I shared a bit last month about Christopher's first swim meet. Christopher has had a big change in the past 6 weeks as he has moved from being a recreational swimmer to more of a competitive swimmer. He participated in his first swim meet (above) in early December and a switch seemed to go on for him. All of a sudden, he seemed to understand that this was why he'd been swimming twice a week since he was 3 years old. As a result of his performance he was invited to join a different group of swimmers within his swim club who swim at a different pool and do more challenging practices. It's pretty interesting to see how much of a difference it can make to a kid to have somebody external from his family tell him that he has talent in a certain area. It's like he grew 2 feet!

He's now swimming at Dimond Pool three times a week. It's made logistics a bit more difficult from the perspective of the mom who has to get him there. But it is worth it as I watch a different side of my son come out -- he's extremely focused, disciplined, and hungry to do well. He's giving himself extra practices by asking to go to the Alaska Club on a Sunday afternoon to do an hour of laps, or doing what he did last night, which was to swim during Cate's swim practice time. I don't know that he can keep that up -- 2 hours of swim practice is brutal, even according to his coach. The new swim team practices are extremely difficult from a conditioning perspective (I don't think I could keep up with the number of laps and speed they do for an entire hour). I wasn't sure he'd like it, but he's thriving on the new challenge, at least for the moment. My dad, a tennis coach, once remarked that Christopher is very "coachable" and we're seeing that play out in the pool right now.

So, we'll see where this all leads. It's possible that the rigors of this new swimming schedule will wear off on him and he'll lose some of his current enthusiasm. But for the moment, I'm enjoying seeing this new joy in him and this new discipline that is spilling out into homework, his work at school, and other areas of his life. It's like my little boy all of a sudden has grown up!