Swimming and Books

This week is April school vacation, so the girls are home from school.  Because the usual YMCA swim lessons are cancelled for the week, and because Julia so loves to swim, I signed her up for the special vacation week swim class that runs every weekday morning.  The class is a hodgepodge of kids of various levels, with Julia very clearly being leagues above the others in terms of her swimming abilities.  Being one of the youngest and least experienced kids during regular swim lessons, she seems unused to being in a position of expertise in the pool.  I watched the group of kids slowly bob on down to the deep end, supporting themselves on a noodle, which, for Julia, is pretty elementary stuff.  She is now used to swimming laps without any flotation device, so noodling her way down one length of the pool wasn't much effort.

TEACHER: How you guys doing?  You guys tired?  Great job!  This must be your first time ever in the deep end!

Julia opted not to volunteer that she regularly visits the deep end during lessons.



The next part of class was taking turns, one by one, treading water.  When it came to Julia's turn, she had the opportunity to toot her own horn.

SWIM TEACHER: Julia, you seem like a very competent swimmer.  Have you ever been in the deep end before?
JULIA: No.

TOOOOT!   TOOOOT!  Man, is she boastful or what?!?

I had to call from the bleachers, "Julia!  Yes, you have!"  I then told the teacher Julia was capable of swimming without a noodle, which allowed Julia the chance to swim her regular crawl stroke on the return to the shallow end.

After class, I asked Julia why she'd said she had never been in the deep end before. 

JULIA: Well, Mom, I thought she meant in THIS lane.

Ah, yes.  It's true that Julia's regular class usually practices in lane 1 rather than lane 2.  So Julia, forever afraid of telling an untruth, decided to take the question at its most literal.  While she regularly swims in the 10 foot deep end in lane 1, she honestly has not ever swam in the 10 foot deep end in lane 2. 

As we all know, Madeleine has always been less of a stickler for the rules than Julia, although, thankfully, at 3.5 she is truly a pretty good listener and is usually quite obedient.  Because of her early years of letting her curiosity win out over her desire to comply with the rules, however, she seems especially drawn to characters who are rebels of some sort.  Simba: the lion who disregards his father's orders not to leave their territory.  Trixie: the My Little Pony enchantress who uses dark magic to win over Twilight Sparkle in a duel.  Kristy: the loser-turned-Camp Champ in Care Bears who sells her soul to Dark Heart in order to become a winner.

So it comes as no surprise to me that, as we are currently reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," Madeleine is completely fascinated by the kids who have disobeyed Willy Wonka and are reaping the consequences.  She tends to interrupt the book with a million questions as I read, UNTIL I get to the sections in which the disobedient kids get their just desserts.  Then she becomes stone-cold silent and enraptured with the story.  I can't tell you how many times I have had to flip backwards to let her see the picture of Augustus Gloop submerged in the chocolate river or Violet Beauregard as a blueberry.

Here, in this video, Madeleine discusses the events of the book:




Considering the degree to which Madeleine has been talking about the story lately, I can definitely say her first foray into the world of chapter books has been a success.

And speaking of books, the girls collaborated on a new one yesterday.  It looks like a real page-turner:

"Simi dasit no she ate her yogt" by Madeleine and Julia Rowe.

Unfortunately, the girls have not yet finished their joint novel, which is a real shame, because I can't WAIT to find out what happens when Simi finally DOES no that she ate her yogt.