Swimming lessons

We finished our swimming lessons last week (we were taking a two-week course...) While we didn't learn to swim, we had a blast. Annabelle was pretty upset the first day when she found out that she had to get in the water by herself. (We told her that one of us would be swimming with her because we thought that we would be....so she was not prepared to "swim" solo....) It didn't help that mommy was across the pool holding Sophie the entire lesson. Once she stopped screaming, she spent the rest of the lesson sucking her thumb and pouting. I really wasn't looking forward to bringing her back the next day. I was pretty shocked when she got in the water without much hesitation the next night...she even laughed and talked with her teacher. At the end of that lesson, I was getting out with Sophie and I had to walk past Anna...she said something to me and I had to walk over to her to hear what she was saying. I was worried that she would want to get out with us (her class had another 15 minutes left), instead she asked me, "Mommy, do I have to get out now?" By the end of our course, she was an expert at blowing bubbles and relaxing on her back, she's getting pretty good at kicking and working on combining the rowing and kicking, she walked to the end of the diving board (sat down and kind of leaned into the teacher instead of jumping off). I was shocked to see her even getting close to the board! She also went down a little slide. While Annabelle saw swimming lessons as a social time...(she seemed to like the down time of splashing and laughing with her new friends more than the times when she had to actually do stuff with the teacher), Sophie took the lessons pretty seriously. She wanted to practice during all the breaks. She would always be trying out a new skill. By the end of the two weeks, she was a pro at relaxing, pretty good at bubbles and could hold her breath and be passed from person to person for a few seconds under water, she jumped in off the side and went off a HUGE slide. I couldn't believe that she did this! She did it the first time with her eyes as big as saucers...then asked her daddy if she could do it again! I think one of Sophie's favorite parts was taking a shower before getting in the pool. She would've stayed in the shower the whole time if we had let her!!