Nicky the Fish

Being the responsible parents we consider ourselves to be, we decided the, well, responsible, thing to do with the arrival of Summer, would be to give Nicky swimming lessons. As with most things we try to teach him, he's resistant and will typically do the complete opposite of what we say/do, so we knew right from the start we would have to enlist an outside, well-trusted individual with this task. Enter our college-bound, well-mannered neighbor Luke Franz. Nicky has spent time with Luke ("uke" in Nicky-speak) on several occasions, when his parents and sister Shelby ("dolby" in Nicky-speak) have babysat him for us. Luke is working as a life-guard this summer and is trained in teaching little guys to swim. Since we are lacking the underground pool, the Franz's were gracious enough to let the little banshee partake in lessons at their house. Luke came over at 5:30pm and took Nicky, and we met up with them a half hour later. He said the best method tends to be to teach the child sans parents so they would actually participate without distraction. It worked! Prior to the lesson, Nicky was hesitant to float with us and he wouldn't even attempt to paddle his arms or kick his feet, much less try to jump into the pool from the side. He made loads of progress in that one little half hour, and even showed off his moves with Kris and I at our friend Gina's pool this past weekend!

Here's Nicky showing us his dog paddle. If you look in the lower right-hand corner of the picture, you can see some dark objects in the pool. These are leaves, which blew in the night before when we had several terrible storms. Well - to Nicky, they were "alligators"! Luke said he was so preoccupied with them when they first started the lesson, they had to skim the top of the pool to make sure that the top of the pool, at least, was clean and alligator-free! I have NO idea where he got the alligator notion, but it sure was cute to hear him tell us all about them!

here's Nicky kicking...

this is just after going under the water and getting ready to do it again...

jumping from the side. sidebar - Nicky didn't jump out quite far enough, and instead of landing IN the water, he landed on the side of the pool :( luckily Luke semi-caught him, so he didn't hit his booty too hard, but good thing I got this shot instead of the one of him hitting the pavement...owie!!!

Nicky telling Daddy thank you for his lesson...

Even with the "alligators" and the little incident of hitting his booty, when asked if he wanted to go back and swim with Luke again, Nicky gave us a big smile and a "yes please"! Looks like we've got a fish on our hands!