Swimming Lessons

Gabe and his buddy Brayden have been taking swim lessons at the pool this week. We signed up for private lessons with Alexa, who is a great instructor and has already taught Gabe so much. He's already doing the front crawl by himself (I think that's what it's called) and is diving in the water to retrieve toys. And he's going down the water slide all by himself, which is a big deal for Gabe, who wouldn't even attempt the water slide when we went to the Wisconsin Dells a few months ago (not even when we tried to bribe him to go down the slide with the reward of ice cream! I know, bribery isn't a great solution, but we figured if he only tried it once, he'd get over the fear and realize how much fun it is!)
Anyway, I took the boys to their lesson today and felt so bad for poor little Cooper. It wasn't an open swim time, so I couldn't let Coop swim too. So as we pulled up in the parking lot in front of the pool, Cooper yells, "Yeah! Swimming!" I had to explain to him that this was just for the big boys, and that he'll be able to swim some other time. He looked at me with those big sad eyes and said, "But I'm a big boy mom." Ahhhh. We walked Gabe & Brayden into the pool to meet Alexa, and watched them for a couple minutes, and then left to go to the park. Cooper, although he wanted to swim so bad, didn't throw a fit about not being able to swim like the typical three-year-old would. He's such a good boy! I took Cooper & Chloe to the park while the boys had their swim lesson and then decided to go to the family swim time tonight so that Cooper could swim and didn't feel too left out. He had a blast. I forgot the camera for the family swim tonight, but did take a few pictures of swim lessons this morning and our time of play at the park.
Below, Gabe coming out of the water slide. The impressive part is, he is doing it by himself and goes completely under water before popping back up!

Here's Gabe doing the front crawl with Alexa & Brayden watching.

Here's Cooper on the spinning seat at the park...a happy boy, but very dizzy after this ride!

Here's Chloe stopping for a quick photo. She was too busy checking everything out to stop for a picture the rest of the time :)