Here Fishy, Fishy

Michael's in swimming lessons. yes, he's 13 months old. Here's how this happened:
Kelly works at a Recreation Center that offers "Parent and Toddler" swimming lessons, she mentioned how that would be fun for the boys to do and my mom got all excited and offered to pay for Michael and Stanley to take "swimming lessons". It's an eight week course, on Saturday's that lasts an hour. Of course the goal for Michael's age group is to get comfortable with the water. It's a lot of fun. We sing and splash and dunk our heads under water. Michael and Stanley LOVE it. Yesterday, I went in the water with Michael (since Josh had school), we played a Humpty Dumpty game that went like this,

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall (all the kids are sitting on the edge and Michael and I are clapping to the beat)
Humpty Dumpty had a great FAAAALLLLL (then we dunk our kids under the water), Michael and Stanley like this and Michael claps afterward;)
Repeat

Thank goodness Michael doesn't mind getting his head wet. We started this early in the bathtub by just dumping water over his head to rinse. Why, because it really stinks to spend a week trying to coax a 5ish year old to put his or her head underwater (so they can move on to learning to swim) when their parents have paid for a week of swim lessons. I know, I was the lifeguard that taught that class, it's frustrating to the teacher, the student and the parent. So success #1, Michael's not afraid of water in his face. Hooray! Hopefully we have more successes like this;)

Another thing that we're working on is identifying and reaching for a toy under the water. Both boys are doing this well, next Saturday, I am going to put the ring on the bottom of the wadding area and see if Michael will get it. The hard part of these swimming lessons is getting Michael to move his legs in any kind of "kicking" motion. We go down the "Lazy River", pulling our kids along on their bellies to help them recognize the forward motion of swimming and try to get them to kick, some kids have started to "crawl" in the water, but Michael doesn't do that much yet, he prefers to glide in the water. So we're working on that still. It's fun and I'm glad we are taking these lessons because it's been a good, new experience to have with Michael. We've got 4 weeks left!


















...Farewell

P.S. Look what my husband came home with yesterday, just to be sweet! I love him;)

A happy wife is a happy life;)