Daily Archives: April 9, 2015

pool expedition

I took L to the pool today for the first time in about a year.  I really want her to learn to and love to swim, but it is really an uphill battle around here.  Outdoor swimming is pleasant maybe a month out of the year, if that, in a typical summer.  On the few gorgeous perfect swimming days, the public pools will have literally a two hour wait to get in, and I’m guessing they’re packed if you do get in.  Therefore, if you want to swim outdoors, you really need to join a swim club, which is rather pricey given how infrequently we get swimming weather.  Swimming indoors is just not the same, but it’s what we’ve got around here.  I used to take L to swim lessons near our old house, and pool was just very cold, and she would just be so frozen she would stop moving at all.  Basically, it was a complete bust.  I found a warmer pool, but it was about 25 minutes from our house, so going there was a bit of a production.   Fortunately, the situation has improved somewhat at our new place.  The local Y has an “activity pool” which they keep at a fairly warm temperature, and it has a 2 foot deep shallow end.  The only problem is that I’ve added a second kid, which makes pool trips more than a bit tougher.  In fact, I’d been so intimidated by trying to take the two of them to the pool on my own, I hadn’t gone.  J is just not that into swimming, especially indoors, so he hadn’t wanted to go with us on the weekends.

Finally, today, I’d had enough, and I decided we were going to do this.  I packed up my kids, their bathing suits and mine and a couple towels and off we went.  It went better than I could have imagined!  The Y is so much nicer than our old local pool.  They had family changing rooms, and you could even bring your stroller onto the pool deck.  B was adorable in her little bathing suit, and L is infatuated with her suit.  I actually bought it accidentally (or B did – not sure) via one-click ordering, and it’s kind of awful in terms of fit, but she loves it, and it’s not like she’s swimming laps at this point.  Anyway, L was very cautious at first, sitting on the step in four inches of water.  She gradually ventured down into the water over the course of 20 minutes until she was walking back and forth holding onto the wall in chest-deep water.  She even wanted me to hold her so she could swim.  It was so much fun!  Keeping B happy was not exactly trivial, so the expedition was not exactly a walk in the park and featured a certain amount of crying, but overall it was a smashing success.  L declared she wants to go to the pool every day.  Hopefully we’ll go back this weekend.