Swimming Fun

While Julia admits to still wishing we were on vacation, one of the highlights of being home, for her, is getting back to Level Two swim lessons.  Her daredevilry at the hotel pool paid off, and she was fearlessly cannonballing off the dock during her lesson today.  In the past, she was dubbed, by her teacher, "The Queen of Belly Flops," which Julia proudly repeated to everyone she knew.  The reason for her belly flops being, of course, her slight nervousness at jumping off the dock, and her choice to simply drop her body down into the water rather than jump up into the air.  But belly flopper no longer, she took great joy in catapulting herself off the dock and splashing under water cannonball-style this morning.  In fact, she had so much fun at swim lessons that she begged to go back to the pool for free swim this afternoon.  Of course, she can't jump off the dock during free swim, but that's okay, because she keeps plenty busy with other activities.

Julia often likes to play "swim lessons," in which she is the teacher and Madeleine and I are pupils.  Sometimes we even get to play a few of the games she plays in class, like "Red Light Green Light," and "Fishy Fishy Cross My Ocean."  And *sometimes*, if we're reeeeally lucky, we get to play any number of Julia's made-up games, which all have completely arbitrary and often ever-changing rules.  Some of her best ones include:

-PIZZA BABY.  The object of this game is to hold hands and swing each other back and forth chanting, "Pizza baby, pizza baby, woo-woo-woo!"  Swimming truly does not get much more riveting than this.

-WORM WORM.  This game pretty much consists of curling your body into a ball and sitting in the water doing nothing.  There are no winners or losers.  There are no other steps to the game.  A good one to play if you're feeling lazy.

-FROGGIE.  A favorite of Madeleine's, the players must hop raucously about the water in the shallow end of the pool ribbiting loudly.  Again, no winner or loser, no clear goal or objective to the game.

-FAST SLOW.  Now this is where things start to get complicated.  The rules of "Fast Slow" are as follows: whoever is in charge (usually Julia) calls out one of four instructions.  1) If she calls "Fast!", then the other two players must move at fast speed.  It is then determined, by the person in charge, which player was better at being fast.  Sometimes this is done by calling the less fast player out, and sometimes it's done by calling out the name of the faster person.  Therefore, it's sometime confusing to know whether I am the winner or the loser.  2)  If the person in charge calls "Slow," the other two players must move at slow speed.  The decision-making on winner and loser follows that of the "fast" call above.  3)  If the person in charge calls "Medium!" then the other two players must NOT move at a moderate speed as might be suggested by the word "medium," but must instead alternate fast and slow movements.  Once again, a winner and loser are determined by the person making the calls.  4)  If the person in charge calls out "Pink!", then, in Julia's words, "you do the thing you think I want you to do."  Whether or not the players executed pink properly is all dependent on Julia and what image was in her head when she called it out.  For instance, today when she called "Pink!", I jumped up and down.  "Yes, Mama!  You win because that's what I was thinking of!  JOY OF DELIGHT is what I was thinking!"

And lest you think the above games don't offer enough for us to do at the pool, new games are constantly being created.  For example, at free swim today:

JULIA: Okay, Mama, let's play a game called "Black Tooth White Tooth."  If I call out "Black Tooth," you put your face in the water.  If I call "White Tooth" you...uh...hang on a second...you...you...uh...
ME: Is this a real game or are you making it up?
JULIA: I'm making it up!  Okay, you...raise your arm in the air.  And if I call out...uh...BROWN TOOTH, you...uh...
ME: Ate some chocolate?
JULIA: No.  You...do a back float.  Okay, ready?  BLACK TOOTH!
ME: (putting my face in the water)
JULIA: WHITE TOOTH!
ME: What do you do for white tooth again?
JULIA: Uh...I forgot.
ME: I forgot too.
JULIA: How about...uh...
ME: Was it wave your arms?
JULIA: Oh, yeah!  That's it!  It was PUT YOUR ARM UP IN THE AIR!

And so forth.

Here are a few videos of the kids swimming around today, mostly doing legitimate swimming strokes and games, because let's face it, by the time we got to games like "Worm Worm" and "Black Tooth White Tooth," I was so invested in playing that I forgot all about my camera.