Birdie's First Swimming Lesson

Swimmers, before class.

Birdie went to her first swimming lesson yesterday morning!  A new session began at the swim school ad while Joe continued on in the Littles 3 class, Clara began in the Little 1 class.  Conveniently, their classes are at the same time: 8am.    Now a Saturday morning 8am swimming lesson sounds like it might be awful, but--as we discovered--it is actually pretty great as there aren't as many families who want to be swimming at that time (especially in the summer) so the usual hubbub of the Foss Swim School was greatly reduced.  As it happens, Clara is the only swimmer in her Littles 1 class, and her teacher, Ms. Courtney, was clearly delighted that her first swimmer out of the box on Saturdays this session was going to be "a little ball of sunshine."

At her first lesson, Birdie did a little bit of everything that she will be taught this session by Ms. Courtney:  monkey cheeks, putting one's face in the water, scooping, kicking, floating like a pancake (one one's back).  Because Joe has talked about all of these things (and had, in fact, just the night before instructed Clara on monkey cheek making in preparation for the big day), Clara picked right up on what Ms. Courtney was laying down and tried it all which made Ms. Courtney very, very happy.  As she told Julie: "She's very brave which is going to be very helpful!"  Birdie likes to kick just one leg right now, largely because she's twisting to watch her would-be kicking prowess, which you can see in this short video of Birdie in the water.