Little Fish

We are back home in Portland after almost a month in New York. We took Jude swimming almost every day while we were back east, and he is getting really comfortable in the water.

Here is a video of his first time really swimming on his own:

We got him a swim trainer, which is basically a bathing suit with removable floaties around the body. Dedicated readers may remember it from a few months ago. He started with eight floaties, and is now down to six.

Jude's favorite thing to do in the water is to tell me to do back flips, front flips, or handstands. Here I am doing a handstand while he observes.

Here's a video from the last day of our trip. You can see that he has gotten a lot faster and kicks his feet more than he did at first. He has to work harder with less flotation assistance.


Overall, swimming was a lot of fun this summer. Jude is getting better about getting his face wet, but still doesn't do it very often. He always says that he wants to jump off the diving board, but actually he is kind of wary of jumping in, even from the side of the pool. He will jump in off of the ladder or steps, when he is closer to the water. He swam a lot in the lake up at Baekeland Camp for the first week, and that was a lot of fun. He liked climbing up on the windsurf board, balancing, and then jumping in. I hope we can continue to work on his swimming now that we're back in the Northwest!