Ms. Liliana Phelps

Since Liliana was a wee baby, she has adored water.  From the very beginning, Evan was adamant on pouring water on her hair, on her face, and even dunking her underwater.

 Even at 8 weeks, she adored bath time!!  Water on the face was a breeze!!

At just a few months old, she started holding her breath under water and even blowing bubbles.  Evan was super excited about that ... he said that is the hardest thing to teach kiddos.

Let me back up for new readers:  my husband is a swimmer to the bone.  He got All American in swimming and water polo in high school, swam competitively in college, and played water polo in college too.  Through highschool, he was a swim coach and in fact, I used to go watch his kiddos swim!  Through MEDICAL SCHOOL even, he had a little side business where he taught swim lessons just for some extra income.  Like I said, swimming is his thing. To him, having a kid that likes swimming is a HUGE deal.  Ok, back to your regularly scheduled blog post...

As soon as it got warm enough to take her to the pool, we got her in and realized QUICKLY that she adored it.  I mean she liked it so much that the grandparents started making phone calls to us saying "we're scared she likes it too much and will willingly jump in while she's too young."  My Dad even insisted that we start teaching her THIS summer because of this.  I kind of thought he was nuts because she's so darn young, but we said, "why the heck not?"

For the last couple months we've been passing her back and forth between us in the pool, each time getting further and each time letting her stay under water a little longer.  Nothing much was coming about because of it, but she definitely knew when to hold her breath and definitely screamed in joy each time we pulled up to our neighborhood pool.

Last week Evan said "would you let me try something with her?"  I gave him my "what are you doing?" look, but agreed.

He had me let go of her and he just let her be in the water for quite a while (quite a while longer than I had been doing! hee hee) ...

And ...

The 13 month old stinker started SWIMMING towards him!  She kicks her little arms and legs and brings herself to the surface!  We couldn't freaking believe it.

I don't know if to call it swimmers intuition, if Evan was flat out crazy, or if it's a Daddy's stroke of good luck but she was awesome and SO excited every time.  She wanted us to turn her right around and do it again.

So then, we tried something else ... we put her to the side of the pool (as evidenced in her chubby self up above) and told her to walk towards the pool.  She made her way over getting MORE and MORE excited.

She looked at me like "am I gonna get in trouble for this?"

But she just walked STRAIGHT in to the pool without hesitating (not the steps ... off the ledge, just walked straight in) and swam up to the surface trying to grab on to the ledge.

The moral of the story?  TEACH YOUR KIDS EARLY to swim ... it CAN be done.  I'm not sure if all babies would be as fearless, or silly enough to take it on this early ... I don't have experience enough to say that. 

But, at 13 months, your little one could surprise you by swimming.