summer of swimming!

D has been technically able to swim since last year (https://aglie.blogspot.com/2021/08/d-can-swim.html) but still has room to improve and, of course, Dd, at almost four, is at an age where he could start learning as well.   This summer, we tried to swim as often as possible and I made a point of trying out many different pools since our closest pool was, once again, out of commission.

Please forgive the following overly detailed saga about our neighborhood pool... 

The city pool near us was closed for renovation for almost an entire year, re-opening in Dec 2019, a few months before covid hit Seattle.  Then, it closed in March 2020 and only re-opened to children in summer 2021.   About six months later, in mid-February 2022 it closed again, purportedly for two weeks for mechanical and electrical repairs.   The big Omicron surge in winter 2021-2022 made indoor swimming seem too risky, so the last time we swam there was around Thanksgiving 2021.  That two week closure was extended three or four times throughout the spring, due to difficulty getting parts.   Eventually, combined with the national shortage of lifeguards, the city announced that the pool would be closed through the summer.

As frustrating as this pool's recent years have been, I do understand that many things are out of the city and pool management's control, like the supply chain issues, covid and the lifeguard shortage.   However, reflecting on the amazing aquatic center we visited in Vancouver and the challenge of finding local pools with reasonable swimming schedules, I've come to realize that pools are just too expensive and can only thrive in a state-sponsored environment.   Yes, I am a swimming socialist.   

Swimming feels like a very elite thing here and now in Seattle, rather than a healthy and fun life skill that should be available to anyone and everyone.   In addition to the experience we recently had in Canada, I remember visiting an incredible and expansive pool in Germany when I was 10 and our friend, who grew up in Germany, remarked that he was also surprised by how limited swimming opportunities are here.   It's not just the locations of pools but also the hours.   There, pools are more like libraries, where you can drop in during normal business hours rather than during a few short, select windows of time throughout the week.   

Boston was a lot like Seattle in this regard.  There was a public pool less than a mile from where we lived that closed just before we got there because repairs were just too expensive.    I dabbled with various YMCA pools there, which ranged from nicer pools at new Ys in the suburbs, to ridiculous 20-yard pools closer in to the city.   We didn't have a car, so accessing decent pools was even harder and it is no wonder many lower-income people just can't swim.

Anyway, enough about swimming in general.   Let me tell you about where we swam this summer and how the kids progressed.

In late March I re-joined the Y again, with the kids, instead of with Jack, who mostly was at baseball while we went swimming.  As I've mentioned, the Y no longer requires kids to wear life jackets so it is a fine place to swim, although the only open swim times over the summer were Friday evening and mid-day Saturday and Sunday, which are easy to miss for other activities.

Group lessons before a kid can swim a little bit on their own have proven to be pointless, but I decided to sign D up for lessons at the Y to improve on his basic skills.   At a minimum, he got to get in the water on a Tuesday evening, when he otherwise would not have been allowed.   He learned a little and got some practice in and it was awesome that I was able to swim laps at the time.   It's hard to talk myself out of a swim, when the alternative is just sitting there waiting for the lesson to end :)   D also did 3-4 private lessons, which were pretty good, but are expensive and can only be scheduled in a competitive, early morning registration frenzy, once a month.

In addition to our local Y, the kids and I swam in wide variety of pools.

• Jack's uncles' pool in Auburn, with cousins, once in the late spring and again in late summer

• Lake Washington - this was only me and my sister while windsurfing and falling in repeatedly
• Radium Hot Springs in Alberta, which had both a warm pool and a regular pool with a water slide
• our hotel in Alberta
• Okanogan Lake in BC
  
• Hillcrest Aquatic center in Vancouver, BC, which is the nicest pool I've ever been too, with a divided 50-yard pool alongside a 45 yard activity pools (super shallow at some points, a lazy river, etc), a large hot tub and an additional outdoor pool just outside the doors pictured below

• our family friend's beach on Angle Lake, which is an awesome, clean lake

• Mounger pool, an outdoor city pool in Magnolia that I had never been to
• Great Wolf Lodge - only Derek went with his grandparents
• Cottage Lake YMCA pool, outdoors with a water slide
• Normandy Park pool, where I learned to swim and started swim team, courtesy of an invitation from a friend.   Seeing my friend's three year old independently jump off the diving board really made me think about opportunities and access.
• Vashon community pool, which also had a slide and some fun foam platforms

• Colman pool, a 50-yard, public, outdoor, saltwater pool, buried deep within Lincoln Park, which I hadn't been to since I was about 12 years old
• Bellevue YMCA pool

D made lots of progress.  He re-learned to float on his back, which was easier as a chubby 3-4 year old than as a lanky 8 year old and got quite confident at swimming a modified backstroke.  At the end of the summer he started jumping in boldly and doing belly flops.   His freestyle reached the point of getting his arms out of the water consistently, but he's not quite side breathing.   He passed the swim test, earning a wristband, at all of the pools we went to at the end of the summer and got to go in to the deep end where he enjoyed swimming with fins on.

