Sorry about being so coy about the whole thing. Despite being tucked away here in my boring little corner of the Internet I just cannot bring myself to announce to the entire world that we are going on vacation for a week.
Here's where we went.
Centerparcs is sort of, well, like camping near a rec center only you get a house. It was a nice house. The food, I have to tell you, is terrible. I am not demanding on a family vacation, I require only food sufficient to maintain life. Um, I think people must cook in those little houses a lot because the food in the restaurants was really very bad.
According to Douwe, the best part was the swimming. We can now forget all that stuff about him being afraid of water and so on, um, he's way over it. A week ago I thought I had better get him into swimming lessons because otherwise he was going to be nervous of water the rest of his life; now I have to teach him to swim post haste because otherwise he is going to scare me out of a decade of my life. He has figured out how to dog paddle and to swim underwater and a sort of half backstroke (he kicks well; his arms he mostly flails about) and that's good enough for him, he was cannonballing into the water off the walls and riding the white water rapids waterslide and going snorkeling and god knows what all.
He has firmly announced today that the idea of a swim diploma* is stupid and that I am going to teach him to swim freestyle and breast stroke. Tomorrow.
Daan dislikes swimming generally, though he enjoys getting in the wading end of the pool. I have viciously prevented everyone from "coaxing" (please read, tossing) Daan into the water as some of you may recall that this is (in my opinion) the reason Douwe has been afraid of water for so long and I have no plans to have to nurse a second set of phobias back to health. Daan is far more determined than his brother ever dreamed of being and I cannot even imagine how I would get him back into the water after the coaxing Douwe got. So Daan got to play in the wading pool and eat hamburgers. According to Daan the best part was (are you ready?).....
Bowling. Daan loves bowling. I really hope the pictures I took on the disposable camera came out because Daan really, really loves bowling. I know the ball is three times as big as his head; he doesn't care. He gets behind it on his knees, lines the ball up carefully with the little marks on the lane and pushes as hard as he can. Daan brought down the house every time we went bowling, everybody was cheering him on.
*Around here everybody gets a swim diploma. Everybody. You have to have a swim diploma. This apparently means you go to swim lessons and pass some tests which mean you can swim. If you can already swim, I hear, you still have to take some kind of swim test at school at around 8 and if you pass they issue you a belated swim diploma. An honorary swim diploma? I dunno, it's like a passport or something I think. Paul's is filed with his childhood well visits and immunization record; evidently it's that big a deal. But I can't figure out why you can't just, you know, learn to swim.
5 comments:
Welcome back!
Sounded like fun to me. How far away was the site of the swimming, etc.
It is glorious spring here. Most of the Daffodils and such have just about run their course. Your garden sounds as though it may actually produce something. Keep it watered. Sage advice, yes?
Dad
When we were at the Zandvoort (?) CenterParcs Kevin and I would try very hard - but often unsuccessfully - to find something to eat that wasn't pink or yellow. Callum is suspicious of food that is not pink or yellow, so remained quite calm throughout.
Jeannine....ah well I know you know this so why am I bothering... but ok:
They don't just learn to swim. They also learn how to swim with clothes on, how to swim under water and through a hole under water etc. All things that come in very handy when you fall into water one day. And being in the Netherldands you may have noticed there is a lot of water where you can fall in.
Don't be suprised if someday some mom will say no to douwe going along with a swimming party because he has no diploma (happened to my brother!)
It's so institutionalised here that people don't believe you can swim if you don't have a diploma.
I'm so glad you bother whenever you bother my dear. And I do understand that water borders on being the National Obsession for good reason.
I just have difficulty wrapping my head around the officialness of it all. I mean, I grew up mostly around and on coastal areas. So I know what to do with rip tides and undertow and rocks and sudden drops in the floor/temperature of the ocean and flotsam and jetsam and so on. But I never had an official lesson in any of that; offical swimming lessons consisted of learning the proper way to do the various strokes properly (and very fast) once you got past the floating and treading water stage.
But in any event, I am unclear on when the water survival part starts, as the pool near here has a list of what they teach up to 6 year olds and all of them are regular old float/swim/dive stuff. Part of the reason I will probably teach Douwe to swim at least at this juncture is that he has to know the things related to "what to do when you fall off the boat" and it does not appear to me that they are teaching that here.
Maybe they are; my reading in Dutch is not as you know that great.
But your last sentence sums it up nicely -- I have had several people be stunned that I have no swim diploma despite having spent much of my young life in natural water, both salt and fresh, and in swimming pools of various dimensions. The only diplomas I have are CPR and lifesaving (and I expect both have expired).
You know, Catherine, when *my* children will not eat the french fries (chips to you, mate, *bwah*) there is Something Seriously Wrong.
Scary food. Very scary food. Otherwise very nice.
So I guess you have laid in a nice supply of Peeps?
I haven't seen a Peep here, I wonder if they have them.
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