Mary Lou Who??

Danielle is now in Aden’s gymnastics class at the local recreation center. For months prior to her birthday she had been talking about going to “nymnastics with Ayan” when she turned three. She’s so proud to be a big girl.

Aden has been in gymnastics for nearly 18 months. A gymnastics company would come to his old daycare while we were at work. Very convenient for us. Danielle was a mere toddler at the time, but was also in the daycare gymnastics class. When we switched daycares, gymnastics was not offered as an extra activity. Luckily the rec center is close by. The same teacher who traveled to different daycares in the area, taught there once a week. Again, very convenient for us as far as location.

Weekly class is at 4:30 in the afternoon. Those days are our early days – meaning I have to be at my desk working by 7:15 in order to leave at 4:00 and get them to gymnastics on time. However, all the credit should be bestowed on Scott for making this possible. To save money we’ve carpooled since Aden started daycare. Scott “encourages” me to get up and out of the door in the morning. Without his help, I would never be able to accomplish our morning tag-team routine. (Scott, Danielle and Aden are “morning” people – I am not. I cannot be that cheerful that early in the morning. To my co-workers’ cheerful “Good Morning” greetings, I am barely able to utter more than a monotone “Morning” reply prior to 9:00. Being up and at work that early is not “good” in my opinion.)

When we started at the rec center about a year ago, we enrolled both kids. After a few months it was apparent Danielle was too young for the format geared toward older kids. She didn’t want to stand in line, wait her turn, listen, etc. (She definitely marches to her own beat.) Since the class is only 45 minutes, Scott and I usually stay during practice. We found we had become wranglers for Danielle, making sure she didn’t hurt herself or others while the instructor was busy. Danielle is definitely a tough one and can pretty much hold her own with the bigger kids, but we had to take her out of the class while Aden continued. This was quite upsetting for her, but we promised she would be able to enroll again when she was older and could listen (meaning age 3). There is still a little bit of wrangling involved, but it’s much better than what it was last May.

This gymnastics class is more organized play than anything else. They still use rings, parallel bars, mats and mini trampolines, but the class geared more toward hand-eye coordination, balance, building muscle tone, and having fun. After 18 months, Aden can’t do a perfect cartwheel, headstand or a gymnastics routine you would expect from a more structured class, but making an Olympic hopeful is not really the point. They teach skills which will be useful when the kids start mandatory Phys. Ed. in school. Hopefully, this will get them “sports ready” and they will want to participate in organized sports and enjoy it much more than I did as a child.