We've had such a GREAT Easter Break and Easter isn't even here yet. Tom took the week off which he has not done in years because usually he saves his vacation time to stay home with Shawn and Gary at in-service time when I go back to work two weeks before the kids go back to school. We just decided to figure something else out somehow, someway this year so that we could have a FAMILY VACATION where we were all off at the same time. Hurray!
The story of joy to tell today is about Shawn and the big, red slide at the YMCA. I put the boys in Splash Week at the Y this week and so every day for half an hour they had swimming, boating, and water safety lessons while I swam laps and Tom worked out in the gym. It was great fun for all of us because Tom would bike over with Shawn on the tandem and Gary would ride along on his bike. Most of the days while they were biking over I drove over early to have some extra quiet time in the jacuzzi before the boys arrived for free swim time followed by their lessons. The Y superviser wisely put the boys in different classes which gave Gary time away from his brother. I liked his teacher who really worked Gary hard on refining his strokes and swimming correctly. Gary likes to swim his "own way" and it was good for him to have an instructor who pushed him to swim correctly. He improved tremendously in one week.
Shawn was put in a class with regular kids and he did GREAT! Every day he got better, and better at listening and following the teacher's instructions. They never assigned him an aide; I never had to get in and help or intervene. Instead, I got such a good laugh every day!
My laugh on Monday was when Shawn kept splashing the boy next to him which was annoying the boy. I was in the jacuzzi watching from a distance and Tom was sitting at the bench nearest to Shawn. I yelled, "Tom! Tell Shawn to stop splashing that boy next to him!" Two firemen from the station across the street were also in the jacuzzi and the gruff, experienced looking one cackled at my request and said, "Awww, Mom, just let the kid be. It's what all boys do in pools." I let his comment sink in. It's what ALL boys do. Not what down syndrome boys do. Not what little boys who can't talk do. Not what kids who have behavioral problems do. It's what ALL BOYS DO. I don't know why I had never thought of that before. But, I looked over just in time to see another boy in the group splash another kid AND I LAUGHED! It was the kind of laugh that goes all the way down to your toes and bounces right back up to land in your heart.
I laughed on Tuesday because at the end of swim lesson they played this game called Mr. Shark, Mr. Shark! What Time is It? One kid is the "shark" and he stands in the middle of the pool. The other kids hold onto the side of the pool and yells out "Mr. Shark, Mr. Shark! What time is it?" The shark will say a number for time and the kids swim that many strokes toward the "shark". They keep asking the shark the time and he keeps telling them a number up to twelve o'clock. But when the "shark" yells back "It's LUNCH TIME!" All the kids have to swim back to the wall as fast as they can without the "shark" tagging them. It made me laugh to hear Shawn's voice yelling "Time es et!" "Time es et!" I'm not sure if anyone else could make out what Shawn was yelling, but I did. When we went to SeaWorld later it was fun for me to point out the sharks to Shawn.
On Wednesday they played the shark game again, but this time I did not hear Shawn yelling out "Time es et!" "Time es et!". I was swimming laps three lanes over and I noticed that not only would Shawn not yell out, but he would not even leave the wall. So, I stopped to tread water and figure out why he wouldn't leave the wall. The teacher kept coaching him to go, but he clung to that wall. His little eyes were huge and searching the water and when the "shark" finally yelled "LUNCH TIME" and all the kids starting swimming back to the wall, Shawn whipped his little feet out of that water so fast and was clinging to the wall with hands and feet and looking over his shoulder for (yep, I know you've already guessed it) a real shark! The poor kid's mama showed him real sharks and he put it together and no way was he going to be shark bait, no way. I must be some kind of sadist because I laughed my head off before I had a talk with Shawn about "pretend sharks" in the pool.
Thursday was boat safety day and I was treading water across the swim lane with my camera in hand trying to get pictures of Shawn and Gary in the kayaks. They put the kids in life jackets and put the kayaks in the pool and taught the kids what to do if they ever fall out of a boat. It was funny to me because they would start out letting the kids paddle the boat, the instructors were outside the boats pushing from the back and when the kids would least expect it the instructors would tip the boats over knocking the kids out of the boat into the water. There were some funny, shocked, startled expressions on the kids faces when they fell out of the boats. (When it was time for Shawn's boat to tip, Shawn clung to the side and would not fall out. It took three times for him to fall out of the boat. Shawn was completed bewildered as to why he was dumped out of the boat. But they showed him how to lie on his back and bend his knees up with the life jacket on and float and THEN he started giggling thinking the whole thing was funny. I have to admit to you that I know that he didn't really get the whole idea of it and now I am a bit concerned that the next time he is in a boat he is going to think he is supposed to tip the boat over so that he can lie on his back and float. But, well, we'll deal with that then.) The instructors were also funny because they saw me taking pictures and they kept hiding behind the boats so that I couldn't get them in the picture. I had to laugh at myself a bit, too, because I was a crazy mama taking pictures in the pool with my camera.
Today was the best laugh of all though because of the big red slide at the YMCA. It must be about 40 feet tall, a red tunnel slide that snakes down and around and into the small, middle pool. The kids have to climb up a long set of stairs to get to the top. Water is turned on which cascades down the slide. The kids are allowed to go on the slide the last fifteen minutes of the last day of swim lessons. They lie on their back because sliding down goes very fast, only Shawn would not lie down. He sat completely upright and yelled at the top of his lungs all the way down and around and into the pool with a big splash. Then he came up for air with the biggest grin and screamed with glee. EVERYBODY laughed. It was pure joy! He went down about six or seven times with the same happy yell every single time. Only, when it was his last time down, he either got caught or made himself stop near the end of the slide and just sat there yelling happily. His instructor got in and went up to the slide's edge and tried to reach him to help pull him down the last little way. He could not reach Shawn so another instructor jumped in the pool and the two of them were trying to reach Shawn to get him out.
"Come on, Shawn, come," said Shawn's teacher to which I heard Shawn answer resoundedly in his deep voice, "No. No."
I have to admit to you that it was a bit comical to see these two big teenage boys scrambling into the slippery bottom of the slide to pull Shawn out. Finally, one got a grab on enough of Shawn's trunks that he pulled and out slid all three of them into the water. Shawn thought this was so funny. And so did the instructors. They came up out of the water laughing. Then, the one said to the other "No!" with the same deep voice Shawn says "No" and then the other replied back "No, No" in the same tone. At other times, I might have been frustrated with Shawn not coming and causing a scene; but everybody was laughing and enjoying the fun of it all even down to the mimicking of Shawn's No, No. And so, I shook off any embarrassment, frustration, and laughed with everybody else because after all this is what ALL boys do--make life fun!
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