I guess I’ve taken for granted that the third child doesn’t just know how to swim.
Apparently, all of those hours being dragged to her sister’s lessons haven’t given her any magical fins.
Chloe had her very first swimming lesson this week.
I decided I had probably lost years off my life taking the older two to a series of lessons where I would hold them, baby-monkey style and we would sing a watery version of The Wheels On The Bus keeping an eye on both how much of my bathing suit had been yanked off by a baby’s foot, exposing my genitals, as well as the clock, knowing that looming over all of us at the end of the thirty minute session was the great big dunk.
Nobody appreciated The Wheels On The Bus being adlibbed by a bunch of pasty new Moms who were singing ‘the paddles on the boat go woosh woosh woosh’ nervously awaiting the moment where we were politely nudged to yank our babies under the water with no warning and then smile like crazy people when our kids cried for the next two hours because “we don’t want the kids to be scared of our reaction.” You mean our reaction to breaking the trust we’ve spent nine months or more building by water boarding them? I can see how a nice smile would make up for that.
I didn’t want to mess around this time. Straight up, private lesson, teach my kid to swim while I watch from the stands and avoid that January frightening skin tone while sobbing in a bathing suit change room. A win-win.
The first red flag before we even got to the pool came in the form of my child who was nattering on about crackers and then got suspiciously quiet.
She was sound asleep and it wasn’t even 9:00am.
I should have aborted the mission then but I had already driven so far to get to the pool, I decided to carry her into the change room and if she still wasn’t awake, that water boarding trick might come in handy here too.
Once again, Chloe impressed me by taking her instructor’s hand and walking in the direction of the pool while I slipped away to observe from the waiting area.
Progress.
While I couldn’t always make out what Chloe was whispering in her instructor’s ear because the instructor’s ear was wholly inside Chloe’s mouth, fingernails digging into her shoulders and neck, I did hear the occasional, “I want to be done now.”
When we got into the change room, exchanged several high fives and Chloe repeatedly reminded me I was not to wash her hair with shampoo, we agreed to call our first swimming lesson a success even though she mentioned a number of times, “But I don’t want to come back here anymore.”
Before we left the parking lot Chloe weakly asked from her car seat, “Mommy are we home?”
Not yet honey.
“Well I’m falling asleep back here.”
She told me not to carry her into the house this time. She wanted to walk in asleep….like a zombie.
Exactly the way you would expect a swimming lesson to end.
