Scuba Steve

Who is Scuba Steve?  William.  Yes, William's new nickname is Scuba Steve because he is spending so much time underwater (in a good way) at swim lessons.

If you know William, you know this is nothing short of miraculous.  He has always been anxious in a pool and our attempts at group lessons through the local high school have been underwhelming.  He never even got out of Level 1 because, as one of his instructors said, he is too scared of water to move on to the next level, where they have to do stuff like, well, go underwater.

After four lessons with my good friend Nicole, he is actually starting to do stuff.  He picks things up off the bottom of the pool.  He glides, face down, through the water.  He is starting to actually, you know, swim.  It's quite something to watch.

The other kids are doing well also.  Tessa wouldn't put her whole face in the water a month ago and now she is going all the way under and doing great back floats - soon she'll be following in William's footsteps.  Henry, who started out a bit ahead of the other kids, is now learning to do the crawl stroke and breathe to the side.  It's not a really pretty stroke but he's doing it.

I know this probably seems like a silly thing to be excited about.  But we've never really made that much of an effort to have the kids learn to swim beyond signing them up and hoping that no one cried during the lessons so to see progress like this in just a few sessions is really exciting for me as a mom.

All of the credit goes to our great teacher.  She is a good friend of mine who I asked about doing private lessons and she has been fantastic.  My kids know and like and trust her and she is so great with them.  I'm excited to see where we end up by the end of the summer.

And William?  He informed me today that we wanted to learn how to play water polo.  Scuba Steve, indeed.