Dd's preference is to motor around on his own with a pool noodle under his arm pits.   He's quite independent and gets to his destinations fine, but I worry he'll accidentally slip off and I doubt he realizes just how much he can't actually swim on his own.    He'll blow bubbles if asked and when he's in the right mood will voluntarily dunk under water on the count of three.   

Two days ago our local pool did in fact, truly, actually re-re-re-open.  We haven't been yet, but the schedule looks relatively good and we are psyched.

D can swim!!!

This was the summer where D learned to swim!  When I started teaching him again in late April, he had reverted back to putting his face in the water for only a second and by mid-July he could swim about 20 feet (with two breaths) and could dive down to get something off the bottom of the shallow end of the pool.   This month I haven't been able to take him very much, but he's been swimming with grandparents a few times and I think he will retain the progress he's made so far.

Getting him the opportunity to learn to swim has been a very frustrating experience for me.  To celebrate his accomplishment, or rather our accomplishment, I have made a cathartic timeline.

6 months: We go to our first parent tot lessons, where I thought "if we just keep this up, he'll never be afraid"

3 years: We have kept up a pretty regular course of lessons.  When he was three he started to make some progress in group lessons that no longer required parents to get in the water.   He had a few lessons where he was afraid, but not many.

I recognize a conspiracy among the city pools where almost all family swims are at about the same time in the middle of the day, conflicting with nap time. 

4 years: We are still going  to group lessons most of the time, at either the YMCA or the nearby city pool.   I realize from talking to other parents that almost no one actually learns to swim from group lessons.   In a 30 min group lesson, each kid is actually working on something for about 7 minutes.   It is entirely about time in the water and lessons are mostly just hanging on to the wall.

It is really hard to get to the times available at local pools.   The beautiful new Rainier Beach pool sells out consistently so if you are late, you won't get in.   Naps are no longer an issue thankfully.  The YMCA near us abruptly starts enforcing a well-intentioned but inane policy whereby kids who can't already swim must wear a lifejacket in the pool, even when they are with their parent the entire time.   This makes it literally impossible to practice anything from the lessons at the Y or to teach your kid there yourself.   It also gives kids a scary over-confidence where they think they can swim when they cannot.   Lifejackets are super useful but this policy drives me crazy.

D's daycare takes the preschool kids to group lessons two days a week in the summer!  There is no evidence of swimming, but he is in the water and it is inexpensive and convenient!

Our local city pool shuts down in January 2019 for renovation.  

I achieve the milestone of spending my 100th hour googling swim lesson options and schedules.

5 years: Some other kids can swim now.   D did a handful of really high quality private lessons at a swim school in South Lake Union.  He made some progress.  The lessons are both expensive, hard to schedule and super inconvenient.  Did I mention they are in South Lake Union?   I cannot handle this combination.   I start to wonder how any child with working parents and without a nanny ever learns to swim.

We sign up for some more fairly pointless lessons at the Y.  At least his friend is there too.  Our neighborhood pool is still closed.   The Y won't let families practice actual swimming.

As 2019 ends, the city pool renovations are finally complete, way behind schedule and marking almost an entire year of closure.  I give up on group lessons and convince D to let me teach him.  We resolve that on any weekend we are in town, we will make a point of swimming together at the city pool.   The family swim time is during Dd's nap time of course, but now that doesn't matter for my five year old.  

In January and February we swim quite a few times.   D makes some progress on being comfortable underwater.  Things are going well.   Then.... COVID-19 hits and I don't need to remind you what that was like.

6 years: D has his first covid birthday in the spring of the full shutdown.   

We play in Lake Washington in the summer and another lake near Mt St Helens (Lake Mayfield), but it's not really the same.  Somehow my dad managed to learn to swim in the lake as a kid.

The city pool opens in February, but only for adults.   I didn't make it there for a few months myself, because I had a cough.  D has a persistent (non-covid) cough also.

When we finally stop coughing in late April, we head out to a pool on Mercer Island, which is allowing kids, with reservations where each family gets a lane in the shallow pool.  This is where we start over, essentially from scratch.  We go there on five Wednesdays.  Since he basically has no school on Wednesdays (only 8 am -10 am online) we have enough flexibility to make it to mid-day time slots.  Thanks pandemic.

That first swim in late April, just before his birthday, is the only time D gets in a pool as a six-year-old.  I was on swim team, practicing every weekday morning all summer when I was six.  I need to ask my fact checkers whether it was the summer I turned six or the summer I turned seven, but the point stands either way.  I lived in the suburbs with a mom who hadn't yet returned to work after having kids.  

7 years:   By this point I am easier on myself, understanding that there were some circumstances outside my control and that if my kid doesn't swim as well as I did at the same age... well, there are bigger problems in the world.   If he doesn't swim as well as his friends, then it's a lesson in not comparing ourselves to other people.

After the five swims on Mercer Island, our local pool opens to kids in late June and we swim there nine times in June and July, reaching the level of progress I described in the intro.  We are both very excited and D is proud of himself.

