The end of the Swimming Season

It was a great swimming season for our fam this year.  We live in a great area.  We are just around the corner from so many things.  The elementary school Tate will attend next year (YIKES), parks, a great outdoor mall, and most importantly for us this summer, our neighborhood pool.  The YMCA runs our pool during the summer so we were able to have swimming lessons there in the mornings too.  Tate took three sessions of lessons this summer and absolutely loved it.  By the end he was jumping off the wall and swimming a few feet by himself to his teacher.  We were all very proud, especially Tate.  

This year he discovered how awesome goggles are.  They were like instant courage for the kid.  If he was in the pool, he was under the water.  

Most of his time in the pool he looks like this:

He was thrilled with being able to see what was going on beneath the surface.  Like he was in on some incredible secret with his new eye-gear.  My favorite moment involving his goggles happened at the beginning of the summer.  He was so proud of his goggles and wanted to show them off to everyone he met.  He followed a little girl around the pool and said, "Hey!  These are my new goggles.  Watch what I can do!" He goes under the water and, after a few seconds, pops back up.  "Pretty cool huh?!"  Later, when we were eating lunch during a swim break, he watched a girl walk past.  He told me, "Mom, that girl is pretty.  Do you think she's nice?"  I told him I thought she probably was.  "That's good.  Do you think she will like my goggles?"  Oh what a sweet boy I have.

Finn LOVES the water too.  He is so excited when we go to the pool.  Our morning jog often brings us by or near the pool and when we turn toward home instead of going to the pool he always cries, "Wawa!  Wawa!"  so sad that we're not going swimming right now!

Finny went through phases this summer.The first half he couldn't get enough of the water.  We have a separate kiddie pool that starts really shallow and at the deepest is only 3.5 feet.  Tate can touch all the way across, which makes my life so much easier, but Finn just can't yet and that made him so frustrated.

For the first part of the summer he would walk to the deep end until the water was to his chin and he was on his toes and either I let him go under, or turned him around to walk back to the shallow, which caused him to make some very loud noises.  He would trip constantly and ended up lying on top of the water, spread eagle, holding really still.  It was a very scary position to see little Finn in.  Unfortunately, for the first half of the summer, it didn't seem to phase him much at all when he tripped or fell.  He just wanted to keep walking to the deep end.  He didn't want to hold your hand.  He didn't want to be held.  He wanted to go where Tate was BY HIMSELF!

In the last couple of weeks he's been a bit more timid and clingy.  It's kind of nice, actually.  To be in the pool with him and not worry about him trying to drown himself with his insistence that he can do anything.  Plus, he's not a very cuddly boy in general, so it's fine with me if he wants to be held in the pool.

We spent lots of mornings at the pool and several evenings after Glenn got home too.  It was the perfect way to be in the summer sunshine and we soaked it up as much as we could this summer.

Last weekend we were super lucky and tried out Broomfield Bay with the Cluffs.  They had extra guest passes so we all got in for just 4 bucks!  We have GOT to do that again next summer.  It was so perfect for our little kiddos.  There were several slides that were just their speed, a water play ground, and tons of shallow places to walk and play.

 Tate loved the slides that he could go on by himself.  He quickly got bored with the plain "sitting while sliding" position

 And started making up new "poses".  It was fun to watch.

 Finn went down a few times with Glenn and wasn't really sure how he felt about it.

He kept going down with this trepidatious look on his face and then saying, "Again" when it was over.

After slide 5 or 6 he somehow got a huge burst of courage and started going by himself.  He would climb up the stairs, decide which slide he wanted to go on, usually changing his mind a couple of times, then one of us would help him sit down and the other would catch him at the bottom.  Then he'd start giggling and chanting, "A-gain! A-gain! A-gain!" over and over.  It was so cute and funny.  It's kind of nice to see a bit of a timid side of him once in a while because he usually has no fear from the get-go.

It was a great swimming season.  I'm glad our boys love to swim because it sure is a nice way to spend the summer!