So all summer as I have been training for a triathlon, I have had to train for the swim which I thought was going to be the hardest with all 3 kids home and a husband doing a second job renovating our old house aka no time to slip away and train peacefully by myself. BUT this ended up being my FAVOURITE thing to train for with my kids out of swim, bike, run!
It helps that my kids are fish and looooove swimming, and dont need me to swim. Madison can actually swim without floaties now but my rule was while I did laps she had to have them on because shes not that strong yet and I am not able to watch her every second.

So basically every swim day, we would gather everything up; goggles, swimming barbies or ponies, floaties, towels etc and head to the pool. I would try and time it for the babies nap time but sometimes that didnt happen so for that I would say you have to have a happy happy baby like Matthew for this to work.  He would sit in his carseat and play with toys, the girls would come over and talk to him every so often and I would pop out between laps and he was happy as can be (not every time-there were a few times I had to get out and give up on my laps and hold him but that only happened once or twice all summer I think)

Key to the success of this was bringing barbies or ponies the girls could play with in the pool while I swam. You'll see in one video here, there were others in the pool a few times and the girls would think they were there to play with them so they would follow them around the pool. That had to be put to a stop immediately haha

Also we had to put some key rules in place, if you were screaming, fighting or crying you had to get out and sit on the edge while mommy swam 4 laps.

Our community doesn't even have a pool, I found a hotel that let me buy a pass so I could train, so sometimes you have to get creative!! 

Sometimes I would swim in the lake and practice open water swims. We have beaches all around us so whenever there was a friends beach day (aka all us moms took all our kids to the beach) I would get the baby to sleep in stroller and beg one of my friends to keep an on my kiddo's while I did my swim.

So here it is; a few video's on our summer of swimming laps with kids in tow! If things hot mess express gang can do it- so can you!!!