Swim Lessons

I've had people ask me why I take Isabel to swim lessons because they believe she can't learn to swim yet. Well, first of all we want her to be comfortable in water, in a pool, at a waterpark, etc. The first day she was a little unsure, but now she is just fine with it. And she might not be learning how to do the crawl (especially since she hasn't yet crawled on land.) But what she has learned so far is:
1) How to float (she used to curl her legs up to her chest - now she put her legs out.)
2) Starting to learn how to kick (previously she would never even move her legs, now she will give a few kicks.)
3) How to hold onto the floaty kickboard thingy (before she would just rest her hands on it, now she will grab the sides of it and hold on as floats around.)
4) Grabbing rings a few inches down in the water (I don't let them sink to the bottom, but the water distorts the image of where they are at, so it can be tricky to grab them. Before she had to fish around a little bit to grab it, not she can accurately grab it.)
5) Going under water briefly is ok (everytime we do it she gets more and more ok with it and has never cried from it.)

Of course, I am in there holding on to her the entire time.

There is a 2 year old girl in our class and I talked to her parents tonight about how long they have been taking her to swim classes. They said they just brought her swimming in a pool a couple times before she was 1 and then at 1 years old they brought her to a class and she learned things slowly (much like Isabel) and now she is 2 and she loves swimming all over the place and going under water. She's a little fish. So, it's encouraging to see so much improvement in such a short amount of time.

The water was REALLY cold tonight. Apparently, the boiler quit working and was not heating the water. Really, they should have just cancelled classes. A co-worker of mine takes her daughter to the same swim class and she complained to the management after class (& kinda dragged me into it as well) and we ended up with free wrist bands that we can come back and use anytime we want in the waterpark. So, that was very nice of them. We got wristbands for all three of us and we'll use it some day after swim classes are over and we want something to do. The cost for the wristbands are $9 during the week and $12 on the weekend. So, the 3 wristbands themselves cost about as much as our 8 weeks of swim lessons (less if we go during the week or more if we go on a weekend.) Crazy.

We have 3 more weeks of swim lessons. I am not sure if we will sign up for them again at the waterpark. The changing situation is less than ideal and it's pretty noisy. Although I am sure daddy likes the concession stand. He has snacks and watches us as we swim. The Tennis Center doesn't offer classes unles 1 1/2 years old and another hotel does swim lessons, but I am not sure the changing situatio would be much better. This summer we will take swim lessons at our local outdoor pool, plus we'll buy a family membership to the pool and go there during open swim times. I hear we are supposed to have a scorcher of a summer, so we may be using that membership a lot.