Welcome to my life story for June. If you aren’t familiar with the life story series, it is a personal project that myself and several other photographers are participating in. It’s a monthly reminder to photograph the little moments in our own lives – the moments that tell our stories.

Summer is in full swing here and after skipping swim lessons for my oldest daughter last summer, I have vowed to have her in lessons as often as possible this summer. She started this week and before her first lesson, there were several protests along the lines of “Swimming is boring!” and “I don’t want to learn how to swim!” (All of her protests stemmed from her great dislike of putting her face in the water!)

After some tough love from me (“You have to learn how to swim, it’s not negotiable!”) she relented and apprehensively got ready for swim lessons…

Flash forward to day three of swim lessons. While she’s not ready for the Olympics just yet, I feel confident in declaring she no longer thinks “swimming is boring”.  In fact, I would say that she thinks everything about swim lessons is fun!

First, there is the wardrobe. For some reason, picking out a swimsuit to wear to swim lessons is far more exciting than picking out regular clothes…

When she is dressed and ready to go, we head to the pool.  When we arrive she scampers over to the pool and hops in.

The lessons are thirty minutes long and there is a lot going on during those thirty minutes.

They practice all sorts of things, like kicks…

And back floats…

And then it is time for the dreaded “putting her face in the water” part of the lesson…

I am not so sure what happened to my child who hated putting her face in the water…  I wonder if she drank mermaid potion when I wasn’t looking?

She is super proud of the progress that she has made and no longer thinks “swimming is boring”!  And I am really proud of my mermaid girl!

I hope you enjoyed the Story of Learning how to Swim! The next photographer in the Life Stories circle is Jen Snyder of Lux Amoris. Swing by her blog to see her Life Story for June!

Until next time,

Nicole