swimming lessons

Nothing says summer like the smell of chlorine and the sound of screaming children if you ask me. I still remember my own swimming lesson days at Jackson Park Middle School and my brother eagerly pushing my forward (on the slippery pool deck) during role call and my mom on the edge of her seat watching to see if I would actually jump off the diving board or not.

You might remember a couple summers ago that we had a sad, sad experience with Dylan at 3 1/2 that resulted in us being swimming lesson drop outs. We were back at it this year though and I think most of the instructors from the summer of '08 had either graduated or forgotten about us. I thought maybe we would have repeat experience as we were driving to the first day and Dylan wasn't too sure of the whole thing. He told me as we were walking in, "My brain is telling me 'I want to' - 'I don't want to' - 'I want to' - 'I don't want to'". Ha. He is so my child.

In the end, it was all fun and Mady even got to hang out with Baby Ty as he watched big brother Jalen. I thought the 45 minute break each morning from the big two was a bonus and the kids were returned to me clean (kind of...I say chlorine and soap are almost the same thing) and tired.

After the last day of lessons, we took the kids out to the pool at my parents' condo and I thought we'd take Dylan's swimmies off so he could practice swimming with Matt helping him. Instead we took off his swimmies and he swam the length of the pool, no problem, and he continued to swim like that for the next hour and half. One more milestone, checked off the list. Our boy is growing up.