August 23, 2013

kribble the frog

Swimming: an essential skill for any child, as far as I'm concerned. I may not have a perfect swim technique, but I swim well and have always loved being in the water - pools, lakes, oceans - anything goes. Now, I look forward to the day when my kids are strong enough swimmers that we can spend hours in a pool playing Marco Polo, doing underwater handstands, and having cannonball contests. But first come the swimming lessons!

When Lady M was 3 1/2, she took her first independent swim class at the rec centre near our house. She was excited to take the class, but when it came to the end she hadn't passed. According to her water stained report card, she was unwilling to splash water on her face, and put her face into the water. Fair enough; these seem like essential skills to demonstrate before graduating from Splash A to Splash B.

Rather than stick her right into another class, we gave her some time to practice these skills in the bathtub and in the pool when we went swimming as a family. Slowly her confidence grew, and our little lady was happily sticking her face in the water, blowing bubbles and splashing herself (and her sister) in the face. However, with all of the other extracurricular activities happening in our world suddenly more than a year had passed.

This spring, we signed her back up for Splash A to try once again, and in a few short weeks she had breezed through the class, splashing and kicking all the way to Splash B. Though we're not on the pool deck to observe the lessons (rather, we're behind the glass, watching from afar) it's clear they spend a good amount of class time singing songs. With these merry tunes stuck in her head, Lady M would come home singing them.

Her best song reiteration was "dunk, dunk went Kribble the frog one day, dunk dunk went Kribble the frog". Yes, it was meant to be Kermit, but my child of the new millenium is unfamiliar with the fabulousness of Jim Henson and all his muppets.

Unlike I did, Lady M isn't spending part of her youth watching The Muppet Show, or Muppet Babies, so has never heard of Kermit, Miss Piggy or the Swedish Chef. No, to my sweet little four year old, "Kribble" is just some frog who likes to dunk himself in the water. Maybe this Christmas we'll pull out The Muppet Christmas Carol, or introduce her to the updated movie with Jason Segel & Amy Adams. But for now, we'll just stick to Kribble.

Over the last two weeks, we put Lady M into the boot camp of swimming lessons, with a lesson every night for 9 weekdays straight. Getting home, eating an express early-bird dinner, getting changed and to the pool by 6pm each night was a brutal, frustrating, delightful challenge to say the least. Little Lady A wanted to watch her big sister swim too, so the whole family would pile in the car and rush, scramble, head to the pool each night for her half hour lesson. As one other parent said to me, it was basically a swimming boot camp, but 9 days later my little lady collected her report card, complete with Splash B sticker, and instruction to sign up for Splash C next.

Lately she's been telling us that she wants to complete every level and become a lifeguard when she's bigger, which I think is great. But, one step at a time. For now, she and Kribble will just move along to Splash C...

1 comment:

Faiza said...

How cool would it be if Lady M was a lifeguard at Olympia?