Well Jeff & I both thought it incredibly important to start our kiddos young-- as in, the youngest possible age allowed to do swim lessons-- which happened to be 6 months old. We never wanted them to be fearful of the water and wanted them to have the skills early on to be able to swim if an emergency situation warranted it.
That said, Ava began swim lessons in March of 2006, just a week shy of 6 months old (look how teeny-tiny she was!)
From day 1, she has loved swimming. Even as an infant, I recall the instructor telling us "Wow, most babies at this age won't lay so still & calm on their backs like that with their ears submerged underwater, because they don't like the feeling. She is doing awesome!"
And from that day on, she was a natural. The summer before she turned three, she was (more or less) swimming comfortably by herself up at the lake in Maine. Jumping off the dock, fearless, completely submerging herself and then swimming to shore. It was music to my eyes to see that the 2.5 years of swim lessons at the Y had finally paid off!
And so we've continued to keep up with the swim lessons through the years, and this morning was the last day of this winter session. At the end of class, her teacher handed her a highly coveted graduation slip-- that she had successfully graduated from Pike, to EEL!!! This is a tremendous step. In order to graduate to this level, a child must be able to swim two pool-lengths without a bubble!!! (bubble = the YMCA version of a floatie thingy that they wear around their waist, in case you were curious), do a pencil dive & touch the bottom, jump off the diving board platform unassisted and swim to the side, and swim/float on her back. During the final minutes of class, we watched as she passed (and surpassed) all of the above with flying colors. She unhooked her bubble from her waist, tossing it to the side of the pool deck, and plummeted into the pool fearlessly. And then, smiling at me from the water, said
"Momma look at me! I'm doing it, I'm doing it!!! I can be an EEL now!!!"
As I sat there on the pool-deck bench, tears of maternal pride streaming down my cheeks while I watched my newly coined Eel swimming freely in the water below, I glanced down at her bubble laying limp at my feet. I thought about the first time I wrapped it around her little tiny waist (she couldn't have been more than 18 months old at the time.) I thought about how, over the years, we have slowly removed one styrofoam layer of the bubble at a time (in order to lessen the amount of buoyancy that it offered)...and watched her flourish aquatically. And now here it was, a useless prop strewn on the floor at my feet, while my "baby" swam confidently in the deep end of the Olympic-sized pool without it.
Ahhh well....Just another one of life's little (big!) milestones that reminds me how quickly this journey of Mommyhood is flying by... And to fully immerse myself in every proud, memorable, remarkable second of it. :-)
Oh, and p.s. I think someone else may be following in big sissy's footsteps- Gav started swim lessons for the first time this week and LOVED them, too! :-)
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