Show Day

Brayden's gymnastics semester ended this week so she had her "show day" last Monday which happened to be on a holiday so Brandon was able to come in and see all her new tricks she's learned and everything else she can do. It was sort of sad for me. It was her last class in the two year old group. From now on she will go in all by herself.

I have loved doing these classes with her from way back when we went to Gymboree when she was only 19 months old. We came to this gym once she was a little bit older after Kaleb was born. Now that Kaleb is getting older it is nice that she won't need me in there with her anymore but I'm going to miss it.

This has been such a great way for her to channel all the energy she has. It has also helped her (and helped me help her) learn more structure. Brayden has always marched to the beat of her own drummer and being a part of this gym has taught me a lot more how to handle it. When we started out she most definitely didn't like to follow the group, be told what to do, and when something was asked of her she would do the opposite. She wanted ALL the attention. She got it when she was doing her own thing in the middle of the rest of the group that was cooperating. Like in this picture above: running circles around everybody always yelling, "Look at me! Look at me!" All the while the instructor and all the other parents laugh. Meanwhile I'm thinking, "Thanks everyone. You're not helping." I eventually learned not to take things so seriously and let her be a kid...the kind of kid that she is. I followed the instructions that the gym leaders would always say to everyone. Just lead by example. If they want to do their own thing then let them as long as we as the parent followed what the group was doing. I would gently remind her and encourage her to join us but if she didn't want to it was no big deal (as long as she was safe) and we both had much more fun. If she wanted to run when everyone else was doing forward rolls her teacher never hesitated to let her know what a good runner she was. It didn't take long before she wanted to be right by my side with the rest of the group, excited to do what everyone was doing and try knew things. I got a some pictures of a few of her tricks...

...the tuck

It doesn't seem like it was too long ago when she was working on jumping off of both feet at the same time. Now she can jump pretty high!

"Hands high touch the sky..."

"...Hands down, jump around!"

She's doing her "monkey jump" (little kid cartwheel). Forward roll Spider walk

Forward roll down the mat

Jumping off the springboard

...and her Pizza hang.

There are many more tricks that I didn't catch like "basket hang," "donkey kick," "table top," "bear walk," and hand stand to name a few.

Kaleb has been such a good sport this whole semester. His morning nap usually got cut short during this time but he's been such a trooper. He would just sit in his carrier nearly the whole time usually pretty entertained by everyone. He would get a little too many kisses from all the little girls. They all adored him. Towards the end of class I would get him out to play with the balls and bubbles and crawl around the mat.

Brayden's class

(back row: David, Jessilyn; Front row: Zane, Brayden, Aubrey, Hannah on Miss Cindy's lap)

At the end of show day each of the children were presented with an award ribbon that said,

"I am a star at the Little Gym."

Brayden was so proud

and we are so proud of her.

I caught a lot of show day on video for the grandmas out there that would've loved to have been there.

(It's 10:30. That's pretty good considering it's a 45 min class:)