Mace's Swimming Summer

Mace is 3. At the beginning of the summer, he was wearing one of these to swim:

Or one of these:

We live in Florida, so that means that he needs to learn to swim at a very young age. There's water everywhere in Florida, not the least scary of which is the unfenced, alligator-infested creek that borders our property and is a mere 10 steps from our back steps. So fine, proactive parent that I am (stop laughing), I signed Mace up for swim lessons in June:

And he did fine -- but not well enough to move up to the next class. I was a little disappointed -- I sort of expected him to just catch on and take off -- he wasn't afraid of the water at all (unlike his older brother, who screamed bloody murder throughout each of his swim lessons when he was Mace's age) and I have been completely under-parenting this child. I assumed that since he was getting absolutely no pressure from me to succeed that he would, naturally, succeed. So I won't say I took his failure to advance as a personal failure, but that's only because I know I'm not supposed to say I took his failure to advance as a personal failure.

Between Heidi's house and the Y pool, Mace has been in the water alot this summer. At least three or four times a week. Those of you up north may not think of the last weekend in September as "summer" but that's because your leaves are changing and you are pulling out the super-attractive corduroy pants right now -- it's still 92 degrees everyday here and probably will be until almost Thanksgiving, so we'll be swimming for a few more weeks. Last week at the Y pool, I made Mace take off his back floatie that he likes to use in the Y pool, and he started swimming underwater. He just took off. Yay Mace!

So today at Heidi's, apparently emboldened by his success at the Y, he decided to abandon all fear. I was already a little nervous -- I knew he was going to be wanting to swim without his special suit today so I wore my bathing suit just in case I needed to get in and save him. So I'm the nervous nellie in the video below trying to get him to jump at the right time and in the right place (I don't think that means I'm a control freak, I think that means I was actually parenting for once).

It's one thing to jump off the edge of the pool and basically land with your hand already on the ladder where your mom in her mismatched bathing suit is waiting for you. But it's completely another thing to do this:

Ha! See? It looks to me like my under-parenting approach is really starting to bear fruit. I think I need to write a book to enlighten all the other mommies.