Bathing Beauty

On Tuesday I took Katie for her very first swimming lesson. She's been in the pool twice before; once at a friend's and once at my mother-in-law's. Both times she loved the water, especially when Daddy and Mommy would spin her around in it, "Wheeeeee!"  So we figured it would be bordering on cruel not to teach her how to swim.

This first lesson was one of our most fraught excursions to date.  Not only did I have to get Katie and all her swim gear into the car on time, we had to survive a clothing and diaper change in a crowded locker room. A sign on the wall explicitly forbade me from changing Katie on the locker room benches, so I opted for the floor. Not exactly what they'd intended, but too bad - we were stressed enough. I tried taking Katie to the designated changing station in the bathroom, but before I even set her down on it, she started to freak out. Somehow we managed to get Katie's suit on (I'd prudently worn mine under my clothes) and stuff all our crap in a locker. After seven or eight unsuccessful tries, a nice old lady helped me figure out how to lock it. (Sigh. Before Katie I was darn good at figuring stuff like that out. Now I can barely think straight.)

We made it out of the locker room and into the pool area. We checked in, put our stuff down on a bench, and got into the water. Lovely and warm! Yay. There were three other kids in our beginner-level Water Babies class. All three were boys, and all three were older than Katie.  And, all three had attended the first two lessons of the series (I screwed up the dates, thinking the class started this week instead of last. Gah.) So we were a little behind to begin with, in addition to being the youngest and least able to follow instructions. (Katie, not me.) To make a long story short, Katie did fine, better than I'd expected, but before it was over she was saying "ALL DONE!" pretty forcefully. And she was shivering. Poor baby! I guess that's what happens when you just hang out in the water and let Mommy do all the work. :)

The most inelegant part was doing the whole locker room thing again, in reverse, while soaking wet. I really don't know how we did it, but it helped that there were a lot fewer people around. Lucky for me, Katie was a little scared by the noise of the hair dryers, so she wasn't as inclined to run off at top speed, leaving me half-naked with one wet leg stuck in my jeans. Instead, she had fun opening and slamming the lockers near us. Yeah, we're making friends already.  I'm now "that mom" that absently says "No, honey" while her kid continues to do something annoying.

We'd almost made it to the door when Katie tripped and fell on the scale. She started to scream bloody murder, so I scooped her up and ran for it. She calmed down as soon as we were out of the locker room. Whew. And, as an added bonus, she didn't fall asleep in the car on the way home! I played peek-a-boo with her nearly the whole way. Not my safest driving, I admit. But if you know our sleep story,* you'll know that Mommy will do ANYTHING to make sure Katie has a good nap!

Tomorrow, we do it all over again. Here's hoping the locker room thing goes more smoothly this time!

Swimming is fun! Let's go again!

*The sleep story is coming! I keep falling asleep writing it...