I love the water and I thought it would be great to expose my son to the water at an early age. In a trip to Hawaii a couple months ago he loved the freezing cold pool and the ocean waves. He is clearly not a scaredy-cat and I hoped to share my love of the water with him. I envision a vacation in the future when I'm 40-something and he's in his teens we take a family scuba diving trip together. Let's hope he still wants to hang out with me then!
The pool by our home has a Mommy and Me class 3 times a week for babies ages 6 mos to 4 years. This seemed perfect so we signed up and head over to our class. We arrived 30 min early, because of the first come first serve policy. Now my son is 11 months, not ready to walk on his own and still pretty wobbly on his legs. I was hoping to bring the stroller in, which I soon found was not allowed because of space issues in the locker room. Still I braved on thinking I would use the baby changing area and then just try to have him sit in a corner while I changed myself. Going in was fine since we were one of the first ones in and there was only a removal of outer garments required. As we were heading in we passed by a Seniors swimming class and of course they all ogled the baby and he returned their praise with his bashful smile, "Oh I'm going to act so shy, but seriously I am really that cute, now please go on about how cute I am!"
The class is packed with Mommys, Daddys and babies. All seem older than my son. The water is freezing but he doesn't seem to mind. We float around and sing songs. I notice some of the other parents actually put their babies under the water. I consider whether I should try this, but decide against it because all my son seems to want to do is drink the water. Every time I get his face close to the water at all his mouth opens and tongue hangs out like a dog ready to lap up the entire pool (no pun intended). Clearly he is not as sophisticated in the ways of real swimming yet. I am impressed at how good some of these babies are at swimming. One mother of a little girl only a month older than my son, goes under the water (without choking, paddles her feet, and floats along like a little buoy. I'm quite impressed. She's also walking. The only thing my son has over her kid is a full row of top teeth. This is the problem when you go to these baby groups, I always end up comparing my kid to the other kids there, and what I can say is although he's sometimes behind in other areas, he's always been ahead in the teeth growing department!
I also always enjoy noting how the parents act with their kids. One little boy cries the entire time he's in the water. If I was that mom, I would have packed up and gone home. Clearly the kid did not want to have anything to do with this pool business. But this mom seems determined to go through the entire class with a screaming kid. I was going to say something, "Um, lady this is a free class. Maybe you should let your kid off the hook this time and try again next time, or maybe take up another activity if he hates this so much."
Another father is one of those aggressive types with his 4 year old girl. He is dunking her under the water and she cries every time she comes up, sputtering for air and clearing not enjoying his drill sergeant way of teaching her to swim. In another exercise the teacher tells the parent to have their kids lay on their backs and kick to teach them to swim backwards. The drill sergeant refuses to hold his daughters shoulder for this exercise and demands she stop wimpering and lay back. Poor girl, he doesn't even promise to catch her if she starts to sink.
Also, another very cute thing to note, my son's favorite toy is a little yellow rubber bath fish. He holds it constantly and holds it throughout the class. Its really much better than a teddy bear, it can go in any environment: wet or dry. It's fin is also the perfect baby grip size, so you can crawl with it walk with it, eat with it, take it just about anywhere. The only difficulty is if you are doing an activity where you need the full capabilities of both hands. Then he may need to be put down for a moment or two.
When there's about 5 minutes left in the class I realize we need to high tail it to the locker room for the tricky changing ordeal or else we will be waiting forever, since both the Mommy and Me class and the Senior class end at the same time. (there are mostly Mommys in this class and all the Seniors are women, so I foresee a huge pile up in the locker room)
I have just about finished changing my son, when the stampede comes in. It's total madness. I have my son on the bench as I try to change, an old lady with a walker literally falls on top of me and then gets upset because I am changing my son on a bench in front of her locker as opposed to on a baby changer by the door. (Please note, this baby changer is placed behind a door that people are crowding into trying to walk in and out of. Another woman pushes past me and tells me to stop using up all of the bench, then she tries to move the bench, which my son is on, so she can get to her locker. I am still trying to be accommodating to these old geezers, but I reach my limit when a woman with a locker on the other side tells me the bench is now in front of her locker. So you can see the actual picture of these space, it is about a 5x5 space and the bench is 5x2, so anywhere I put the bench will place it in front of someones locker. That's it. I am still in my swim suit, dripping wet. I pack up my stuff and my son and take us into the handicapped bathroom where we can at least have a door between us and these pushy old women. I put my son on a towel on the floor in the stall while I finish changing. It's kinda gross but it was our only option. As someone smart once said, whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger. (I'm guessing this person probably had a baby who puts everything from lint off the floor to pool water in his mouth)
