Encouraged by several of our friends, I finally mustered up the courage to sign Emilia up for swimming lessons. The ability to swim is super important for me. Not only is it good exercise, but I have very fond memories of swim lessons at the K of C pool growing up, as well as taking Nena and Javi to their swim lessons at their neighborhood pool ages and ages ago. I love swimming and grew up by pools all summer long, eventually even having one in our backyard. Plus, there’s the factor that we will forever be outnumbered – there are more of ‘them’ than ‘us’ and they need to know how to at least tread water.
Emilia talked a great ‘game’ about how excited she was about swim lessons, but made it a point to tell me she didn’t want to get her face wet, nor did she feel like she needed an actual teacher, but rather wanted mama to get in the pool with her. I picked Charlotte Aquatics, just down the road from where we are, because several of Emi’s friends (Kate, Maisie, Liza and Zoe) had all taken/were taking lessons there. When I checked it out it seemed perfect – a very small pool, tiny classes (5 kids with 2 instructors), and very mellow. They are, however, pretty hard-core in the sense that, when Emilia had the full-on-koala-bear-death-grip-meltdown I knew she would when it came time to take off her dress and get her to the edge of the pool, the teachers essentially ripped her off of me and took her. The wailing was deafening to say the least. None of these pictures are particularly good as I only had my cell phone and, oh, by the way, two other babies with me, but you get the idea.
emi’s teacher’s name is ms. gigi, from brasil. emi was sobbing at this point and had just barely hit the water. she wouldn’t even tell the teacher her name she was that upset.
you can’t really tell but there’s a little railing the kids are holding on to. they were supposed to scoot along the wall, holding the railing, to the end of the pool (maybe 10 feet total) where they would work on a skill). as you can see, emi continues to scream bloody murder and at this point has upset the little boy next to her. awesome.
The video is towards the end of the class where she had finally stopped crying. You can’t hear, but the teacher is asking her how many brother she has (she holds up 2 fingers) and how old she is…
emi - first swim from Denise Glaser on Vimeo.
not sure if she was smiling because she was a) done with class or b) knew an ice cream was in her future. stinker.
3 comments:
heard a lot about this place via anne but love that i can see actual pictures now...what a cool set up! can't wait to hear how she does next class...really appreciate that they stole her from you kicking and screaming...we may need to do this after ISR
I hate that Emi was so sad at class but, I feel like I know your girl well enough to know she will totally love it by the end. She never likes things the first time and that's totally cool because it's her!!!
THIS IS THE WORSE IT WILL BE. Seriously. So glad you documented though. I'm so bad never even did (until the last day). And ps I LOVE THIS TEACHER. Always watched and admired her and she would always shout out at me from the sidelines about Eve's hair!
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