10.30 tuesday through friday is an important time in our home.

we have started swimming lessons.

babies and sebastian.

and of course the babies need escorts because they are young and wimpy and their mindset seems to be if you want us to hang out in the frigid water you’re coming in and suffering as well. and believe me, we suffer.

the girls have four bathing suits. two bikinis and two malliotts, with ruffles, of course. identical. but for swimming lessons, they wear 1920 style elbow to knee bathing costumes. jasper and sebastian’s are blue with sharks on them, carys’ sports a hot pink one that has mermaids with gracefully floating hair, while sela’s is purple and white and has large flowers across the back and bodice.

around 9.45 we begin gathering up towels and suits, and change into our own swimming gear. we put the babies in their swimming nappies and a regular nappy just in case they have accidents on the way to the pool (as all three did monday). i prepare a snack for sebastian and the babies. at 10am we all look at the clock and get that cold icy feeling in our stomachs that is nothing to the cold icyness of the chlorinated water we know we will be in in one half of one hour.

at 10.10 we are out the door.

today it was spitting rain. what are the odds of that. yellowknife is technically a desert, but the rain has been sheeting down today. my parents have one umbrella. so my dad raced four times to the two vehicles, each time holding the umbrella over a female carrying a child. then he held them over us while we organised baby into the car seat, and then slid into our own seats. sebastian had his favourite "winniepoowellies" and so he wore those with his new nifty spidermain raincoat and was a happy chappy. why avoid the wet when you are preparing to get into the swimming pool, which is pretty much a wet place? talk to my dad. chivalry is not dead.

the city’s one public swimming pool is less than a five minute drive away (maybe five if you hit the one stoplight….welcome to yellowknife, population 16,000) and reverse the above paragraph.

we kick off shoes, tell sebastian he will walk with grandad into the boys changing room, and lita, mum and i disappear into the girls changing room, where we whip off the regular nappies, their outside clothes, our own outside clothes and carefully avoiding the showers, head out to the pool area.

sebastian and i chat until his teacher comes to collect him for his class. then they are off. sebastian is in the teddy bear silver class and i try to monitor his skill and progress, but it is hard, because i am in the water too. oh yes, procrastinate as i try, pulling out the "oh i don’t want to go into the water until i know my oldest is safely settled in his class", eventually i have to get into the water. sometimes above the crotch. the first day, the water temperature wasn’t so bad, but yesterday, i guess not enough kids had peed in the pool and warmed it up yet, because i was sure i could still see the thin veneer of ice pieces floating on top of the pool. regardless.

there are toys and the babies are meant to splash around with the toys and reach underwater for them and smack the surface of the water. but pretty much only one of the babies does. surprise, jasper. seriously. jasper, willingly participating in a sporting event that doesn’t offer food as an incentive.

he grins throughout the lesson. loves it.

the girls, possibly more sensitive and aware that the water is so cold the hair on their mother’s legs is standing straight out at attention, are not as enamoured. carys, loyal girl that she is, has been unhappy three days straight, while today sela really let loose and bellowed her displeasure.

but we float and pretend this is fun, and teeth chattering, clap when jasper slides by with a hand under his back, his head in the water. we lift the girls out of the water and watch their faces relax, and then tighten again when they hit the water.

i observe sebastian jumping or practising his kick, and i watch my dad watching all of us. that’s only when i am not watching the clock, which has those typical four hands that clock seconds, as typical swimming pool clocks do. they must be magic, because believe it or not, the time does pass quickly.

finally finally, it is time to get out of the water and we sprint (we ignore the no running rule, i am too cold to be a good example to the next generation), to the hottub. and we slide in, and suddenly life is and our bodies are warm again. the babies are grinning, and the instructor comes over and observes carys and sela floating on their fronts backs and fronts. no one wants to leave the pool.

babies (wimpy) aren’t meant to be in hottubs for very long, and my special babies resent this rule. they cry when we haul them out. the only reason we get out is peer pressure – the head lifeguard eyeballs the sign that talks about babies not being in the hot tub and stares significantly at us – i think we should hold the class in there. there are only five babies in the class, and since my three make up the majority, if we took a vote on it, it would pass. the kids definitely accomplish more in the warmth.

then we quickly change, and throw biscuits at the kids before they start crying too loudly. then we dash off home, hang up swimsuits and start with lunch.

it is 4.41pm, in less than 18.5 hours the next swimming lesson will be over. not sure we will sign up for the next class.