Saturday, July 17, 2010

Swimming

After swimming lessons this morning (and by swimming lessons I mean Zoe hugs the wall of the pool and waits for Mr. Jeff to come over and carry her around the water a bit, sometimes with a noodle, sometimes with a kickboard, but always with firm support and guidance and, I'm sure, encouraging words like, "Good job, kiddo! You're doing great!" while thinking to himself, "Stop whining you little brat...they don't pay me enough to do this...and dear God can someone shut up that howling tyrant four feet from me?") we ran some errands and then returned to the pool for a swim-play date with her old friends from the Bunny Room.

It's amazing what a little healthy peer pressure can do. Within 30 minutes of hanging with her buds, Zoe was completely submerging her head by herself. She'd pop back up and proudly announce, "Did you see me? I was under for like two minutes!"* This feat took quite awhile to get to, as at first she firmly believed that dunking the lower half of her face in the water was "going underwater." So she made great strides today.

The swimming lessons are really helping her get comfortable being in the water. And I'm just kidding about Mr. Jeff's internal dialogue. I think. He seems like a really nice guy and gives no indication that he's ready to go postal on our children. Zoe really likes him. "He's a boy...with long hair!" Apparently Mr. Jeff's long hair is intriguing.

We arrived and checked Zozer in at the front desk, and then headed downstairs where, inexplicably, we had to check her in again. There was a laminated sign on that check-in table requesting parents remove themselves from the aquatic center and watch from the viewing area located one story above and behind huge windows. We all know the reason for this. It's exactly the same premise of taking your kid to school the first day and sprinting out the door...if you pull off the band-aid real quicklike it doesn't hurt as much. We waited with Zoe for swim lessons to start, and as soon as Mr. Jeff and his partner were leading Zoe and three other children into the water, we scrammed.

As we left, we heard the yowling start. Not our kid, thankfully. The screaming girl is the aquatic equivalent of The Banshee that ruined Zoe's first week of preschool. OMG. I have never heard screaming like this. And, of course, she's in Zoe's little group. Great. I prayed as we walked upstairs that fear and terror are not contagious.

We got to the window and saw that Zoe was unfazed by the screaming, occasionally glancing at the little girl with an exasperated expression of "WTF?" And what did the screaming girl's mom do? Yeah, that's right. She planted her ass in a poolside deck chair, whipped out her Blackberry, and let her child scream for her for 30 minutes. Great strategy. Let's stay close enough so the girl can see you, and will therefore continue to try to get your attention, and yet be completely oblivious.

Then, what really pissed me off, was that the two people assigned to our foursome were forced to unequally divide their energies. Mr. Jeff got Zoe and her two, nonscreaming friends. And the screamer got an instructor all to herself. This pissed me off because Zoe had to wait longer between turns with Mr. Jeff, obviously. The human siren's mom did not pay for individual, private instruction, but her little screamer got just that.

We'll wait and see how it goes next week. M said that this week went pretty well, as apparently last week there were two children raising holy hell.

*NOTE: While normally boosting times is a male trait, I assume that all little kids do this and shortly her estrogen will kick in, causing her to know exactly what two minutes is, and also causing her to lose all sense of direction, and reason when it comes to buying shoes, purses and camera gear.

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