First Swim

Memorial Day weekend was filled with a lot of "firsts" for EH.  Among those first, "first time swimming" and "first time in a lake!"

We drove to Moraine State Park and went to their beach area.

On Saturday morning EH and I went to Target so that DH could do some loud hammering and drilling in the laundry room.  While there we decided to get him a summer toy - an infant swim tube!

I chose this particular tube over the other option that they had available because it seemed like a more substantial and sturdy tube, and we didn't want EH leaning over and falling out, or getting water in his face and then getting scared.  We want water to a fun thing for him before we start doing things like putting his face underwater.  The other infant tube that they had at Target had a much better sun shade than the one we got, but the tube itself was just a thin little tub on the outside with mesh between that and the baby.  It's great for introducing your baby to water but it didn't hold the baby out of the water as much as this one did and his hands would be in the water.  Since I know that most of the use this tube is going to get is in rivers and lakes (as opposed to chlorinated pools) I wanted to keep him slightly more out of the water than usual.

As expected, EH cried when we first put his feet in the water (it was pretty cold) but within minutes he was used to it and having a blast!  The entire time he was in the water he kicked his feet ferociously like he thought he was running!  It was so cute.  At times he would kick so hard that his little body would be rocking back and forth, but he was still smiling and screaming with delight, so we knew that he was just having fun.  A little girl swam up to him and starting going underwater.  Every time she popped her head back to the surface EH screamed in excitement!  (Really the whole day involved a ton of screaming, but the good, excited screaming.)

We had fun, but I'm not sure if we'll make that trip on any sort of regular basis.  It's about 45 minutes away, which is quite a hike for swimming. The place was really crowded and the water seemed so dirty.  That might not be a big deal once EH is a little older, but he kept trying to lean over the tube to try to put it in his mouth, and that water seemed so dirty that I really didn't want him ingesting any of that!  The other weird thing is that there were a TON of people smoking there.  We don't really go to many places anymore where smoking is really prevalent so we were shocked by the amount of people smoking at Moraine and I was frustrated by the fact that we were breathing in smoke with every single breath. 

But I don't regret going one bit.  EH definitely enjoyed it and we are looking forward to taking him swimming in many other places this summer!