One fish...

Noah has always loved the water. From the time he was little baby he loved the bath - it was practically impossible to get him out - and ever since he discovered pools, he has loved jumping in and splashing. But until recently, he's always been very timid about getting in over his head.

We signed him up for swim lessons at the YMCA in mid-May, and he lasted less than one lesson as he decided the pool was crowded with too many kids for him to be letting some stranger try to pull him away from the safety of the side of the pool. We had been swimming quite a few times over the winter (it's an indoor pool) and by this point, I had been trying everything to get him to at least put his face in the water and blow bubbles, without success.

We tried signing him up for private lessons to avoid the crowd. He had one lesson with his teacher, and then a break of a few weeks. In those few weeks, he suddenly started putting his face in the water and something must have clicked. His water skills started improving very quickly, and it was amazing to both of us how good he got at swimming in such a short time.

His tricks include swimming under water finding sunken objects (eyes open the whole time), swimming on his back and swimming nearly 20 yards in the deeper part of the pool without stopping. The only time he ever gets bothered by anything is when he gets water up his nose.

These videos don't capture it all, but do show quite a bit of what he can do. And you can imagine who is watching all this, and is thinking he can do just what big brother is doing. We'll have another post soon on "Two fish..."

Racing daddy across the pool


Swimming like a madman. Sometimes he just turns on the speed and hauls ass.


Nice form


under water


Noah diving for sunglasses


Noah swimming on his back


Noah jumping. He can jump in under water and come up by himself, but he doesn't like to do it in the deep end without me there to catch him.