Tonight was the first swim meet for the guys. It was a scrimmage; the team was split into two parts and they swam against each other. I cannot imagine what a real meet is going to be like, since tonight was total chaos and there were only half the people there that will be at a real meet. The guys did great things in the pool. They did much better during the meet than I had expected. They all made it the length of the pool and, in some cases, were not dead last. Andy swam in 4 events: the 25 yard butterfly, 25 yard backstroke, 25 yard breaststroke, and 25 yard freestyle. Elias and Benjamin each did two races -- 25 yard backstroke and 25 yard freestyle. Here is Andy starting in his first race. Andy's biggest problem in the water is that he keeps on popping his head up to see where the other swimmers are. I talked with him about that, but he kept right on doing it. He is so paranoid about being last that he can't help but look up and see where he is. I hope this passes.

Benjamin was amazing. For someone who participates in a somewhat lackluster fashion in practice, he really poured on the gas in the race! He really cruised up his lane and Andy insists that Benjamin finished first in his freestyle race. We have no idea because Ron was busy taking pictures, and I was busy cheering him on.

Elias also did very well in his races, but it is all relative. He still hasn't figured out the breathing thing, so every time he was swimming he would go 2 or 3 strokes and then flip over on his back to breathe, then back to swimming. Because of this, it took him a while to get down the pool. Then he had his backstroke race. It is tough to do the backstroke when you are vertical in the pool. For some reason, Elias is unable to keep his legs up when he does backstroke, so his head is out of the water (sometimes)and the rest of him drifts downward until his feet are practically dragging on the bottom of the pool. Elias is not a speed demon, but he sure had a great time and was grinning when he touched the wall. I think he was grinning because he had the totally undivided attention of the entire pool for about 30 seconds while he labored to get to the wall -- with everyone shouting encouraging things and cheering him on. He ate that up!

In other news, I visited the acupuncturist today and he has recommended that I cut dairy out of my diet (dairy is a big cause of excess damp). So, I am going to give it a shot. However, this does mean that there will be no more frozen yogurt in my smoothies. A bummer. We will see how it goes...