Our Little Family: swim meet

I've looked into swimming for the girls in the past. Practice is during the summer, normally the morning hours while I'm at the work. And that just doesn't work. When I heard about the JaxParks league that meets at 6 p.m. everyday I thought "that might be doable". The first practice was on Monday and here it was already Wednesday. I might be too late. Lucky for me, the Sandalwood Sharks still had some openings on the team.

Both the girls were required to swim 25 yards across the pool before they could sign up. Addison hopped in the water and swam across the pool with no problem. Morgan never got the chance because we live in Florida and it rains every afternoon. With rain comes lightning and practice was cancelled.The coach was kind enough to take my word for it and signed off on her application.

Here we are on Saturday morning. They girls have one practice under their belt. Addison freaks out when she has to do the butterfly and Morgan sinks like a rock when trying to do the backstroke. Here's Morgan getting ready for her freestyle swim.

In the younger group freestyle kind of means just getting from one end to the other. Look at her giving it everything she's got.

She made it though and I was super proud of her.

Addison spent half of the practice on Friday night crying. She was exhausted and like I mentioned, couldn't do the butterfly. Her anxiety was in full force all morning because she wanted to switch from the freestyle to the backstroke. I pulled out my supermom powers and made that happen. First up was the breaststroke.

She had her place card and was ready to go.

She did great! This is me telling her how proud I am and giving her every encouraging word I could think of. My heart was about to burst I was just so happy.

The hardest part between races was the wait. None of us knew what to expect. And the entire thing was completely disorganized. At some point Morgan declared that she was done. She did not want to sign up for the swim team and she just wanted to go to Wendy's and get a Frosty. I then pulled my mean mom card and explained to her that she committed to this and she was going to do it. Then we could get a Frosty.

So she did the breaststroke and it was one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

Addison's last race was the backstroke. She still needed some work on rotating her shoulders, but remember she only went to one practice. I think in time she could be really good at this.

Her sweet little face. She loved every second of it.

Both of the girls swim like fish. They always have. In the Spring I was worried about Morgan picking it back up, but that quickly went away. She can now dive down to the bottom to get toys. Learning the skills to do the strokes has been a little challenging, but they're getting there. I keep telling them they just need to practice.