Birthdays and Big Girl Swimming Lessons

Monday saw my baby turn into a 'big girl'.  It is funny when your children turn three, they are no longer babies, not even toddlers and heading at a rapid rate of knots towards school.  A is already wise beyond her few years.  You can have a pretty decent conversation with her about Tom and Jerry (her current absolute favourite thing in the world), she loves to 'help' with lots of jobs and when she flies out of the playgroup door to throw her arms around me, she really does give the best hugs too.

She has been extremely over excited about her birthday and as it was on Monday, she had a three day birthday spectacular with family visitors over the weekend.  She loved all of her presents especially her regulation pink Hello Kitty bike and has had the best time

Who says I can't ride my bike in the living room?

But the most incredible thing that A has done this week is start her 'big girl' swimming lessons.  The boys have lessons in a private swimming pool and although it is overdraft increasingly expensive, it has been money well spent as both boys are becoming fine swimmers.  A and I have been going to a mother and baby group at the same pool for over a year and to begin with, it was a really lovely half an hour of dancing around, singing and playing games in the pool.  I loved it and it was amazing to see how A grew in confidence in the water in just a few months.  

The she started to get a little too confident.  It was like wrestling a crocodile trying to get her to do what she was supposed to.  When we had our ten minutes without arm bands we had a real battle of wills as she was convinced that she could swim and didn't need me to hold her.  A few weeks ago, the swimming teacher tool pity on me and said that they would find a session for her to start lessons on her own as she was clearly ready and although a bit young, she was confident that the time had come.

A was over the moon.  She kept telling me (over and over) that she didn't need me any more and the two week wait until her first lesson seemed like a very very long time.  She went into the pool on her own wearing her goggles and arm bands.  She sat patiently on the side waiting her turn.  She listened and did everything she was told. And she swam her little socks off from one side of the pool to the other.  

It was incredible.  It was certainly a very proud mummy moment and even the teacher said how amazing she had been as the other two children in the group are older than her and she did just as well as them, if not better.

She came out of the pool with the hugest of smiles on her cheeky face and told me; "See mummy, I told you I didn't need you any more!"  Well until she needed carrying out of the car as she had fallen fast asleep after the exhaustion of the lesson that is.