Swim Buddy

I've been in San Jose the past few days (just came back this morning at 2:30am) so I didn't get a chance to post anything new from last week. The biggest thing being Taede's first swim lesson. Since it's pretty late and I'm pretty tired, I will post Malia's swim lesson. Kael requested that do one of his too so I'll do that tomorrow.

Anyway, Malia is the fish in pink and her BFF Audrey is in blue. They are supposed to have 15 minutes of solo private lessons but Audrey was having a hard time with swim class way back when so we thought having a swim buddy (Malia) would help her. The new swim class would then be 10 minutes solo with Audrey, shared 10 minutes with both girls then 10 minutes solo with Malia.

It worked great. Malia listened better and started trying harder. Audrey stopped crying and started swimming. It was freaking fantastic. Eventually though this swim "buddy" system took on some kind of crazy fierce Olympic competitive feeling. (Notice how I have the word buddy in "quotes.")

The girls now race across from platform to platform. Back and forth, back and forth. Not heeding Sara's (their swim teacher) instructions. We've got girls bumping the other out of the way like it's a roller derby. Cutting the other off at the platform. Pulling feet and grabbing swim suits. It's a dog eat dog lesson out there. They don't even care about form. Sara's trying to get them to use their arms and start doing freestyle but they won't listen. The only thing that matters is who gets across first.



They are so funny. I've never seen them try so hard and I will say: peer pressure works. Linda and I will have to be careful with how we wield this power.