This weekend has seen my Daughter completely nail three separate achievements in the various activities we do with her. Everything seemed to click with her and I’m bursting with pride. It’s also a perfect opportunity to open up the blog and get it down on paper. Erm, screen….. Anyway – here’s the story:

Achievement No 1 – Swimming

The start of the weekend is always swimming lessons first thing on a Saturday morning. iBear is currently going through stage 2 and her confidence has been growing a lot over the last couple of months. When she first started out she could barely put her head in the water but recently has even been attempting to dive to the bottom of the pool.  I was a water baby as a child so it’s an activity I love doing with my Daughter and to see her progress whilst clearly enjoying herself is lovely to watch.

This weekend the teacher was encouraging the kids to change styles halfway through a length of the small pool. They had to push off on their fronts and kick their legs whilst holding their arms together like a rocket.  After the count of three they had to spin onto their backs and continue swimming to the other side. iBear has attempted this a few times but has never managed a “perfect” length.  She either has to pause, splashes about too much with her legs or doesn’t kick enough.  However, today, she nailed it.

After pushing off she glided before kicking her legs to gain momentum. At the switch point she got onto her back and used her legs perfectly (short sharp kicks under the water, no splashing) to propel herself effortlessly to the other side. I honestly think she could have swam the length of the big pool on her back.  I was jumping with joy in the spectator area. Well done her!

Achievement No 2 – Cycling

Taking iBear out on her bike is one of those activities we never seem to get around to doing much.  This frustrates me a little as we both enjoy it and I’ve been wanting to give her enough experience in the saddle ahead of this summers plan of removing her stabilizers.  Whenever I’ve mentioned this too her she’s always been very wary.  We tried it once last year in the Grandparents garden but she fell off straightaway and it was therefore game over.  But in the past week she’s been talking about it a little so we decided to give it a go this weekend. The weather’s been kind recently which meant we could use the grass for the first few attempts.

The plan didn’t start too well as we had a disagreement over the location.  I thought the local park with its nice large, flat field would be the perfect place. iBear insisted it had to be the Grandparents garden which is decent in size, but on a slight slope and covered in twigs.  iBear won.  I grumbled.

The garden

I had hold of the back of her bike and she peddled as we took off down the garden.  The last time we did this her steering was all over the place.  This time though, it felt different.  She seemed to be holding steady and didn’t seem to be relying on my arm keeping the balance as much as I expected.  We tried again a couple of more times, each one I’d let go for a little longer but kept maintaining my presence alongside her.  It was time.  I gave her a little push off, stood back and watched her go.  She nailed it (again!). I don’t know how but it all clicked and she cycled all the way to the bottom of the garden unaided.  I have a video of said event and at the end you can hear me screaming like a crazy person. We kept on practicing.  She had a couple of falls but most importantly got straight back up and on.  Time to plan a family bike trip!

Achievement number 3 – Climbing

I’m a great believer in giving our kids opportunities to try things.  I don’t ever want to be a pushy Dad but I think it’s important to expose kids to all sorts of potential hobbies.  If they don’t like them, fine, but at least we’ve given it a go.

One such activity which fits in with this mantra is climbing. There’s a centre I’d heard about locally that has an indoor climbing wall.  They do a kids session called “rock stars” which caters for ages 3-6.  We took iBear there when she was almost 4 but were conscious how little she was. She loved it though and we started going twice a month until I think the novelty wore off a little for her. It’s an activity she still enjoys sporadically and whilst she was getting better and better climbing up she always struggled climbing down.  She just couldn’t seem to get to grips (pun intended) with where to place her hands and feet .

For a third time in two days, she nailed it.  We decided to go this weekend after it casually came up in conversation and iBear pleaded for us to take her.  As soon are we were in she was straight on the wall climbing up without much effort. As she stopped I approached expecting her to want assistance on the decline.  She then looked down and started feeling her way all by herself.  Amazing!

OneDadsView

This weekend, which has left me feeling so happy and proud of my Daughter, kind of happened by accident. Other that the swimming lessons we had no specific plans to do any of the above let alone expect iBear to do so well in all of them.  Even as I write this I’m smiling at the memory of her little face beaming away. She was so happy with what she’s achieved.