Swimming lessons

So, Jacob wanted to take his goggles to swim lessons. I said fine. When we got there the head lady talked to all of us, about 70 with kids, parents and guards total, maybe more. She says they don't want the kids to use goggles so that they can get use to the water without them. She said something to the effect (about this time I was telling Jake we weren't going to wear them, he was holding them in his hands) that you need to learn to be comfortable in the water without them in case you get into a situation where you don't have them, like a safety thing. Cool, that's fine with me. Well, Jake LOSES it! He starts crying that he can't open his eyes under water without them (yes, that's the guards whole point honey!) and he needs them to swim. Everyone is looking at us with the sad, I feel for you Mom, look that you give a mom you feel sorry for. He continues to cry. I say we're going to leave if he doesn't stop, he cries harder and then settles down. Then we go to our guard who is going to be our teacher, they head to the BABY pool, ugh!!! Jake wants to go to the big pool and I had told him that was where his lessons were going to be because the guy I had spoke with before hand told us that's where he'd be. A friend from HS has her son there who is Jake's age. We are both like "oh no, not the baby pool our kids are too advanced for that". I mean, they were practicing blowing bubbles which is great but Jake is past that!! So, we talk to the head lady and say we'd like to see if they can move us to the big pool. Meanwhile, her little boy is swimming around and doing awesome, my wonderful Jake is crying because he has water in his eyes, yeah, really advanced!!!! So, she watches and they go to the big pool and we stay. He's now crying because water went up his nose (luckily the lady didn't see this). I'm telling him we can leave if he doesn't want to be there, he cries harder and says he wants to be in the big pool. He plays some and does Ring Around the Rosie with everyone and search for the penny. He's settled down. Then they go to the side and hold on and start kicking. the lady comes back, he's now crying because he is hitting his legs on the bottom of the pool and it's scratching him. The lady says we'll see how he does tomorrow and decide what to do. He played for a while longer and then it was over. I couldn't believe it! Not how I thought it would go at all. So, we will go back tomorrow and blow bubbles and see what happens. I was trying not to be the crazy mom yelling at her kid for crying in the pool (these people don't know that he actually is fine in the water, for all they know he's scared out of his mind!) but I was SO bugged!!! Oh well, what can you do. I'm hoping he was just tired and stuff but we'll see tomorrow. That's the swim lesson nightmare!! Oh, and at some point he was crying because the kids were splashing him, aghhhh! And all of that happened in 30 minutes!

So...that was the first day but we went back and finished out the 2 weeks. He stayed in the "baby" pool for his lessons but was very happy in the end when they got to go down the slide into the "big" pool. He officially graduated from the preschool swimming lessons program and learned a big lesson...First impressions DO last so be careful how you behave on the first day of anything!!

Walking over to the big slide (I have no idea when Lifeguards started wearing skimpy 2 piece swimsuits by the way), getting ready to go down the big slide and holding his "diploma" for graduating swim lessons.