Our Little Shark

Since Sydney and John are half-Australian and I've been told that Aussie kids learn to swim before the walk, we've had the kids enrolled in swimming lessons since they were little. These photos are some of the only ones we ever took of the Mommy and Me classes John and I did together from March 2009 until February this year. He would have "graduated" to the solo classes sooner, but his teacher didn't realize he was 2-years-old because the little guy is so small! Oops.

Houston Swim Club teaches back-floating as a survival technique. You may remember the earlier post with the video of Sydney's float test. This below photo was taken as John's face broke the surface - its an activity where I would hold him out of the water facing me, count to three and then put him under the water so that his feet would push off from the bottom of the pool, then let go and let him float to the top. He then puts himself on his back and floats for 5 seconds.

Here he is with his instructor working on the floating. They encourage them to put their hands under their head, tip their chin up and also keep their toes out of the water. Now that he's in classes without me he's floating really well on his own. I wouldn't be surprised if he does his float test before the end of the summer.

John LOVES the water. Whenever I tell him that we're going to swim lessons he gets really excited and asks if we can go now. When he gets out of the pool he has to tell me everything he's done in the water and always says "Mommy, I had fun swimming."