Swimming In The Atlantic

Really just swimming in general.  See, I have a daughter that loves water.  If she's fussing, all I have to do is fill the bathroom sink up with a few inches of water, let her feet touch it, and zzzzt!  No more crying.  It's miraculous.  She loves water.

But we seem to be doing our best to break her of that.

Remember how I was raving about my swim lessons, and how I was willing to haul my baby-laden ass out to Brooklyn for them, because I was so impressed by their no-flotation devices, swim-baby-swim! ethos?  And we loved the first class.  It was small, Willow kicked and paddled without any prompting at all, the instructor was good with babies, letting Willow get a sense of her and gently borrowing her from me when Willow was ready. 

But last week, there was a replacement instructor, and everything that I loved about the class was gone.  It had doubled in size (what happened?  Nobody had to work that day?) the instructor grabbed Willow and wasn't clear with me about what he was going to do with her so Willow freaked and spent the last 2/3 of the class crying, and then he brought out flotation devices.  I was flabbergasted.  Obviously, flotation devices not the end of the world or as bad as, say, torture instruments or anything.  But under the commute-from-Jersey circumstances, I wanted to smack him.

And then on Saturday, we took her to the beach.  She's already dipped a toe in the Pacific, but that was a while ago, and it was, needless to say, significantly warmer water.  (Or maybe it needs to be said.  Just so everybody's clear, the water in Hawaii?  WARMER.  Also it's warmer at the beach than it is at your house, not the other way around like it is here.)

(Everybody tell Dave "Don't wear that hat, Gilligan."  Seriously.  But everybody also say, "Happy Birthday, Dave!  Know that the hat comment is said with love!")

Again, at first it seemed like it was going really well.  Dave held her feet in the wet sand, and then a wave came up and tickled her toes and she danced a little jig.  And then he dipped her down into a wave, and her face got splashed and she didn't even care.  And then he walked out into the waves with her, where I was unwilling to follow because of aforementioned coldness but the fact of the matter is that Willow is a Jersey Girl, not a Hawaii Girl, and she'd best get used to water this goddamn frigid temperature because it's just a fact of life here, and not grow up all spoiled like me. 

All of this was fine and dandy.  But then we put her down in the sand and she hated it, and so we had to dunk her in the water to wash off the sand, and that was understandably traumatic, and we were so stupid we actually did it twice, and then we went home.



So now I'm scared.  Our next swim class is tomorrow, and it will be the original instructor, but what if my water baby is broken?

That would be tragic!