Now the swimming opportunities are more abundant.   We swam a few times in a hotel pool in July (because we actually went somewhere, namely Leavenworth).  Jack's parents are allowed to take guests to their YMCA (which has a more shallow activity pool free from silly rules) and my parents' community pool is open to guests again, at certain hours.

You might be wondering about my experience teaching swimming.  I don't really have that much, but it relies heavily on trust and so teaching someone you have a relationship with makes sense.   After my first year of college I did teach a few people to swim.   Two were the kids I babysat in high school, and again that summer.  A friend of theirs and a woman from their church also came for lessons.   We did the lessons, one at a time, in a gorgeous private pool that belonged to another friend of theirs.   Only now do I realize what a privilege that was, along with the swim club my family belonged to when I was a kid.

When D and I got a bit stuck in June, I watched some YouTube videos (Swim to Fly) on teaching swimming and the thing that helped the most was telling him to to breath out through his mouth underwater.  I breath out through my nose way more, but that was hard for him.   

He's still got a ways to go, but this progress after so much time has been really rewarding.  Next up, Dd!

swimming in accessories

For Christmas, Jack's dad and step mom, gave me a very thoughtful gift of an underwater mp3 player.  I used it yesterday and it was great.  Swimming is good in many ways, but it can get boring and I definitely felt more energized.  Hopefully this will help me work up to longer workouts.

So, now, when I swim, I wear:

1. a swim suit - Because, obviously.
2. a cap - I have to get special long hair caps for my large cranium.
3. prescription goggles - I just got these in the last year or so.  They work really well and weren't expensive.
4. prescription earplugs - I've relied on these since I was about 13.  While, I don't wear them for "social" swimming, they are essential for athletic swimming where I have to turn my head just so.  I might have outgrown the frequent infections that prompted the plugs, but now they're just a habit.
5. an mp3 player - It uses bone conduction, to pump music into my ears through my cheekbones.  How cool is that?

Note that I do not have, not do I intend to acquire, any pictures of myself wearing all of this paraphernalia.  Just use your imagination and be glad I don't wear a nose plug...

swimming fun time

 

I love swimming.  In my own, non-extreme way, it has been part of my regular life for as long as I can remember, so it’s important to me that D learn to swim well enough to feel comfortable in the water.  We’re doing “lessons” with some other families we know.  Jack could use the practice too :)

30 for my 30th: goals are great

Five or six months ago, my friend in Boston mentioned some goals she had before her 30th birthday.  I was inspired and on the plane ride home I came up with 30 personal goals. 

a Texas wedding

Over the weekend we flew down to Austin to attend the wedding of my wonderful cousin Amanda to a great guy named Ryan.  We camped two nights with most of the wedding guests at a beautiful, out-of-the-way place near Dripping Springs, Texas. 
This was their first dance.

We got to feel warm again (hot actually, it was in the 80’s), swim in a great water hole, witness a touching ceremony, have a campfire and do some night swimming in a pool while enjoying a live band out in the woods.  We also ate tacos and played beanbag toss and hacky sack and caught up with my non-Pacific-Northwest family.

They also had fun decorations and perfect weather!

After the wedding, Jack and I spent another night in Austin with my parents.  We walked around and saw the state capitol, the damned up river/like that goes through town and went kayaking in the morning, before it got too hot.  
As far as wildlife goes, we saw one land snake, one water snake, some pretty water birds and about a hundred turtles sunning in the river. They might not qualify as wildlife, but the dogs at the leash-free zone on trail along the river were a delight to watch. I also enjoyed seeing the dapper beagle at the wedding.

Austin has had a lot of rain recently, so the wildflowers were beautiful and miraculously the bugs weren’t bad, even though the famous Austin bug-eating bats played an April fool’s trick on us and simply didn’t come out of their bridge roost.  We waited from 7:50 pm until 9:15 along with several hundred other would-be bat watchers, but no luck.

We ate our fair share of tex-mex fare at Chuy’s and Oasis, by lake Travis.  Here we are with our impressive “cathedral oak” trunk table.

Live from the Dead Sea, this is Cari and Jack!

 

Okay, this isn’t really live.

We took a day trip to the Dead Sea from Jerusalem.  As you probably know, the shores of the Dead Sea are the lowest land on Earth  at 377 meters below sea level.  It’s salinity is about 34%, which is about 8 times more salty than the ocean.  It isn’t quite the saltiest body of water, but it’s right up there.

The extra buoyancy is just as weird as you might imagine.  Jack is pretending to read a newspaper.

The minerals are extremely potent and they really hurt when you inevitably get some up your nose or in your eyes, or even on your lips.  Hence the rule about not swimming on your stomach.  The lifeguards can shout this in quite a few languages.

The salt forms neat crystals on the shore.

There’s also lots of strong black mud.  There’s a big industry around cosmetics and health products from the area.  The Blue Lagoon in Iceland really did make my skin feel amazing, but I can’t say the same for the Dead Sea. 

We read that there’s more oxygen than usual there as well as some powerful effects from various minerals, even in the air.  I can say that Jack was pretty darn hyper on our way back, or at least he was for the first hour we waited at the bus stop. 

We watched sunset … from the bus stop.