Ian the Swimmer!

This morning Ian visited a real swimming pool for the first time. He and I are taking a parent and child swim class at the YMCA down the street (many of our classmates were late today due to trouble parking during a big festival event, and I was reminded of why we like to live close to downtown!). After the first few minutes, in which he kept his head firmly buried in my shoulder, he got comfortable and really enjoyed himself. The class alternates between songs with water movements worked in and short exercises. We practiced kicking on stomachs and backs, blowing bubbles in the water, jumping in the pool and climbing out again. All of these activities require a lot of assistance from me, but Ian did well. His "jumping" was more like walking off the edge (or sometimes, trying to walk away from the edge to explore while I was in the water waiting for him), but he did quite well at climbing out of the pool with a little assistance. We're looking forward to next week's class. We wonder if Ian might have a future as a swimmer -- given his genetic propensity to be tall, broad, and have disproportionately large hands and feet, he could be good at it. But we'll settle for him enjoying it and being safe in the water.

Here Ian is in the locker room, having a pre-swim snack:



I'm thinking that these swim trunks will fit him for quite some time:



After swim class, we headed over to the library. Ian picked out two books in the children's section (which he proceeded to sit down and read frequently during the rest of our trip to the library). We happened to arrive just before story time began, so we stayed to hear the story. Ian was a little young to completely appreciate the series of snake stories, but he enjoyed sitting on his own yellow cushion and played his maraca (imitating a rattlesnake, no doubt) during the song portions of the storytime:



As time went on, he couldn't resist getting his library books out to look at some more. As you can see, he's no longer facing the storytelling librarian in the background (this is a man who Greg, after his trip to storytime with Ian, described as "apparently very secure in his manhood", and I have to agree.):



The next stop on our downtown journey was the farmer's market (after a brief walk through the CenterFest arts festival). I wouldn't normally attempt this many sequential activities around morning nap time, but we were temporarily homeless due to a realtor showing our loft. We got breakfast at the market, as well as some produce and the requisite loaf of bread (more on that later). Ian feel asleep on my back (it was naptime, after all), so I took my time walking around and getting plenty of exercise so he could sleep uninterrupted. As I was heading home, he woke up and requested both food and to get down and walk. Thus began our new ritual of walking home from the farmer's market together while pausing frequently to eat pieces of farmer's market bread. It can be a rather slow trip, not because Ian is a slow walker, but because he likes to stop to explore many, many things along the way, sometimes sitting down to fully appreciate a new object like a pebble. We discovered later that the auto parts store employees on the next block, who we frequently meet on our morning walks with the dogs, had been watching his journey with amusement. Ian and I were happy to see for the first time that baseball was actually being played in the Durham Athletic Park on the block next to our loft. We've visiting it frequently this year and seen the progress of its restoration. Now that it's open, it will be the home of a local college team (and possibly the location of the filming of Bull Durham 2). Ian watched the ball players warming up:



What a morning on the town!