Summer Swim Update

About 2 months ago, we shared news of our summer ambassadorship with SwimWays. You can read details about the different swim training gear and tips they provide in our first post. Today I’m sharing an exciting swim update: Maggie has started to swim on her own and Alex has moved up to the level Maggie started at! It’s been so neat to see them move up in their skills and “swap” in and out of the SwimWays swim training products. Here are Maggie and Alex early June:

Both were a bit nervous to get back in the water. Maggie was so close to swimming last summer, but over the long, cold winter she lost a lot of the confidence she had in the water and forgot a lot of the skills she learned last summer in swim lessons. Alex wasn’t even 2 last summer, and didn’t do much swimming outside of the baby pool. She was very hesitant to get into a pool this summer and didn’t want us to let her go, even with a flotation device on.  In the picture above, Maggie is wearing the Power Swimr and Alex is wearing the SwimWays Swim Vest.  Wearing these helped their confidence in the water tremendously. 

The Power Swimr gave Maggie the feeling she was “swimming on her own”. She had to use her arms and legs the way she would while truly swimming. She quickly started cruising around the pool, kicking as hard as she could. The Swim Vest held Alex up enough that she was ok with us not holding onto her. She started trying to kick around after her sister. 

We spent the last 2 weeks at the beach. The girls took swim lessons in the bay while we were there. After lessons, we spent most of the day practicing together. As of yesterday, Maggie is officially swimming on her own! 

She has a way to go still, but she can swim back and forth between Tom and I. She’s even started to try true swim strokes. After swim lessons, Alex is now so confident in the water that she doesn’t want her Swim Vest anymore and wants to swim around with Maggie’s “hand me down” Power Swimr. I am so proud of them. I’ve loved the water and swimming my whole life and it’s a true joy to watch my girls learn to swim and advance in the pool.