Swimming Lessons

Today all we did was swimming lessons....Mondays are exhausting!

Here is her cute 'after nap' clothes for the day

Nina's Day 20...Swimming Lessons

I am working very hard to distinguish the difference between 'swimming' and 'swimming lessons' for Kayla. So that she can understand that we play while we are 'swimming' and we have to listen while we are at 'swimming lessons'. I think she is working on getting them straight. She love both anyway.

Today instead of sleeping in until 930 to make her lessons go smoothly she was awake at 8am anyway. So I got less sleep :(. Because of that swimming lessons didnt go quite as smoothly. She didnt really want to participate in anything but we were able to do it. We also learned if we cant get her to kick her feet that if we 'get' Corrina or race her we can make her kick and have fun. So we did that a few times.

We also make her 'swim' by laying her flat on her belly and pushing her through the water one to the other (are hands are off less than a second). We make her put her face down just for a second too, she handles it all amazingly well. Im so proud of her!

Nina's Day 18 (Swimming Lessons)

Today was our second day of swimming lessons. Maria and I agreed that the best way for Kayla to survive lessons that are right at her nap time is for me to pick her up at 5am so she can sleep in until 930 rather than the 8am she has to get up when I pick her up then. So far its worked pretty well.

Today's lesson was a repeat of the 1st, repetition is important obviously.


(doing the kick board)

(itsy bitsy spider)

After we got home from lessons I fed Kayla, bathed her and sent her off for a nap. She slept more than 2 hours today which is a good nap. About the time she wakes up we have time for a snack and then we are off to go see "Mommy DeeDee". Busy busy days! What am I going to do when she is old enough to be involved in sports and artsy stuff??

Swimming Lessons (Nina Day 16)

A few weeks ago my mom convinced me to sign Kayla up for some private swimming lessons. I thought that sounded fine, just Matthew, Corrina, and Kayla (with me) in my moms pool. Well a few days before the lessons start I found out they arent in my moms pool they are in a someone's pool down the street. Apparently you have to sign up to be a host even if its just your family. So needless to say I wasnt too thrilled about that but I felt that it was important enough for her to go that I sucked it up and we went.

My main goals for Kayla were #1 Not to be afraid of the water the way I am and #2 to learn something that would help her when she learns to swim. I didnt think at all that she was going to learn to swim in the 8 lessons she would be getting.

Our first day started off kinda rough, the instructor was a few minutes late and then we had to sign paper work (oops they think Im Kayla's guardian-Nina guardian same thing right?). So we ended up only getting about 2o minutes of water time. That actually worked out okay, she had the other kids doing kick boards and swimming back and forth since they all knew 'kinda' how to swim.

Kayla learned how to hold on to my shoulders and kick across the pool with me helping her. She also learned how to 'get the side'. This involves us sitting her on the edge and then kinda pulling her into the pull and telling her that 'when we fall in the pool we get the side'. After she holds on to the side we sing 'itsy bitsy spider' and walk her hands until she can stand on the step.

In my opinion the day was a success because there were no tears, she happily played in the water and let us do as we wanted with her. One of the times we 'got the side' we even dunked her so that she would learn to close her mouth when she goes under, and other than coming up rubbing her eyes to get the water off her face she had no reaction. Better than me! LOL I come up sputtering every time.