Claire's First Swimming Lesson

I took Claire to her first swimming lesson yesterday and it brought me right back to when I was a kid and I went to swimming lessons. Everything was exactly the same as it used to be. I was so nervous in the morning that I could barely eat my cereal and I was ready to go way to early so I ended up just watching the clock (time goes so slowly when you do this) until it was time to go. 

When we got there I wasn't exactly sure where to go or what to do so I just kinda followed the crowd and ended up in the changing room where I got changed as fast as humanly possible (this part was quite different from when I was a kid because I, of course, had Claire with me, so it was much more complicated). After changing I ended up playing around with the lock on the locker for a while before I figured out that I had to put the quarter in first, then shut the locker and then remove the key (it doesn't sound difficult now, but it seemed like rocket science at the time). Then I made my way out to the pool deck (This was also much more difficult than it sounds because I was carrying Claire in one arm and the car seat in the other and the crazy wheelchair-door-opener-button wouldn't work. I'm not actually sure how I made it through that door but the next thing I knew I was by the pool.) and found the sign that said "Sunfish". This was so surreal because it was exactly the same as when I was a kid, standing under your sign looking out at the pool at all the instructors and trying to guess which one was going to be mine (I got the one I was hoping for!). It was also pretty awkward standing there anxiously in my bathing suit with all these other nervous mom's in their bathing suits. There is just something so uncomfortable about standing around in your bathing suit with a bunch of people you don't know (and all of the mom's of the older kids were walking by smugly in their jeans because they no longer have to get into their bathing suits because their kids can go in the water all by themselves). I tried to make friends with the lady standing next to me, but just my luck, it turned out that she was waiting for another mom that she already knew and didn't really need a new friend. 
Soon the instructor came over and we got in the water. I was so nervous I could barely focus on what the instructor was saying but just followed what the other moms did and Claire really liked it! Her favourite part was when she got to "jump" in the water when we said the "monkeys jumping on the bed" poem. 
I think that if this was a pass or fail kind of swimming lesson I would have passed because there was only once that I was looking at the instructor and when I looked back the lower half of Claire's face was all wet and she was coughing up a little bit of water (whoops!). She got over it very quickly though. Soon it was time to shower, get changed and drive home. All in all it was a great experience but one thing that was very different about this swimming lesson from the ones I took as a kid was that I got to do it with my daughter and that was amazing!