Swim lessons

Charlotte is taking swim lessons this summer.  We started in May, which is when these two pictures were taken.

She cried her head off the first lesson, and about half of the second lesson.  By the third, she was functional, but timid in the water, as usual.  Her teacher did manage to convince her that it was ok to put your mouth in the water and blow bubbles, which is what she's doing in the second picture. 

So she's been doing basically the same things since May, namely: putting her face in the water, learning to float on her back, how to get out of the pool by herself, stuff like that. Mostly getting comfortable in the water.  There hasn't been much progress to speak of, until this week.

It's like a lightbulb went off! She's all of the sudden comfortable on her back in the water and can float for a couple of seconds.  She's allowing her head to be dunked underwater and will wear goggles (for a while).  She's not truly swimming swimming by herself, but she is making definite progress towards it. 

Just this morning, we all went to the pool in our neighborhood and Charlotte "swam" to us from the steps.  She pushes off, goes underwater, stretches her arms out towards us, and kicks her feet.  She makes about a foot or two of distance on her own, then comes up gasping.  BUT! She's not breathing in water like she used to. She's very good about holding her breath.  She "swam" back and forth for close to an hour, and only got out because we said it was time for lunch and gave her no choice.  I think she's as excited about it as us!