Aqua Baby II: Return of Little Fish

On Wednesday, Martin and Edward embarked on the first of a series of Parent/Child swim classes at one of our local pools. Although local, this pool is on the other side of town and there are closer ones to us. However, this one is unique in the area, as it is a salt pool, not chlorinated, and is heated to 92 degrees, which will be a welcome feature in the wintertime. Once he is older we will probably take him to a closer pool for the convenience.

The class series meets for four weeks, one hour each Wednesday afternoon. (Additional four-week sessions meet throughout the fall and winter.) Half of the hour is designated as free swim and half is instructed in a small group. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the first class and witness Ed's first-ever full sized pool experience. Future classes will require too much time off work, so those will be attended by the Men of the family. This level of lesson is called "Parent/Child 1: Little Baby Oysters". For the moment we'll set aside the question of whether oysters can swim.

Edward was...astonishing. His usual Zen-ness shone through in spades and although he looked around with great interest, sometimes it looked like he wasn't even aware of his new surroundings. He was completely unbothered. He never cried once, and I think he enjoyed himself in a baby sort of way. He even went underwater several times! I would have been crying at that point if it were me; I hate getting water in my nose. And that's part of why we wanted to get him introduced to the water at an early age: to try to avoid the same uncomfortable relationship with swimming that I've had for most of my life, introduced by awful lessons at the age of four-ish and reinforced by a number of unpleasant watery dunking experiences since then.

Clearly, that fate shall not be shared by Edward.