatt Souza

Here is some video of Jonah having fun.

Unfortunately, it wasn't all good times in the water. It was a nice day, so we decided to fill up one of Jonah's new pools (also from Uncle Russ and Aunt Shannon). Despite the warm weather though, the water from the hose was very cold. Jonah, Alex, and Grant all got dressed to swim, but we wanted to let Jonah get in the pool first.

"Oooh! Water!"

Testing the waters...

"Get me out of here!!"

You can see more of the pictures from Jonah's birthday on our photo site.

Jonah was not permanently scarred by his pool experience, though. We went to a neighborhood wading pool at the local park today, and he had some fun there. We'll post more on that later.