The Lone Star Girl's swim team is called the Piranhas (slogan: eat my bubbles). The Lone Star Baby thinks she's ready to join up. When we took her to Family Swim Night on Thursday, she noticed the people diving and jumping off the diving board at the other end of the pool. I dive, she kept saying, no matter how many times we told her she was too little. Then she would throw herself onto her belly in the water (in our arms and no face in the water, of course) and kick her legs and paddle her arms and say I swimming! This continued until she was shivering so much we had to insist upon going home. We have finally gotten the rain our area needs this weekend, and in massive amounts, so the dips in sidewalk and street are all flooded today and we are sort of stranded at home. The Lone Star Baby looked outside at the flowing streams in the yard and said I go swimming! I go swimming! She really likes the water! I think she will be ready for swimming lessons next summer, even though she will just be turning three and I would normally wait until she was turning four, just so it would be easier to follow directions and actually get it learned. I know some people put two-year-olds in swim lessons, but she is really just a baby. I think she is too small for it to be good for her ears to be submersing her and she would not really understand about holding her breath and definitely would freak out at being handed off to a stranger - so those early lessons are not for us. Next year is soon enough and then only really if she is three-year-old sized - she is very small for her age now and often taken for a year younger than she is unless she is talking, and I do think it is important for their little ear passages to be big enough before they start getting submerged so that they don't get lots of infections. I can tell that she will have her day on the diving board eventually, though!
2 comments:
What a sweetie!
I was thinking about swim lessons for Lucia this summer, but I've decided I just want her to get comfortable in the water first. She takes a LOT of persuasion to get into the wading pool, and then a LOT of persuasion to get out again. That's our girl
Mine have always liked the water - it is the swimming instructors they need time to get comfortable about. I didn't start the Lone Star Girl until the summer she was 4 (which for her, meant she was almost 5), and it seemed like perfect timing for her...she was comfortable and learned quickly. Two years before she would have been terrified to be handed off to a stranger in the water and one year before I think she just wouldn't have followed directions and learned the techniques as efficiently...but she was definitely the oldest one just starting to learn, so I don't know. What is starting to be hard in many areas with the Lone Star Baby is the gap between her desire and her size. She literally cannot be left alone for a second at home because seemingly inocuous things like the couch are dangerous when her toddler climbing skills are matched with her tininess. We call her Danger Baby but it really isn't funny. I don't know if her ears will be big enough to really swim without getting sick next summer but she will be ticked, I think, if she doesn't get to. I hope she grows soon!
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