My little fish

Ethan has always had very active legs, from his days in my tummy to sitting in his bouncing chair. For this reason we thought he'd take to swimming and we wanted to get him in the water as soon as possible. I didn't learn to swim until I was about 10 years old and I want Ethan to pick up this important and fun skill from an early age.

Our local mum an baby group benefits from a children's pool on site and yesterday we headed down to give it a go.

The water is heated to 32 degrees so was nice and warm plus the instructor had plenty of toys and floats out for everyone to play with.

During the one hour session, we were free to enjoy the water and the toys as we wanted but the instructor came round regularly to give suggestions and check how we were doing. It was a good way to introduce Ethan to the water and I guess the stronger he becomes, the more we can start to do.

For his first time though, I stuck to floating him on his front and his back, head out the water, spinning him around and then I sat him in a baby ring so he could try kicking his legs. 

He was calm the whole time and seemed at ease being in the water. He didn't wriggle and let the water hold him up. He kicked his legs a little and started to laugh and babble the longer we were in the pool so all in all, it was a great first experience in the water.

I was so happy seeing how content he was in the water that the instructor let me get my phone so I could take some photos - I just had to capture his first swim.

We'll get some better photos in the future but I'm really pleased I could commemorate the occasion. In this last photo, he doesn't look that happy but that's because we had a little difficulty getting him out the baby ring and by that point, he was quite worn out and ready for a feed.

I don't think we will go swimming when the cold weather really hits but this month I'm sure we will go a couple more times. Then in December we go to CenterParcs so he should be ready for even more fun in the water.