F used to take swim lessons with a man called Mr. Jim, who was very sweet and a great swim teacher. But he belonged to the swim/athletic club in town, so in order to take lessons with Mr. Jim, you first had to pay a guest fee to get into the club. When you combined this with Mr. Jim's lesson fee, it was about $37.50 for half an hour. Oh- and did I mention that the water was so ice cold that he would spend several minutes of the lesson dunking F into the hot tub to warm her up?

It was so cold in the pool that F begged to stop after only a few lessons, and I said ok because I was going broke.

I was determined that she would swim a ton this summer so that she could become a better, safer swimmer. (She can swim underwater and dog paddle but can't tread water or do the crawl). And we've been at the pool a ton! And she still can't tread water or do the crawl.

So today we had our first lesson with Nancy who rents a lane to teach in at the public pool. This pool is still pretty cold (but F wore a hand-me-down wetsuit from a friend who's on swim team - an advantage of being smaller than the other kids is you get hand-me-down wetsuits!). But it's closer to the house. And the lesson - 45 minutes - was $20 including admission to the pool!

And F LOVED it and LOVED Nancy. She can now tread water after just one lesson and is working on the crawl. Nancy said she's really strong and thinks she'll be a great swimmer. At the end of the lesson, F got a prize from Nancy's bag of prizes - a little cuddly toy whale from the dollar store. And I'm confident I can scare up $20 a week.