Okay, so he’s not a swimmer yet, but Noah started his swimming lessons tonight. But this is more accurately survival skills than swimming lessons. You’ve probably heard of it—it’s the type of program where they basically let the baby or toddler swallow a lot of water while they teach them how to get to the side of the pool and how to turn over and float on their backs. I know this type of teaching is controversial, but it’s practically a must in Florida where drowning is the leading cause of accidental death in kids under 4. And the kids that I’ve seen go through it have all turned out to be excellent swimmers. It was torture for me, though, because after he went under the first time, you could tell he wasn’t quite sure about it, then the next time he cried, then he started screaming for me “I want Mommy! I want Mommy!” How can I possibly do this to my baby??? I had to keep telling myself that they have a 100% success rate for teaching these skills, and it will be worth it when we start spending a lot of time at my parents’ new house with the pool.

But it turns out that my little stinker was just teasing me. As soon as he got out of the water, my polite little man even managed to say thank you to the teacher through his tears, and agreed that he wanted to come back for more of this torture tomorrow! When we came home he was telling Daddy all about how he went swimming in the water. You’d never know this was the same child whose cries and looks of pure desperation were breaking my heart 30 minutes earlier.

We’ll be doing this 5 nights a week for the next 6 weeks (or longer, if we get rain cancellations, which is a given). What fun. I hope I can survive it.