Swimmingly...

For our second winter in a row, we signed the three boys up for 10 weeks of swim lessons at Foss Swim School in St. Louis Park. Now, I know, I know, expensive!!! but hear me out: This place has fine-tuned their lessons down to a science. I mean, they are here to teach your kid to swim, period. The instructors are high-energy, on-task, non-nonsense, really like and understand kids, and are so well-trained and professional. We have tried the Y lessons and I seriously think one half-hour Foss lesson is like 6+ (45 minute) Y lessons. Part of it is that they never have more than 3 kids in a group lesson. Last winter the three boys were an entire class. This year we had to separate them because of Atticus' school schedule and because I signed them up too late. We have two weeks left and so far the younger boys have passed 3 levels!!! Yay! They can swim forward, turn and float on their back, turn again and swim forward. They also know how to jump in, turn around and swim back to the edge. (Brad takes Atticus to lessons on Tuesday evenings so I don't know where he is at though I know he can swim on his own and gaining strength and confidence.) I thought long about how to go about gettting the kids' swimming skills and it has been difficult to have four closely-spaced kids...expensive and hard to have enough grown-ups to help so the way these lessons are set up has worked for us. Our first "rule" has been to only start lessons at age 3 since it seems like that's the age where their motor skills start really kicking in (good bicycle age, good hopping on one foot age, etc.) and we would get more out of the lessons. Only driving twice a week (next year I will sign up earlier and get them all in at the same time) and having the lessons at half an hour is do-able with Thea Belle waiting on the sidelines.

Thea Belle just got a new swimsuit -- I learned the hard way last year that you get swimsuits in the winter when they first come out and sales are on. She wanted so badly to try it out that we came 10 minutes early and the Foss staff let her sit with her feet in the water...and then at the end of their lesson, they let her jump in. (-: I would have gotten a photo of their teacher but this week (the week I finally remembered to take a picture) she was gone on her honeymoon (-:.