J. Bear the Swimmer. Sorta.

Those who know my kid know he's active. Veeeeeeeeery active. So I knew I had to do something with him this summer to keep him entertained besides weekend trips to the zoo and nightly walks. My mom had wanted to put him in swim lessons last year down in our hometown, but I couldn't make them...so this year, I checked into swim lessons here. Both my university gym and our local Y offered them, so I signed him up for the ones at the Y.

Last night was his first lesson. Oh boy.

Now, most kids love water - and my kid is no exception. But I think he was way overly excited to be in the water, so he barely listened to the instructors. He wasn't bad, per say - splashing other kids with water, pushing them around etc. The fact that he got in the water without Mommy behind him was a huge step [and bittersweet for me, because it shows he's becoming more independent], but after that, he just wanted to play.

He was supposed to be learning how to swim on his back. Instead, he smiled for Mama.

All the other kids were paying attention, except for him. I literally stood by him the entire lesson to be sure he didn't try to either climb out or swim too far into the pool, but he quit paying attention to me after a bit. I felt bad because he literally was the only one who, for most of the lesson, wanted to do everything but what he was told to do. But, at least he was having fun, right?

I'll admit that I probably kept him pretty sheltered the first couple of years of his life, so besides daycare, his interaction with other kids was limited. Now that he's older and interacting more, I want to put him in more lessons [he's doing swimming now, obviously, and we'll probably do weekend gymnastics classes in July and August to see how he likes that]. He's so active that he needs a way to burn the energy, and these types of activities will do it. I also hope it helps calm him down as he gets used to it, because having my kid be the only one out of seven not paying attention probably got me the side eye from the handful of parents that were actually paying attention to the lesson.

Learning how to swim on his belly using the board - except after this was taken, he abandoned the board. :)

He has swim lessons this week and next week, then he has water play at daycare on Fridays - so he's practically going to live in the water the next couple of weeks. Guess that means I'd better be prepared to take him to the pool and work on his swimming, eh?