The Chlorine Update

October 15th, 2009

We started the fall session of Gym n’ Swim today, and it’s been a while since I mentioned that little activity of ours, so I thought I would update you. You may (or may not) recall that I began taking Violet to Gym n’ Swim when she was a wee tiny thing barely able to crawl. She HATED the pool. Wah WAH WAAHHHH!!! So naturally I kept taking her, because I wanted to get her to some level of comfort with the water.

Then something changed. She went to the BEACH! With her COUSINS! Cousins who SWIM! And since then she has been on a mission: To Joyfully Drown Herself. Thus we NOW go to Gym n’ Swim to actually learn how to swim. And today she was in Heaven. The glee, people. The glee, and the constant attempt to wiggle from my grip and be FREE! In the WATER! Where she has no BUSINESS being FREE! Because she cannot SWIM! I finally had to resort to balling up the back of her swim-shirt in my hand and holding tightly to it, so she was basically harnessed in restraint by her clothing. Otherwise, she would just forcefully remove my hands from her person and writhe nonstop. My arms were giving out, it was an incredible workout trying to keep her alive in that pool.

Here is what I have to report:
- She is very, VERY “comfortable” in the water now.
- She’s not in love with being dunked under, but she doesn’t complain about it.
- She can kick, but she would rather just WIGGLE.
- She can smile bigger than the actual size of her face, you’ll have to take my word for it.

I also had a chance to see her around the other kids her age who have been attending G n’ S with her from the start. I hadn’t seen them since the summer. I can report that, relative to these other kids, Violet (a) has an insane amount of upper-body/arm strength, and (b) is not talking any less than they are. That’s right, none of these kids was saying anything more elaborate than I’ve heard her saying lately, and I’m not going to worry any more about that business for now. We’re doing everything we should be doing to encourage her to talk, including restricting pacifiers to sleep-time, and she’s reluctantly choking up a new word every few days. Hand to God, last night: “Umbrella.” Steve heard it, too.

Umbrella!

4 Responses to “The Chlorine Update”

  1. Megan Says:

    If we can get it to snow here, maybe she’ll come up with “shovel?” Can we hope for “snow blower?!” :)

  2. dad Says:

    Yes, ever since you and Steve finally convinced her of the worth of being in the water at Tybee, she has been on a mission to drown herself. And trying to keep up with Erica and Dani certainly was incentive enough.

    She is very strong for her age. Particularly in upper body strength. It must be from all of that crawling around, recently.

    You will grow stronger as she does. This is just survival mode kicking in to keep her safe from herself. Such a strong willed littleperson! Where does she get that from?

  3. ma Says:

    She gets it from her mother, of course. :-)

    I’m so glad that she’s starting to enjoy swimming! Hope I get a chance to see her the next time that I visit!

  4. Scrubbed Innocence Says:

    We need photos of this.

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