Swim time

It has been an eventful couple of weeks since vacation!
The kids have been in camp. Sam is proud to report that he is the "camp encyclopedia" and performs feats of fact recall for the amusement of the others. (Yeah, kind of Little-Man-Tate/Malcolm-in-the-Middle sad, but it could be worse.)

So far, Sam has not been too badly sunburned and is generally having a good time, Last week, he was also in projectile camp, which he enjoyed enormously (physics+projectiles=fun).

Joseph is at camp at Chesterbrook Academy. It sounds like a pretentious place where they wear little British schoolboy uniforms, but it is just a perfectly ordinary daycare camp. Every week they have a reality show theme, which the kids seem to like. So far, they have had an American Idol week, an Amazing Race week and a Deal or No Deal week. Of course, Joseph has never seen any of those shows, but that is because we make him live in a cave.

Joseph started piano lessons a few weeks ago. He really looks forward to the lessons, and he is OK about practicing at home on his new keyboard.

Also, last week I bought myself a new watch and Joseph decided that he should get one too. By the time we got home from the store, he had learned how to read time (analog) as well as adjust his watch strap. He is just such a competent little guy!

Both kids have been in swimming lessons, too. I really wanted Sam to join the summer swim team because it is the only swim team that is seasonal. The other swim teams in town run year-round forever and ever and ever until you quit. But Sam was having none of swim team, so the compromise was that he would take 4 weeks of lessons for stroke improvement. The classes are the prototypical Red Cross swim classes--exactly identical to the ones that I took as a kid. Sam seems to be getting a lot out of them, and his strokes seem more efficient (chicken-soldier-airplane).

However, the Red Cross classes are NOT AT ALL effective in getting non-swimmers swimming. Both kids have been taking swim classes every summer since they were infants. We sat through 5 years of "pre-swimming" classes per kid, watching them performing "pre-swimming skills" and yet not swimming. When Sam turned 6, he suddenly decided to start swimming and has been swimming ever since. So we had high expectations that Joseph would start swimming this year.

Last Thursday was "Parent Day" when parents (me) were encouraged to get into the pool with the kids. I swim with Joseph all the time, but this time, I convinced him to seal up his goggles and keep his eyes open underwater. He was so delighted that he started diving for rings. The next day at camp he decided to start swimming underwater all on his own! Joseph still can't reliably get up to the surface to breathe in water over his head, so watching him swim is really nerve-racking. But so far so good. Joseph still has 2 weeks left of lessons, so I hope that he will learn neutral buoyancy before he drowns himself.

Will he or won't he jump?

Joseph underwater