Swimming lessons, take two

The last time Gavin took swimming lessons was about a year and a half ago - we got ambitious and signed him up for lessons in Grande Prairie during the winter. He was not quite four. He enjoyed it, I think, but was very freaked out by anything that resembled water touching his face. When the class played games or sang songs that included splashing, he would scream and take five minutes to recover each time a drop of water got near his eyes. He was very nervous about doing any jumping into the water or letting go of his teachers when they tried to get him to do floats or anything similar.

Fast forward to this summer. At the last minute, we decided to put Gavin in lessons here at the outdoor pool in Beaverlodge - we will probably be doing some swimming on our vacation starting next week, and we didn't want him to be screaming the whole time! :)

The lessons have been every day for last week and this week. Gavin's been doing great! The first two days he was his 'usual' self, refusing to put his eyes in the water, and holding so tightly to his teacher's neck when they went to the deep end (with lifejackets) that I kept hearing her say "Gavin, you're choking me! Gavin, you're choking me!" But by the third day something changed and we cannot believe the improvement he has made! He happily paddles off to the deep end in his lifejacket, jumps in off the side after just a moment of gathering his courage, and today he was going totally underwater to pick things up off of the bottom of the pool! We are just amazed that this is our kid!

We are just so proud of him we have to share some pictures of him at his lessons this week:

He still freaks out for a minute when it's his turn to go down the slide, but he does it! Today was the first time he went down without his teacher standing right at the bottom.