learning to swim!

Ok, so I hope that I wasn't misleading when I said we're teaching Cole how to swim. Obviously he can't really swim yet, but he can put his head under the water which is HUGE to us. This has been going on for the past month or so. We started out by watching a few youtube videos that gave us a few pointers.

First of all, if I had known that babies just naturally have this instinct that they know not to inhale when they're submerged under water, I would not have been so crazy paranoid when taking Cole to the pool before. So that was the first thing that I needed to get over which made it really easy for me as his mom (believe me, my job is hard) to let Steve put his head under water. 

Another pointer from the video was to just make it fun. Steve was really good at this. The first thing we did was sing "Ring around the rosies" and when we got to "...we all fall down!" we would put his head under water. Cole loved that! He wanted to do it over and over and before we knew it, he had no problem with stepping off the ledge and going completely under water.

And that is pretty much where we are still at. He does kick his legs when we tell him to, and he's started wiggling his whole body when he's completely submerged so that's a step in the right direction; he just doesn't really swim yet. But we're getting there! And I feel so much better about being at the pool with him now! That little boy loves the water! And he loves that silly tennis ball :)

Ok, now you can watch the video. There's actually not very much footage of him "swimming" at all. Sorry :/