Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Cannonballs

For some awesome reason our pool is still holding together, so the boys can still keep going outside to swim!    And all of us love a nice late afternoon (early evening) swim.  


Yesterday though, while dinner was cooking, I took all three boys outside for a swim, and I'm so Thankful I did.  They kept playing Cannonball!  Though neither boy is very accurately doing them, they are pretty fun to watch.  Sam is especially funny, because his cannonballs involve simply jumping in place, getting minimally wet.  

But Sam was having a ton of fun playing with the beachball.  


Christopher has been only wanting to swim underwater lately.  


The reason this was such a wonderful evening swim was because I was able to talk Christopher into doing some "practice" for swim class.   First I got him to Kick while swimming underwater; he's getting quite good at that.  But then he asked me how to touch his belly to the bottom.  Every time he flopped forward he was just below the surface.  Until last summer he hated putting his face underwater.  It's been Revolutionary, that he finally found some Joy in swimming instead of it being torturous.  Then yesterday, I asked him to float on his back.  And he did it.  His belly was dropping down a bit, so I got him to push it up a bit, and he Did!  He floated on his back, ears actually got wet.  For years he has screamed like a maniac when we'd try to make him do it, and he finally did it on his own.  I credit Max, and swimming in Wisconsin last summer at the lake with the beginning of this turnaround.  And I credit the IndyParks swim class staff  at Northwestway with this year's progress.  They are so wonderful over there.  We've done swim class for the last 5 years there, since we had to do Mom and Tot classes.  And he fought and fought.  And this year...he's stopped fighting.  


So it can happen.  

I just need to keep focusing on that, as we try to get Sam to want to get his face in the water.  He's not much of a fan either, but this year he's not running away from his teachers, so I'll take that as progress too.  


In the meantime I can be pretty happy with bubble blowing and cannonballs, because I know eventually, with persistance and perserverance, my boys will Swim!

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