Sunday, October 11, 2009

Blaise Balas: Aqua-naut!

In her last post, Erin alluded to a new adventure Blaise would be undertaking today. Having returned from said adventure, I'm happy to say it was a great success: Blaise LOVES swimming!


Her parent-infant class meets once a week at the MIT Athletic Center. Class lasts about 25 minutes and is a very low-key introduction to the water for little ones betweek 6-18 months. The pool at the Z Center is great and as you can see Blaise had a great time splashing around with her mom. We went into the whole thing figuring there was a not-small chance she might just freak out and not have a great time being in the water...you never know, right? Either way, we figured it was definitely worth the new experience.

The end result was just a ton of fun all around. Blaise was cool as a cucumber while she was getting into the water and only hesitated a little bit the first time her face got splashed. Any wariness she may have been harboring gave way rapidly to the realization that she could splash around in the water like a wild child. She spent the whole class waving her arms and legs around like mad and giggling away at Erin blowing bubbles at her under the water.

What about the tube? Not really much of an issue as it turns out. It's sealed tight at her belly, so not much of anything can get in, and all we did was put her in a t-shirt so the other parents didn't freak out at the sight of large abdominal scars and a plastic appliance. She also now has some adorable clownfish swim diapers that unfortunately had to get covered up with a vinyl diaper that the Z center sells. Chalk this up as another really fun, normal thing we can do with her...we're just hoping she keeps enjoying it so much. I swim like a brick (I'll even go so far as to say like a dead brick) so I'm particularly excited to have Blaise be comfortable in the water.

So that's what we're going to be doing with our Sundays for a while to come. Hopefully we can get some Blaise & Dad time in the pool soon, or at the very least Dad can hit the track while Blaise hangs out in the water with Mom.

2 comments:

Erin said...

Just want to add that this is Blaise's first class at MIT and we took plenty of photos. That way we won't have to embarrass her in 17 years by following her around campus with the camera as she heads to 8.01.

Gran said...

I remember enrolling you in aqua-baby class at the Y when you were the exact same age. You loved it too!
I just bet you still sneak one photo as she heads to 8.01.