Go swimming!

A-chan looking with quiet concentration at her Star Wars "flash cards".

We had quite the weekend with many adventures and much negotiation. It all started last wednesday when I took a trial bellydance class just to see how much my body would protest after not doing any dancing for about 10 years. (It was a nice and gentle class, I'm very excited!!) Anyway, I checked out what else was available for Ketu and A-chan to do while I was dancing...and there were parent tot swim classes starting this week! We'd been intending to do the swim class thing for a while but just not gotten around to it and I decided why wait longer? On Saturday I called and asked lots of questions. We were told that no one else had signed up yet but that the class would be held even if it were just us. So we rushed over and registered, then went out and searched town for swimsuits in february.





You might say that luck was in little supply in regards to the swimsuits. hmmm. It has been around 14 years since Ketu or I has been in water. (Well, there was that one year where I had water therapy, but I don't really count that and it was still at least 8 years ago.) Swimsuits we did not have. Neither did many stores. Target was the only store that had any and the selection there was pretty sparse. We decided to wait and shop around more. A-chan picked out a cute ladybug number at Toys R Us. I found nothing. Did I mention that we found out on Saturday that the class actually started on Monday?





Sunday dawned bright and cheery with an A-chan who kept saying constantly that she wanted to try on her swimsuit. We go to try it on and suddenly have a wailing banshee on our hands. We think she hadn't known that she'd have to take off her socks to go swimming and that set her off? Other than that we have no idea what went wrong but the rest of the day she refused to even look at the suit! Knowing that she was unhappy but that we had already signed up for the class we spent the rest of the day convincing her that swimming was fun and wearing a swimsuit was coolness. (Azu Manga Daioh helped a whole lot. It's one of her favorite anime and episode #4 included the locker room, changing to suits and getting in the pool.) After dinner she consented to try on her suit, all excited again.





Monday. A-chan woke up and said, "A-chan go swimming!" as her first words of the day. We were incredibly relieved that she remained excited all day. An hour before class time we all hopped in the car...to go buy swimsuits for me and Ketu. Yep. An hour. Are we nuts? Yep. So, back to Target we went for the world's fastest swimsuit shopping expedition. On time (incredible, we didn't believe it!) we arrived at the pool, dressed in brand new swimwear with one beaming and raring to go toddler. She looked at the pool, she tugged on my hand, she goes, 'that a pool, Mata! let's go swimming!!!" But the fellow in charge of swimming says, "so sorry you didn't get called, but we cancelled the class for lack of people." If we didn't get in that water before we left there was going to be a ruckus, a riot, a coup! We did end up getting into the water for an hour, the instructor (who is absolutely soooo nice!!!!) came in to give us elementary tips so that we wouldn't scare our baby girl with her first swim.





I think we were all amazed at how well she did. No screaming, no fright, it was all smiles and loving the water and having tons of fun. She did blastoffs from the wall and tried really hard to swim with legs and arms going every which way. We had an awesome time!