family swim fridays.

today, the girls had their second swimming lesson session at the surrey sport & leisure center and they had such a blast! even with just one lesson under their belts, they seemed a lot more confident in the water this time around. last week, the hubster took olivia for her first lesson and he kept saying how much olivia loved splashing around so it was nice to switch it up this week and have a chance to see her reaction for myself.

being only the second session, the instructor got serious and showed us how to 'dunk' our little ones into the water. the nice thing about our class is that it consists of two students -olivia, and my niece chloe. so we get all the attention and direction to make sure we're doing things right. so he instructs us to count to 3, give a big blow of air to their faces and dunk head first into the water so as not to get any water up their noses and then once they're out give plenty of positive remarks. this was quite funny because he was actually telling us in a high pitched tone of voice what to say...as if mothers don't already know what to say to console our children lol!

so 1st attempt: success! she was a bit dumbfounded by the whole thing, but no tears which is excellent! we proceeded to play 'ring around the rosy' and dunk them a few more times and each time was just as good as the first. since literally her very first bath, olivia has been obsessed with trying to drink the water. whether it be from residual drips after rinsing her hair with water, finding a toy that has water pooled in it, or just downright bending over to drink the water..its just been her thing. so its no surprise that since we're in a pool, she's trying to be tricky so she can drink the pool water! (yuck!) once i managed to distract her, it was nothing but shrieks and squeals from her. another water baby! yay!

once our half hour session is over, its emma and my nephew jacob's turn. i guess we picked the best time to have lessons because they also have a private class of just the two of them! its totally awesome because the instructor focuses on just them and they're actually learning rather than being distracted by other students. i could see that they were learning how to hold their breaths under water. they were definitely having a good time!

after seeing kids the same age and even younger than emma frolicking and actually swimming, i knew it was high time that i sent her to swimming lessons. with all of those horrific stories of people drowning last summer made me think how unfortunate it is that people out there don't know how to swim. i guess one could say that they don't ever go out into the water therefore knowing how isn't necessary..but you just never know and from that i knew it was a skill my children had to learn.

once the classes were over, we all got dressed and picked up some shamrock sugar cookies and chai lattes from the cafe. mmm chai lattes- an excellent way to warm you up after a swim. then we head back to our place to fill up our tummies with a polish dish called bigos (polish sauerkraut stew) that my mom came over to drop off (hi mom!) the kiddies played and i prepared dessert: some red velvet cake with cream cheese icing (leftover from a cake i made earlier in the day) and some paczkis (polish jam filled donut)..its safe to say we were in heaven!

all in all an excellent friday night..looking forward to next friday!