Category Archives: Swimming
Katie started swim lessons at British Swim School one year ago today!
I’m amazed at how much she loves the water and how comfortable she is in the pool! She jumps in regularly (with and without goggles), does cannonballs (complete with holding her knees), and just taught herself to retrieve rings from the bottom of the pool. She turns four in a few days. #proudmama
These are all rehashed photos, but it’s what I posted on Facebook. 🙂
Usually both are back there but Owen didn’t want to today.
Katie’s jumps and mermaid tail.Â
They didn’t want to get out of the pool!
Swim Lessons
Papa and Grannie have been going to swim lessons and Papa brought his camera today!
Modeling her new swim goggles
A new suit for KatieÂ
Grannie brought Katie two new suits—of course she had to wear one to swimming tonight!
Our new Turtle 2!
The instructors are amazed that she’s only three. 🙂
Katie leveled up!
Her instructor told us she was getting close…but then we had three weeks of nothing happening. So today, mid-lesson, she leveled up! Of course I missed her super excited face but here she is with her new cap! It took just under six months.
Play time!
Enjoying playtime before lessons.
Katie showed me!
I was actually considering stopping Katie’s swim lessons because I wasn’t sure she was still progressing and $75/mo is a decent chunk of money for her to just be splashing around for a few hours. So of course she completely amazed me today! I asked the instructor to have her practice her floating (since she hasn’t done that in months) and she did great at that—along with actually swimming!! Holy cow! So…lessons continue!
Playing together after their lessons were over.
Awesome December weather for swim lessons!
Sunday Swim
The kids’ lessons are progressing nicely…but today we just get a video of Katie going down the slide during play time. It’s funny—last week was the first week she was even somewhat interested, and one of the instructors made sure to help her climb up and wanted to wait for her at the bottom of the slide. I had to tell them she’s an old hat at big slides and they didn’t need to worry! She showed them today!
Owen helping her up the first time:
Time change + pool time = wiped out
Letting our little fish swim!
After the events of the past few days, we wanted to let the kids have some fun!
And a compilation of slides…
Katie’s swim lesson and play time
Swimmers!
Katie’s learning to swim!
Her first attempt had wild kicking that got parents on the sidelines wet. 🙂 Her second attempt, here, is calmer…but we have a long ways to go.
I hope it’s worth the money. 🙂
Our new turtle is official!
She finally got her new cap today!
Playing before class:
Since there’s no convenient Turtle class (i.e. adjacent to Owen’s Shark class), Katie is staying in her Minnow class and the instructor just teaches her swimming vs. floating. So today was attempting to get her face in the water, kicking, with arms above her head. She did pretty well. She had fun “swimming like a mermaid.” 🙂
Playing after class:
It was cute. Katie had been on the raft by herself with the instructor. Owen’s classmates all jumped in and were a bit aggressive getting up on the raft and Owen kept shouting “Be careful! That’s my sister!” 🙂
Katie graduated to Turtle 1!
Pllaying before lessons started.
Then Katie had some successful jumps…
…and she graduated to Turtle 1 (red cap)! (It took her 11 classes, or just under 3 months of classes!) Unfortunately they were out of red caps, so hopefully she’ll get it next week and then we can take her official photo!
Now I just hope they can rearrange some students so that their classes are more convenient—there’s no Turtle 1 classes adjacent to Owen’s Shark 1 class so we have to be there from 11 (when his class starts) to 12:30 (when her class ends). They said they’d try to get us something better so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
We have a shark in the family!
Owen graduated from Turtle 2 to Shark 1 today!
Working on his breast stroke:
And Katie still working on her floating.
She’s VERY good at the floating and she can jump in no problem…she just needs to jump in AND THEN roll over onto her back by herself…and then she will graduate to a red cap! I had a talk with the owner about what to do if/when she does graduate…because I honestly can’t see her swimming and I hate to pay $90/month to just play in the water and not learn anything. She said to just try it for a few weeks and see what happens—they don’t push the kids at all and if she isn’t afraid to be in the water on her own she might learn more than we think. But if it’s not working after a month, then we can reconsider—and also, she said they normally don’t do drop-in lessons, but if we wanted to come once a month for a drop-in lesson to make sure she still knows how to float, they’d let us do that. So, we’ll see.
Little girl stuck
I’m not quite sure how this happened but she was cute. 🙂
It’s Sunday so it must be swim lessons!
Katie has the jumping in down and the floating down…now she just has to get the middle part of getting into her back by herself.
Sunday Swim Lessons
Playing before her lesson:
She has reverted back a little from that one day of awesome jumps and floating…she still does well enough, though, and has fun.
Normally she plays after her lesson (while Owen does his lesson) but today she wanted to get dressed. We didn’t bring anything for her to do (since she normally plays in the pool the whole time) so we gave her the camera to take pictures—which she LOVED. These were the best two. 🙂
Because I love her jumps!
She didn’t do as well today with her jumping and floating but she’s still fun to watch.
Our amazing little jumper!
Katie did amazing at swim class today! (We were here on a Saturday for a makeup lesson.)
And Owen actually had a one-on-one lesson so he got a lot of practice in—and did well with his side-breathing.
Swim Lesson Sunday
She’s not even posing. This is just a natural look. Hoo boy are we in for trouble… 🙂
Getting better at floating—lasting longer in the float position little by little.
Then guess who suddenly LOVED jumping in?
She loves wearing her goggles now! We think that’s why she liked jumping in this time!
And another natural look LOL. I missed the actual eye roll. 🙂
Sunday Swim Lessons
She’s getting better at floating!
Owen getting a lesson on the backstroke from a new instructor:
This is what happens when left to her own devices:
“I’ve got a tutu!”
Kaliseum Daredevils
We took the kids to Kalkaska today for open swim…and boy did they have a blast! Owen was excited to go down the slide again (mom fail: I may have forgotten to mention he did it for the very first time when he was there earlier this vacation). I LOVE the faces he makes. 🙂
My favorite:
You see his harem standing by watching him, right? 🙂
Katie really wanted to go down the slide but she was too little…or so we thought. The lifeguard came up and told Tom she could go down as long as he was at the bottom to catch her. So Owen took her up:
There were other kids going up and they were getting too close to them on the stairs so Owen put his hand out to stop/block them and protect Katie. And then he guided her into the slide while he made sure to keep everyone back. Awwww, I know. 🙂
Here she comes!
Caught her!
Her reaction? She LOVED it and wanted to go again! (But she was done after the second time!)
I still can’t believe it—Owen was 6.5 when he finally went down the slide…and Katie was 3! You can tell who the family daredevil is!