The Deep End

I think I will be watching a lot of this during the coming summer. My boys like to go in the slide pool where D hurtles down like a bullet and E glides gracefully down as slowly as possible. But what they love most of all is the deep end of the pool and jumping off the blocks. And today I allowed D to do it without me physically in the water with him for the first time. He does a very frantic dog paddle to get to the side (so much for the swimming lessons) but he makes it and he is so proud of himself, giving me a big thumbs up sign every time he climbs out of the pool. He then went on to his lessons today where he performed really well after I bribed him with more "slide pool time". He gets so excited at swimming lessons that he has terrible difficulty staying on the step when it isn't is his turn and he wasn't listening to his teacher or trying to follow her instructions very well.
I should mention here that E is always beautifully behaved and is doing very well. he's got good technique but not much speed. However in a couple of weeks when his lesson moves to the big pool I expect he will develop more stamina.