Alexis is pretty fearless in a "WHERE IS MY MOMMY?" sort of way. I mean, I can talk her into doing anything, but she is going to do it while clinging to me so tightly that I'm certain she's trying to crawl back in my uterus.
Her fearless-with-mommy-thing extends to pretty much every part of her life. At Disney World, I continuously bribe her into riding Tower of Terror. She does it, but then leaves bruises on my arms and a lifetime supply of guilt in my heart (it's totally worth it). I can get her to try any foods, go through any experience, talk to any people, anything at all. She'll do it. I just have to be there to suffer through it with her.
That includes swimming, of course. She has always been willing to jump into the deep end of a pool, float around on a raft for hours, or just plain splash all day long. There's just one catch--she has to be able to cling to me like Saran Wrap clings to Saran Wrap.
The problem with that is that I suck at swimming. I swear there are concrete blocks embedded in my feet because I sink faster than the Titanic when I'm in a pool. I don't particularly like swimming since I suck at it, which always lands me in the pool with a kid clinging to me. That's how Murphy's Law works, after all. The kid loves to hang out in the pool. She insists that I hang out in the pool with her.
BLURGH.
There was only one possible solution to the dilemma and that was to turn into the Queen of Overcompensation by signing the kid up for swimming lessons. I figure that I suck at swimming because I didn't learn how to do it until I was a teenager. That's always a fun time to learn, you know. Nothing says "Joy" like struggling to learn to swim while your friends stand by getting paid to make sure you don't die because oh, did I mention that three of my friends in high school were lifeguards? Yeah. That was special. My mom once tried to sign 14-year old me up for a beginners swimming class with a bunch of six-year olds and I wouldn't do it because one of my friends was the instructor.
Queen of Overcompensation. Make Alexis learn to swim early.
So she started lessons back at the beginning of the summer. It was an off and on sort of thing that mostly consisted of a teenage girl telling her to shove her face in the water and blow bubbles. I can't say that she was really learning much, but she was having fun.
A LOT of fun.
The one thing that she did learn was that she learned to cling like Saran Wrap to someone besides me. Sometimes she even clung to the wall instead of a human! Woooo!
Then the fall sessions started and I figured we'd give it one more go (the sessions are six weeks long with one half-hour class per week--it's really not much of a time commitment). I didn't have high hopes of anything much happening. I predicted the kid would spend more time learning to kick while holding on to a wall and that she would blow some bubbles, but that she would end each class with a huge grin on her face. That's what she did the 10 other weeks she went to swimming classes.
Surprise, surprise! Instead of a teenage girl teaching the class, the Program Director was in charge this session. And WHAT THE WHAT? He actually knows how to teach kids. Like, he's goooooood.
Two weeks. It took him two weeks to pry the kid away from the safety of the wall and to have her swimming. By herself. In the deep end of the pool. BY HERSELF.
He did it by standing two feet in front of her and telling her she had to catch him if she wanted to hold on to somebody. He just kept backing up when she would get closer.
She still flails and flops around like a fish out of water when she's in the water, but she has the general idea. Alexis can swim. ALEXIS CAN SWIM.
And now I don't have to.
This growing up thing is pretty damn awesome if you ask me.
