our little swimmer

Bryce definitely stepped out of his comfort zone the past two weeks, but he has come out a braver, more prepared swimmer!  He loves the water and he loves to swim, but he likes it on his terms.  I'm just happy that he has learned some survival skills that will help him in the water.

He learned how to swim to the wall and grab the edge if he needs a break.

He's even strong enough to pull himself out of the water and out of the pool.

Before these lessons, Bryce wouldn't have dared put his face in the water.  Now he can jump in and go under the water!

He wasn't thrilled about it and came up quivering most times, but he did it!

After jumping in, he learned how to take off and swim.

They taught him to roll over to his back in order to rest and catch his breath.  At the beginning of the lessons, whenever his mouth was opened he was crying or screaming.  The instructor told him the only sound they should hear is "ahhh".  It was so cute to listen to him whenever he came up because you would hear a sweet, innocent little "ahhh".

He even learned how to go under and retrieve dive sticks off the bottom of the pool.

He brought his own cars and dive sticks from home for extra motivation.

Bryce had a different teacher his first week who helped get him acclimated to the water, but this week, Ms. Maria really worked wonders for him!

We dodged the storms today, but had to run to get out of the torrential rain after the lesson so we finished our photo shoot at Jason's parent's house.  Here is Bryce with his certificate.  He passed!

We went shopping last week at the start of swimming lessons and Bryce picked out his swimming surprise he wanted if he did a good job and was a good listener and tried his best.  He got ribbons each day from the teacher (which he loved), but he was so excited to get his monster truck when he got in the car.

I hated how scared, anxious, and emotional this made Bryce, but he did a great job and learned water survival skills that will help him in the future.  This was a great program and I'm thinking of putting him in a once a week lesson in the fall/winter so he won't lose his confidence or skills  by next summer.