(Note: Sorry there are no pictures for this post - taking your not-quite-two-year olds to gymnastics is definitely hands-on and prevents much photography from happening.)
Tuesday morning was gymnastics again and the Teenies are making great strides - there were hardly any total meltdowns. It's been a lot of fun to watch as their different strengths develop. Daniel is really, really good at the warm up and cool down sections of class, which stump Max and Caroline (possibly because they involve FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS?). Every week there is a different sort of prop that the teacher uses to help get the kids focused on what they're supposed to do, which involves running back and forth, jumping, galloping, and sidling, among other skills. Last week, the prop was frisbees - but not for throwing. The kids carried them over their heads and then rolled them from one side of the mat to the other while chasing them. The hard part came when they were asked to put them down on the floor, put their hands on top, and push them across the floor - once with both hands on one frisbee and another time with one frisbee PER hand. As I ran after a totally off-task Caroline, I was amazed to turn around and see Daniel pushing his little frisbees across the mat, with Max being gently coaxed by Uncle Kelly to follow suit.
Speaking of Max, he is quite the jumper. Every nap we wake him from, he is jumping on the mattress in his crib. His favorite part of Tahoe was jumping on the sofa. And he has even mastered the very difficult task of jumping on solid ground and actually getting off the ground. Needless to say, Max's favorite part of the day is always when we get to the TumbleTrak - a long lane of trampoline that the kids run and/or jump along. But this week we got to go on the actual trampoline! You could see Max's face open up as he started to walk out toward the middle. He didn't do a great jump in the middle, but he made his way to the side and put his hands down on the mat on the side of the trampoline, and did a series of little "donkey kicks" (kicking his legs up behind him like a donkey would).
Caroline is a master at the balance beam, walking with only a minimum of hand-holding, and she loves to tumble, whether it is forward rolls or sideways log rolls, as long as she's heading downhill, she giggles. She also loves to jump into the foam pit with Uncle Kelly. At home on Monday night, she stood on the couch and threw all the cushions onto the floor into a pile, then practiced stepping off and falling onto the padding she'd created. She doesn't quite know how to "jump off" yet, but I can sense it's not far off.
Speaking of the foam pit, a group of 4 year old kids got to the foam pit at the same time as we did and thought it was hysterical that Uncle Kelly was in the foam pit with a baby, playing with her (he was tossing blocks at her to bury her and she was digging her way out). He put her on the mat that was acting like a slide down into the pit when it was time to start heading out, at which point the little girls started calling, "Where's the baby?" and then proceeded to toss foam blocks at him so that he'd play with them too. Wanting to play with Uncle Kelly is obviously something infectious!
The only downside of this week was that we discovered Daniel is not a fan of tunnels - at one point there was a tunnel made out of mat arches and he completely flipped out and refused to go through it, even with the adorable teacher beckoning to him from the other end. Later, there was a hula hoop to step through, and he flat out refused to do it. So, we know something new and we won't be putting him on the tunnel slides at the playground anytime soon!
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