Swimming

Though I am usually awoken by 6:30 each morning, on weekdays it is always a struggle to get myself showered, fed, and into the office by 9 am. I don't know exactly where the time goes though I suspect it is consumed by some combination of time-wasting, extensive negotiations on the changing of diapers, and preparing a 21-course breakfast for my beautiful daughter.

On Saturdays Natalia and I trade in the chaos of weekdays for an even steeper challenge: getting two kids to the Waltham Y in time for 9:00 and 9:30 swimming lessons.

We have been attending weekend swimming lessons for a long time now--Andres began swimming when he was 6 months old, and we have only taken a couple of sessions off since then--so one would think that we would have a good system in place for getting everyone out the door by 8:45 am. In fact, if one were really to spend 2 minutes and think about what was necessary, one may come up with a list like this: (1) pack up everything the night before, and (2) don't sleep in.

Somehow we have never figured out how to put this list into practice. So, as you can imagine, Saturday mornings are a blur of grogginess, food, diapers, tears, and then an oft-futile effort to get into the water any earlier than 9:03.

Once we are there, it is great!

The current swimming session started about a month ago. Now that he is 3, Andres has graduated/matriculated into a class without one of us in the water alongside him. This is great for a couple of reasons. One is that he is really becoming a more independent swimmer; the other is that on any given Saturday, either Natalia or me is spared the chlorinated ice water of the YMCA pool.



We were both worried that he would not willingly accept our absence in the pool. But, as has happened many times before, we were pretty wrong--he's doing great without us, and he even seems happy swimming with John, his Y swimming instructor.



Celia is in her second session, lessons beginning only when babies are about 6 month old. She is doing great so far and has even managed to dive in a couple times. (She did this once when I wasn't paying full attention to her, so as of that moment, I pay full attention to her in the pool.) She splashes, kicks, tries to drink the water, and generally seems very happy. The other parents in the group all admire her cuteness ("oh how cute she is!") and her disposition ("what a wonderful disposition!") and I am inclined not to disagree...she does handle herself pretty well.



One of her favorite things to do is to splash around after a little yellow duck, which she then grabs and tries to suck on before I can throw it somewhere else in the pool. Last week Andres had a good time helping out with the throwing part of this exercise.



Well it's Friday night/early Saturday right now, and lessons start in just short of 9 hours. Nothing is packed up, the kitchen is a mess, and I have no intention of getting out of bed before 7. I guess we can work on implementing the items on the list next week.