Starfish Swimming Lessons

I've been remiss in posting about our latest adventure this week: Water Babies!  I did mention, a few posts ago, that Hubs and I signed Bunkey up for swimming "lessons" at the Monterey Sports Center!

Well, classes started this week.  We attend for 30 minutes on Monday and Wednesday mornings.  Coupled with our weekly Parents Place class on Tuesdays, Bunkey and I are pretty busy little bees.  I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was a little relieved to wake up this morning and have no place to go.  I was actually thankful that I could stay home and finish the cleaning that I didn't get to yesterday.  Clearly I must be sick!  At least the kitchen and bathrooms are done.  Today I just have to dust and vacuum.  And probably fold some more laundry, but I do that every day.  Oh the joys of motherhood!

Anyway...  I know you really just want to hear about swimming!  At first I thought 30 minutes was pretty short for a class.  Between getting Bunkey decked out in his swim suit, making sure my legs are shaved (parents participate, so yes, I need to be well-groomed), driving there and back, we're talking a three hour ordeal.  Kinda sucks that only 30 minutes are the actual activity.  But after two classes, I realize that half and hour is probably just about all Bunkey can handle.  The warm water and activity wear him out, the timing of the class means that his morning nap is cut a little short, my fear of him tossing his cookies in the pool (more on that later) means that I don't feed him solids with his 10:00 bottle as he's become accustomed, and thus far he's not a huge fan of going under water, which is a good portion of the class.

Here's how it works:  We're in the very first level, the Starfish group, which is six month-olds to three year-olds.  We get in the pool and circle up.  We play the Hokey Pokey in the water and splash around quite a bit.  At this point Bunkey is giggling and squealing and being adorable.  Then we practice blowing bubbles under water.  Bunkey's a bit young for this.  The lifeguard/instructor taught us that if we blow sharply in our baby's face, they'll gasp (inhale), and right then we should dunk them.  Eventually they'll learn to blow out to mimic us, which will turn into bubbles, which will teach them to not swallow the pool, etc.  But like I said, Bunkey's busy giggling at this point, splashing and kicking his feet.  It's adorable.  But when I dunk hum, he drinks water.  And then gasps and chokes a little.  And stares at me wondering why I'd do something so mean to him.  And then clings to me for dear life.  He never cries.  He doesn't even protest.  But he doesn't understand.  At our first class, he threw up in the pool.  Like really threw up.  Granted, it was just milk-water, so no biggie, but some of the other mommies were a little off-put by it (despite the fact that there were other babies who did the same thing).  We didn't dunk any more after that.  At the second class, Bunkey did better.  He stopped giggling enough to gasp when I blew in his face, and I successfully dunked him three times with no vomit!  I didn't want to press my luck, though, and so decided to quit while I was ahead.  He'll get it eventually.  I don't want to make him scared of the water before he even knows what a pool is!

So, back to class... After the Hokey Pokey and blowing bubbles drills, we get back in a circle and sing Pop Goes the Weasel.  Each mommy-baby pair has a rubber ducky, and when we say "POP! Goes the Weasel", we toss the duck in the air and the babies are supposed to splash/kick/blow bubbles toward the duck.  We do a few round of this, with different "tasks" each time.  I guess as they get bigger and learn more they'll do more, like actually swim toward the duck.  Then we have "jumping time".  It's more for the bigger kids (like I said, our class is 6 months to 3 years).  They stand on the side of the pool and jump to their mamas.  Bunkey can't even stand alone, much less jump, so I sit him on the side and "jump" him in myself, making sure to make a big splash since he seems to love that.  Then it's back to the circle, where we sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and call it a day.

By the time we get home, Bunkey's passed out in his car seat, and doesn't wiggle one little bit while I tuck him back into his crib for a nice long nap until his afternoon bottle!

So, I suppose in retrospect 30 minutes is the perfect time.  The last ten minutes of class Bunkey's definitely winding down and ready to go to sleep.  He stops splashing as much and just wants to lay his little wet head on my shoulder and relax in the warm water.  He's perfectly content when we finally get out and I wrap him in a fuzzy towel and strap him into the car seat in nothing but a diaper and tee shirt.  And he's out like a light before I'm even out of the parking lot.

We have three more weeks of lessons, and then I guess we'll figure out if we'll do a consecutive session or take a little break for a few weeks...