Water Baby

We have created a water baby - Ben!

We are spending another weekend at our caravan and of course with the pool here we are in it at least twice a day, and that means his swimming is improving every hour!

After we spent Easter here we went home and sorted out swimming lessons.
So Ben now has lessons twice a week, Alex has 1 a week.
Ben has only been having lessons for 2 weeks now and I hadn't really seen too much improvement in those lessons but I wasn't expecting too much in the first few weeks, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting to see improvement in him in one day at the caravan.

Yesterday morning we went swimming and he was floating around the pool on his own with a ring, he would go over everything he had done in lessons with us and we practiced them so he was getting better at them. Things like floating on your back with float boards, floating on your front and putting your face in the water for a second.

Yesterday afternoon my cousin and her family came to join us for a couple of hours and everyone went in the pool, by the time we got out Ben was swimming under water almost across the whole pool by himself, although he can't come up for air as he doesn't know how to! But as long as he is swimming to someone he is fine.

He was taking himself under the water at every opportunity, and that was every second he was in the pool.
I have never seen such an improvement in confidence in such a short time frame.
He tried on Jazz'z goggles and that set him off further, he was going under to touch the bottom, wave at others who would go under with him etc.

So yesterday afternoon we went and brought him some goggles, and now all we keep hearing is "can we go swimming please?"
As I write this, he is currently in the pool, they have been for the last hour! And Ben has too much confidence for his own good. We are frantically trying to teach him how to come up for air, how you have to be able to swim on the surface to be safe and anything else we can teach him without scaring him, because now he has this new talent we want to extend it, but safely without scaring him, but I do feel he will come a cropper a few times before he realises just what he doesn't know, and until that happens we will be watching him like a hawk and being there to catch him everytime he throws himself in and swims under the water to us.

On Monday he has another swimming lesson, I will be making sure they get to see him in action because I think my little Octopus (swim class name) may just graduate up to a turtle by his lesson on Wednesday! Last week I asked the teacher what we could work on to help him improve...she said being able to put his face in the water for a few seconds. I.e stand in the water and just put your face through the surface, not quite sure she meant for him to be able to swim from one side of the pool to the other under water!

He reminds me of my brother, because when Iain was first learning to swim he swam like a fish under the water but it took him a while to master swimming above the water. One look at Ben swimming today and it is Iain all the way!