Here at #DaddyWrite, I often pride myself on
enthralling you with the types of thrilling facts one could never hope to
obtain elsewhere. Today, I find myself wanting to wax poetic about our friend,
water. Not Walter, but water.
- Water is made up of Hydrogen and Oxygen (we're just getting going here)
- Nearly 97% of Earth's water is salty and therefore undrinkable (doesn't mean it's not good for swimming or playing in though)
- A person can live approximately a month without food but only a week without water (I haven't tested this fact and only know of one person who has done so and survived...so, you know)
- 75% of both the human brain and a living tree is water (We are Groot?)
For those that don't know, one good thing about living in
the Kansas City metro area is that we often have access to quite the variety of
what I'll call 'enrichment classes' for affordable fees. One of those is the
Water Babies class offered in four-week cycles at Park Hill's Aquatic Center
for the low, low price of $19ish. To tell the truth, the Water Babies class had
been on our radar for a while and this so happened to be the perfect time for
said class to happen.
So, now that you're all caught up, I take you back to
Thursday morning. With Ellie's class scheduled to begin promptly at 10 am, we
made plans to show up at the Park Hill Aquatic Center 15 minutes early. In
order to make that happen, I actually made the unprecedented decision of planning
ahead by ensuring I already had Ellie's swimsuit on under her normal clothes
when we left home. Therefore, all that had to happen was simply shedding a
couple of layers once we got to the pool.
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| Ellie, what are you looking at? |
Now, if you have never shown up early to a class such as
this, it can be kind of uncomfortable. Or maybe that's the just the case if
you're the only adult male in the room, as I was. Needless to say, I found
myself engaged in some pretty awkward conversations with the moms as we waiting
for class to begin. In fact, I probably learned more about one woman's history
of breast-feeding her child than I ever needed to know. Short version of the
story, her kid had teeth at three months and she began pumping the day they
came in. **shudder** Luckily for me, one grandfather eventually showed up with
his grandson in tow to join the class. Although, for the record, I'm not
certain that was much better.
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| Chandler Bing is correct. |
Once the time came for Ellie and I to hop in the pool with
the rest of the class, I was a little surprised at the cold temperature of an
indoor pool. So was Ellie as evident by the epic trembling of her lower lip. We
both adjusted soon enough. In case you're wondering what exactly baby swim lessons
consists of, it's a strange array of water aerobics, singing, dead man's
floats, wacky noodles, and crying. Oh, the crying.
Lucky for me, my child wasn't the one responsible for the
crying. In fact, Ellie's prowess in the water was, dare I say, Phelpsian (exaggeration, much?). As you can probably
guess, I never let go of Ellie during this class but was encouraged to put her
in positions designed to help her gain comfort with the water. For example,
with position 1, I rested her head on my shoulder and helped her to float in
the water on her back. With position 2, she was stomach down in the water with
my hands under her armpits for support. That was actually my favorite position as I kept tossing a toy in front of her and watched excitedly
as Ellie used her legs and arms to pull herself through the water until she
reached her prize. Ellie even got to experience "jumping" off the
side of the pool into her daddy's outstretched arms.
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| The most endearing image of Michael Phelps the internet has to offer... |
As a whole, I would consider week one to have been a great
experience for a couple of reason. For starters, Ellie absolutely did not want
to leave the water when class was over. Second, Ellie's teacher was so
impressed by her comfort with the water that apparently Ellie will get to
experience a slight dip under the water next week.
For the record, that's a slight dip only so keep visions of
waterboarding out of your head. I'm pretty sure the waterboarding lesson isn't
until week 4 at the earliest. Kidding, kidding. #DaddyWrite
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| What do you mean I can't swim anymore today? |
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