Water Baby

Monday, June 01, 2009 at 05:57 by MJD-S in MJ • Elliot Mason
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filter water 3, originally uploaded by mjd-s.
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I have been trying to find organized things to do with EM, so that he can interact with some other babies around his own age. He’s usually only around adults so when it comes to other kids he just looks at them in wonder and isn’t really sure what to do.

At the kids playhouse often the children are much older and not interested in playing with him - although he gets mobbed by a group of elementary school girls there sometimes - they freak him out a bit with all their cries of kawaii though. The ward office is still useless in regards to information, so I’ve given up on them. I thought seeing as EM loves water so much going to the pool would be a good idea - but the big pool with kiddy area doesn’t allow babies who haven’t been toilet trained yet.

Then I came across a swimming school nearby. Their website gave out very little information, except that they have baby classes. So I went in there to find out about it.

It’s called Leo Swimming School and they have been around for years - in fact Yoshi used to go to the same actual school when he was an elementary school student. They offered us a free lesson, so on Friday EM and I tried it out, with Daddy observing us.

Well. EM LOVED LOVED LOVED it. It almost killed me though.

A large part of the class involves exercises which require you to lift your baby from the water right up into the air. Now this is fine for everyone else with their cute tiny little babies - but EM now weighs about 12kgs!

Also at first I thought the water would be pretty deep when I saw the other mothers standing in there - but it turns out they are all just shorties. So I don’t even have the water to help out with the weight. A month of this and I’ll be able to enter arm wrestling competitions I suspect. We also have to do running in the water, carrying baby, and bringing our knees as close to our chests as possible, and a sideways-walking-swing-baby-through-water movement - and EM has some serious drag going on - a couple of times there he got dunked… ooops.

Still not one tear during the entire class - in fact most of it he was smiling and laughing. After all it had so many of his favourite elements - water, coloured balls, being flung into the air… and of course Mum (~_^). The coach was very impressed with him because we could do everything and picked things up pretty quickly. EM even did the underwater plunge at the end of the class - and was the only baby who didn’t cry. In fact he was all “Wheeeeeeeeee! Let’s go again!” Crazy baby.

Now one issue with babies is of course the potential for wee and poop in the pool. Although there are swimming disposable nappies available, the school asks that no nappies are worn. So the babies are changed out of nappies into swimsuits in a little warm room right next to the pool, then we walk through a shower area before getting in the pool itself. The coach said generally speaking there aren’t accidents - but for first timers a short break in between taking off the nappy and putting on the swimsuit is a good idea.

EM didn’t have any accidents - although we haven’t had any in the bath yet either so maybe he understands this whole water - no pee or poop concept.

Or we are just hell lucky.

They asked us to come half an hour before class - but this was not a good plan because we had to wait around for too long with EM just getting antsy. He did “chat” to everyone though. Then we were kind of vaguely guided as to what to do - which could have been a lot simpler than it was if they’d just explained it. I got a locker key (I guess I just ask the front desk for this in the future), go to locker room and get ready myself, take towels and baby swimwear - and baby - to the warm room to change him.

The locker key you give to the coach to put in a basket at the side of the pool. The towels and nappy you leave in the warm room. There is something involving floaties but we aren’t there yet.

After walking through the showers, we can sit with the babies on a platform in the pool and they can have a little play around in the water until it’s time for warm up. Then we do a formal greeting, warm up exercises and then get in the pool for the session.

At the end of the session, the babies sit in a warm baby pool next to the big pool to warm up. After this EM wanted to go back into the big pool - but we had to take off their swimsuits and have showers, then take them back into the warm room and put nappies back on and towel dry both baby and Mums to some degree, get given back some kind of card(?) - I think it was our free pass - not sure because EM ate most of it - and said a formal goodbye, before moving back into the locker room to get dressed.

While I was getting organized in the locker room, EM led a drumming circle on one of the benches with the 2 little girls in the class. It was pretty cute.

So I’m pretty sure we are signing up for classes as daycare is seeming to be more like a pipe dream that will never come to eventuality. The other mothers in the Friday class were pretty nice and the coach and the managers were friendly. The cost is pretty reasonable too, and if I can’t go then Yoshi is allowed to do it instead which is handy.

One negative was trying to book the lesson by phone. I already loathe the telephone anyway - and it’s much worse when it’s in Japanese and you can’t read each others expressions. I was nearly in tears of frustration after that call. First off the person I talked to insisted that there was no baby class the following day - although I insisted that I was looking at the schedule I’d picked up on the Tuesday and it said there was definitely a class on the Friday - to which she replied “Oh it’s Friday tomorrow!” ...... I had to repeat my very easy phone number to her 6 or 7 times - and she still got it wrong at the end. She decided that EM was 1 year and 8 months old (no idea where she got that) - and I won’t even go into the whole drama with our names.

Turned out there was no note or message left anyway when we turned up there the next day, they weren’t expecting us but luckily we could do the class anyway.

One curious thing is that everyone mentioned to me that there were other foreigners attending the classes. Both of them are Russian. I don’t speak Russian and I’ve never lived in Russia so I’m not sure why they would think an native English speaking Australian, who speaks pretty decent Japanese and has lived here for 12 years (they asked about my background here) and who walked into the swimming school with a Japanese husband and a half Japanese child would feel more comfortable knowing that there were other non Japanese in the classes. Even if those people weren’t from the same country or background or spoke the same native language.

I guess they were trying to make me feel welcome not realizing that they made me feel further apart and isolated. Regardless of your situation it is always going to be foreigners over there, Japanese over here. Yeah I get it - maybe we are all white. Seems ridiculous with the amount of travel and information about the world that this is still the default way of thinking.

So that and the Phone Call of Drama and Pointlessness left me non-plussed, but the class was fun and good exercise for both of us. I’m sure there will be further tales from the swimming adventures anyway…...

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Comments....

Yay about baby pool class. Boo about the stupid phone call and whole white/Japanese thing.

Maybe as you get to know the other mums a bit better, you can pick their brains about options to dump, er, leave EM somewhere for a few hours. There might be other kinds of classes that he could attend, even on his own!

Alnedra
Location: Singapore
09/06/01 05:20 PM

The only option for that is daycare - all types of classes need to have Mum or Dad there.

And we all know the daycare-drama….

MJD-S
Location: lack of sleep limbo
09/06/01 05:30 PM

Water Baby

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