#poolbabies

When Akilah and Zak were close to nine months Karim and I enrolled them in a waterbabies swimming class through our town and recreation park’s department.

It was a great experience for all of us. Swimming classes gave my husband and I a new way to bond with them, while Akilah and Zak learned basic elements of swimming.

Although they’re not ready for competitive swimming lessons, I was impressed by what they remembered from the classes over the eight weeks. Akilah was doing some flutter kicks and hand scoops that modeled wading water. Zak who isn’t a fan of cold water and the pool was cold quite often also had some wins. By the end he would jump into the pool with one of us and began to push away from the walls.

A few months later when we drove down to Florida to visit my friend Yesenia, it was in her complex’s pool where Akilah and Zak didn’t show fear of the water and were doing some of the basic skills they learned. I was impressed. I think Karim was too.

Life has a way of quickly changing course and although I meant to sign them back up I didn’t. When I finally got around to signing them up online, the day I wanted for the classes was filled up. I had to wait til spring.

Spring is finally here and today will be their first day back in the pool. Now that they’re older and have a better understanding of their surroundings I wonder how they will process being in the water.

For my sake and Zak’s I hope the pool is warmer this time around. I look forward to sharing post-waterbabies class photos. Stay tuned.

So my son has started swim lessons (“swim” is a very relative word if describing what he is learning). We have signed up for four Fridays with his little girlfriend (at least that is how he thinks of her, their relationship is very up and down, if it would be on Facebook it would be deemed “complicated”) Even if our boy actually did great in his first lessons (blowing bubbles, got his hair wet,…