Audrey Learns to Swim!

Wednesday April 20. It's our first day in Phuket. Within minutes of being in the hotel pool, Audrey had her goggles on and was being quite brave going under water without holding her nose. (side note here- she used to not be afraid of the water. Then we had a bad experience with swim lessons when she was 3 and ever since it has been an uphill, gentle battle getting her to approach the water without trepidation) So she was playing around looking underwater, holding my hand and kicking. Then all of a sudden, she let go of my hand and started moving through the water by herself! No glug, glug to the bottom which is what usually happens (granted we were in less that 3' deep water) but actual forward motion! I was so excited I picked her up shrieking about how stoked and proud I was and yelling to Joe across the pool to watch, totally embarrassing her. I gave her a few tips on hand movement and proper kicking and she tried again. This time she went further! She was so excited and wanted to immediately play mermaids. Now obviously she's not doing proper strokes, but she is doing AMAZING in just one afternoon! I was beginning to think about swim lessons for the summer, trying to figure out if we go the rec center route again or spring for more personal lessons. But in typical Audrey fashion, she beat me to it and pretty much taught herself how to swim! (she taught herself how to read last fall and took to riding a bike like nobody's business last summer) By the end of the day today, she was swimming with her face underwater all of the way across the kiddy pool (about 12' maybe?) without needing to pop up for a breath. She was quite proud of this action!