Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Baby's got class

My 16-month-old son started his first-ever class today. That is, a parent & child "gymnastics" class for kids aged 12 months to 3 years old. The class information said it was for "confident walkers and up," and my baby has been a confident walker for 6 or 7 months. So my husband took him to the class tonight, where we hoped he could run & jump on mats & play with balls, etc., and get used to being around children close to his age. Instead, my husband said it was pretty structured, and the instructors seemed to think our son would understand the directions they were giving him, and how to do things like somersaults and bear crawls, and how to sit still and listen. Uh...right. He was the youngest one there, though apparently there were a few girls not much bigger who followed along much better. We're going to give it another go since we signed up for a 6-week session, but this may not be the best class for him!

My 7-year-old is also starting gymnastics tomorrow. He's asked about taking gymnastics for a month or two, but I thought by his age, the only boys in gymnastics were those who were serious enough about it to be at a higher level than he could keep up with. I found out, though, that the YMCA has beginning boys' gymnastics for ages 6-9, so we're going to try it out. He can do a decent cartwheel already, so I think he'll do fine...I just hope other boys have signed up for the class!

We also signed up for the library's summer reading program today. To my shock, my older boys were both so excited about it, they each spent more than an hour reading when we got home! The 9-year-old loves to read anyway, but the 7-year-old says he doesn't like it, so for him to choose reading over computer time, video games, or other types of activities was a big deal! Even the baby is enrolled in the program, with minutes that we read to him being counted, but he's so incredibly active, he won't even sit still long enough to hear a whole board book. It's less like we read to him and more like we read at him while he wiggles or darts around!

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