Dicusting

By my calculations, we’ve been going to swimming lessons for 34 weeks.  No joke.  We’ve only missed four Saturdays in that time.  Plus on most Saturdays this summer, we also went outside to play in the kid pool and hot tub for at least two hours.

And today goes down in history as a major breakthrough for Nate.

After 34 weeks of swimming lessons… he went down the kiddie slide!  Can I get a woop woop?  WOOP WOOP.  Shocker of shockers.

Here’s how it happened…  Miss Christine, our teacher for the last 12+ weeks, noticed that Nathaniel has been making some significant progress.  I think she went so far as to say, “He’s getting so comfortable!”  We’ve developed a relationship with very little conversation up to this point.  Previously, if she so much as looked at Nate he would completely pout out his lips and lay his head down on the side of the pool.  She once complimented his perfect pouty pucker.  He glared.

Every now and then he gives her a high-five, but mostly, she instills the antithesis of swimming in him.  I hope she doesn’t take it personally.

In any case, Nate and I are immune to the pressures of doing what all the cool kids are doing.  We do our own thing.  For awhile Miss Christine stopped the hello and goodbye singing which made a marked improvement on Nate’s demeanor.  He still goes buck wild if we sing, “Nate is in the pool” to the tune of heigh-ho a derry-o.  No one should know he is in the pool.

Today I could tell things might be different.  He did lots of jumping in and swimming under water to me.  We’ve been practicing this for weeks and the “too deep for me’s” have completely subsided.  Now I ask if we’re going to go under water and he says, “We go unner, a little bit, unner the agua.”

We did two “up so high, down with me, swimmers in the middle, one-two-three’s” and Nate actually went under water of his own accord.  He has never done this particular swimming drill.  Then we did two “elevators go up-up-up, elevators go down-down-down, big breath eyes in” and he did that, too.  Two firsts in one lesson.  But then after just fifteen minutes he said he was all done and was hungry and wanted to eat a bar.

I distracted him with the platform and some rings.

Then came the ultimate test.  Miss Christine brought out the red and blue floating kid slide and Natesy said he wanted to go on it.  (Record scratch… everyone stops and looks toward the door.  Or the slide, if you will.)  Before he could change his mind we big arms and kickered our way straight over there.  He clambered up without missing a beat and didn’t even shrink away when Miss Christine actually made physical contact with his arm.  Swoosh into the pool and some underwater kicking straight to me.  WOOP WOOP.

He probably went down the slide at least seven times.  Then it all went downhill because Miss Christine had to tell him ‘no’ as he practically tried to pass Caitlin on her way up the slide.  He didn’t take the scolding too well and refused to go back on the slide.  Then when she put the slide away it was the end of the world.  We’d gone a couple of weeks without any tears.  All I can say is at least this week’s tears were due to the emotional roller coaster that is his new love affair with the water slide.

During the final goodbye song, Nate’s latest is, “No… yucky song.  Di-custing song!”  What could possibly illicit such a harsh critique?

If You’re Happy and You Know It.

Or, You Know You’re Not.