Swimming Lessons: Week 1

Our first day of swimming lessons started off great. I had been talking up the lessons to Ava. She doesn’t take quickly to anyone new and I wanted her to just absolutely love Miss Lindsey since I knew she would be the one to continuously push her under the water :)

Elijah, Bella, and Ava were all in a group together on day 1. They started with the basics, working on their kicking and floating.

Ava has always loved the pool, but has always been very timid around it. She was never a child I had to worry about jumping in when I wasn’t looking, which is great- execpt when you want them to jump in. She had such a fear of going under that she just wouldn’t relax and float, nor would she jump off the side. I had been working with her for a little while this summer and made her go under a few times, but she still wasn’t sure about the idea.

Since we have a pool, swimming lessons were a top priority this year. I didn’t want any type of floatation device to become a crutch for her. When we started the swimming lessons she would tread water like no one’s business, but the problem with treading water is, you don’t go anywhere, so eventually she would wear herself out and still not be any closer to the edge, something I didn’t want to keep happening.

We would laugh because towards the end of the week she was the only child who would be able to tread water and then stop and just float when she got tired, which was a little bit better than where we had started, but still not where I knew she could be.

She was so scared about going under that she couldn’t bring herself to lean forwards on her stomach to propel herself forward. However, if you had a hold of her, even with just 1 finger, she was doing exactly what she was supposed to do, but as soon as you moved that 1 finger, straight up and down she went. It was amazing!

Thanks to Uncle Brian for the goggles, they were a lifesaver and made all the difference in the water.

We would try to get Ava to jump in and she would push against the idea and I could pull her to the edge and make her jump, but she would always hold someone’s hand. On the second day after about 3 times, I got tired of hearing her whine and decided that she was going to do it or I was going to throw her in. Apparently she didn’t think I was serious, so I tossed her in the pool. Oh. My! You would have thought I was the meanest mom on earth- not by Ava, but her Gigi! My mom was there and couldn’t believe I had thrown her in, of course, Lindsey was right there and she cried after she came up and had stopped by the time she made the 5 foot length that it was to the steps. When I asked if she wanted to get out she looked at me and said, no- so I took it from that no harm was done and she realized it wasn’t so bad to jump in….

Elijah and Ava loved being in the pool and the idea of swimming, even if Ava didn’t like for her head to be under. Elijah had to opposite problem, he would swim with his head under and not come up for a breath, so they worked with him to try and get him to remember to breathe! Bella on the other hand- didn’t want anything to do with swimming. She was perfectly content playing on the top step of the pool and would cry anytime they pulled her out beyond it.

Elijah and Ava

I think one of Ava’s favorite people in the whole world is Hallie. She would always try to get Hallie to watch her and amazingly she did so much better if she thought Hallie was looking. We used that to our advantage often the first week!

Ava has this little Belle toy that floats on top of the water and all of the girls enjoyed playing with it, so I remembered seeing Princess dive sticks at Target and thought that maybe I could get Ava to put her head underwater (willingly) if she had to rescue the princesses! Haha! It worked, but for the first week it was only look at them on the top step, but at least she was putting her face in the water.

Ava’s favorite thing to do the first week of lessons was to sit on the step and kick and kick and kick.

Towards the end of the week she was gradually getting the concept of swimming on her belly, but she still didn’t want to swim with her head down in the water, which would be the best way for her to swim at this point.

She was still an excellent treader and probably has the strongest legs of any 2 year old girl from all the treading!

Ava would do great, as long as that finger was there underneath her- I guess it was her sense of security.

Hallie and Ava and their matching suits :)

Ava trying to show Hallie what to do! :)

At the end of week one she had done better than I had hoped as far as her willingness to participate. My main goal was for her to be able to jump in the pool and be able to swim to the side or steps in order to get out, she wasn’t quite there, but I felt confident with another week she would be close.