One Fish, Two Fish

The two little fish in our house recently finished up swim lessons for the summer.

This year, everything seemed to click for Drew. His lessons started out in the front pool, but after a few lessons of review time of what he learned last year, he graduated to the back pool...and let me tell you, he was one proud boy to do so! Because the instructors in the back pool are different than those in the front pool, Drew had to switch teachers three lessons in. He was a little nervous about the change, but we have never, ever had an instructor that we didn't like at swimming lessons. I reminded him of this, which seemed to help, but actually meeting David sealed the deal. He was so great with Drew and Drew ate up the time he spent with him.

David was great at telling Drew silly things in between swims, or listening to some extremely long story Drew had for him (did I mention David was also uber patient?).

When it came time to actually swim though, the long stories went out the window and Drew was all business. Like I said, this year things clicked and he can now swim freely in the pool on his own (and confidently enough that I feel comfortable sitting on the side with him in the water). Because of this, halfway through, lessons switched to learning the different swim strokes and not just swimming across the pool. 

Freestyle

Backstroke

Butterfly (Put that Hiney in the air!) and Breast stroke

And diving in from the side

and from the diving board.

Of course there was plenty of fun going on as well...

The back pool had these two great slides that Drew loved! Can you see that blur shooting out of the slide?

At the end of all of his lessons, Drew got to stand up on the podium and receive his gold medal and his blue ribbon (the highlight of swim lessons for both our boys!). Drew did such a great job this year!

For Collin's lessons, his instructor was Nikki. She taught Collin's lessons last year and we loved  her. Secretly I may have been more excited than Collin to see that she would be his teacher again. Such a sweet, encouraging girl!

Collin loves the water and always has. He's my kid that I have to worry about jumping into water when it's around because he is typically more confident in what he can do than what he is physically capable of doing. Fortunately, this year he started taking a breath on his way to the side of the pool. They also worked on climbing out of the water on the side of the pool (without stairs), which put me at least at a little more ease when he is near water (he is still by no means "water proof" yet though).

Like last year, they worked on swimming independently across the pool...

...and flipping over in the middle to take a breath.

Every so often Collin would get upset about the water being splashed in his nose by another swimmer passing by. Collin is a pretty feisty crier, but Nikki was great about explaining to Collin that the solution to getting water up your nose was just to keep your chin up. She also would tell him to be bossy and tell the water to stay out of his nose, which usually had him laughing.

Like Drew, Collin also got to play. His favorites were jumping off the diving board and going down the slide.

And then at the end, just like Drew, it was up to the podium! Collin was so cute. Every year prior to this one he has cried while they announce him as the swim school's latest champion to graduate (makes for some really interesting and memorable pictures). This year however, he was looking forward to getting his medal. So much so that he started talking about when it would be his turn on the podium the first day of lessons. Huge change from last year!

He also had to get his arms just right to match the hippo behind him. It took about six tries before he felt like he got it and would let me take the picture! :)

Again, such a great year with Jan Thomas. We loved our instructors! I don't have enough good I can say about them. It was fun to see the boys' leap in confidence and skill and we're already looking forward to next year!