A Little Fish

In both July and August, Matthew did two consecutive weeks of swimming lessons...for a total of twenty days.  This is the second year that we've done the lessons about twenty minutes out of town, in a woman's private backyard.  The lessons are, frankly, amazing, in terms of their results.  The instructors are very tough on the kids at first (kinda military like), but once the kids get going, the whole atmosphere lightens up.  Matthew and his cousin, M, did the lessons together, and advanced a couple of Red Cross levels.  For a kid that, eighteen months ago, refused to put his face in the water, the turnaround is amazing...this is a boy who loves water.

Here are  few pictures:

Matthew and his cousin:

He got such a brown little body during his weeks of lessons...he asked once if he looked like his Ethiopian-born siblings would look!

For a six-year-old, Matthew has quite an unusual ability to dive.  No belly-flops for this boy - he goes in fingers and head first!

His front crawl still needs quite a bit of work, though!