Swim Lessons Summer 2011

My brother Desmond has an extended school year that reaches well into the summer leaving him only three and a half weeks of summer vacation. To him it's "only 3.5 weeks" to me it's "THREE AND A HALF WEEKS?!?!?". JK. It's not quite that bad but all the same, I wanted to find some activities to keep him and Lorelai fairly occupied. It hit me during his first week of vacation while I was watching Lorelai, who, while wearing a life jacket, fearlessly threw herself into the pool over and over again. Hello! We should have signed them up for swim lessons! My friend who is the swim coordinator at the local JC let me know that there was a two week class starting the following Monday and there were still plenty of spots open.
The kids were very excited and that first lesson was so fun.

I was so proud of my brave little girl and when she ran up to me I promptly wrapped her up into her towel and she gave me this less than excited look. Des also really struggled with the whole 'walking while wearing a towel' thing and corralling them into the car was not fun at all. I remembered this pattern by Made that I was impressed by but I thought it wasn't likely that I would need it anytime soon.

I went back to my parents house and quickly convinced my mom that we needed to buy it and some beach towels right away. She was easily swayed to my point of view and I got right to work.

The pattern is for sizes 9mos to 4T so I whipped up Lorelai's first so I could judge what adjustments I would need to make to enlarge it for Bekah and Des.

My printed out patterns ended up looking like this...

Some major alterations were involved but it all worked out. Des got a Transformers robe.

It took two beach towels to make Desmond's and Bekah's robes.

On the inside of Desmond's robe I used some transformers cotton for the lining. On Bekah's robe I used the same orange fabric I used for the bias tape.

Lorelai's is easily my favorite. To line her's I used pink zebra stripe and I think it coordinated so well.

She is such a cutie little poser for the camera. Her robe pooches a little funny in the picture because she is wearing a tutu swimsuit.

All in all the two weeks of swim class were an excellent experience. Even though the classes seemed so short Lorelai learned a ton and all three kids made some major improvements. On the last day all the kids got to jump off the diving board. The guy in the water was not her teacher (her teacher is on the board with her). Lorelai had only met him that day. She is one strong brave little girl. I couldn't be a prouder mama.