R and I are trying out a number of things with Gabriel. At his age, we are told that there’s only a few activities worth trying – one of them is swimming.
We bring him once a week to the Betty Wright Swim Centre in Palo Alto – about 15 minutes away from home. It’s a nice warm indoor pool with lots of kids and parents every weekend. I normally take him for 30 minutes in the pool while R watches or runs errands.
| From Gabriel's Fir… |
The lessons are pretty simple – singing action songs around the pool with the main theme of dipping the child in and out of the water. Gabriel isn’t very keen in the water yet – he doesn’t exhibit any excitement, but we hope in time he’ll grow to be more comfortable. Right now, his biggest challenge is learning to blow bubbles under water instead of gulping water.
The pool insists that babies are “tripled up” before they go into the pool. This means a swim diaper, plastic pants and a swimsuit on top. The diaper is pretty hopeless since it gets wet the minute Gabriel steps into the pool. But last week, he did a “big one”, and the diaper actually managed to keep most of the mess in his pants. Now, that’s more about infant swimming than I’ll ever want to know.
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