Samut Saring Ceylon - Keep on swimming

Sat 12 Jul 2008 - Keep on swimming

Last Saturday was such a fine day for Li'l Ruffin to start her lessons. She donned on her swimsuit and cap, obviously unable to keep her excitement. It was her first day to be formally learning how to swim. Her siblings, Vibrant Bea and Fuzzy have been taking lessons for 2 years now and are progressing really well.

As the mom who takes them to the pool on a regular basis, it is a great time to listen to the podcasts or the book I need to finish - a perfect hour for multitasking - while I watch them and take notes, at times I bring my own studies. During this time, I have made notes to search youtube to show some strokes and dives for them to see and also read through a parenting book. We just had a nice discussion on the benefits of swimming as a regular exercise and survival skill since we came from a country of 7,100+ islands.

So far, everybody is quite content with the lessons particularly our littlest, Li'l Ruffin. Since her first day, she has been pulling her swimsuit out off her chest drawer, putting it on and sporting it around the house. On some days, it is just the swimsuit and later on, with layers of clothes on. It was funny at first but not anymore as I get to wash the suit almost 5 times last week! Well, it is a good sign that she is keen about it. I hope the interest stays even when the novelty of the swimsuit-at-home fever wears off.

Here she is on our veranda and we do not even have a pool!

As for Vibrant Bea and Fuzzy, they are both learning their breast stroke and the butterfly quite steadily; and polishing their freestyle and backstroke as well. They were struggling with the endless cough and colds that had them skip so many classes the previous months. And when a thunderstorm strikes Colombo, on a frightening season of the 2nd quarter of the year, everybody just had to get off the pool. I had to be offline too for the rest of the day ( my first modem got toasted due to lightning in 2007).

I'd like to share some photos of Lil Ruffin lately. I will post the older kid's photos on a next blog.