Taste of spring

It was a gorgeous weekend! On Saturday it got up to the mid 60s and at one point, we were even walking around outside without coats and eating ice cream! Here’s what kept us busy this weekend:

After gymnastics, we ran a few errands to kill time before our hair appointment -- that is, Emilia and my hair appointment. The last time I got my hair cut, we brought Emilia in to my hair dresser, Andrew, to trim her bangs. He has openly said he hates cutting kids’ hair, but he was willing to try as long as she didn’t move a muscle. Well, she didn’t – she was perfectly still and he did a great job! So, we brought her back this time to clean up the mullet that was growing in the back of her head. She again was as still as a statue. By the end of her haircut, Andrew was giving Emilia kisses and showing her off to his colleagues. Emilia was trying to climb back into the chair for “more, more!” While I finished up with my hair cut, Eric and Emilia walked to McDonald’s so that daddy could get a snack and Emilia could get the happy meal toy.

After our hair cuts, mommy and Emilia were now hungry so we went to Nielsen's Frozen Custard in Old Town Vienna for yummy sandwiches and yes, even custard! We walked around the Old Town and then headed home for naps.

After daddy and Emilia finally woke up, we pulled out the swing for some mid-winter "weee" time. Then, we broke out the jogging stroller and went for a walk on the trail that backs up to our neighborhood. The bridge over the creek has washed out many times, so we had to do a little bouldering to get across. Here is out little hiker-to-be scaling the rocks. Emilia saw lots of doggies and we even took a pit stop at a playground on our journey.
Hurry up, spring!

Not quite Dominique Dawes yet

On a recent post, I said that I thought Emilia was ready for gymnastics. Well, it just so happened that a new session at Loudoun Gymnastics was starting up two weeks ago, so we took the plunge and enrolled her.

This past Saturday was our second Mommy, Daddy and Me class. Why are you only hearing about this now, you ask? We brought our camera to the first class and had every intention of capturing Emilia displaying her raw gymnastics talent. However, there was not even a second to snap a photo because it took both Eric and my full attention to keep Emilia somewhat in line during the class (BTW - she was the only kid in the class to have both parents there... can you say overkill?!). Five minutes into the first class and I was ready to ask for my money back – not because the class wasn’t good, but I just felt like Emilia was way, way too young. After all, the class was for kids 18 months to 3 years, which is a big age group. And, she had just turned 18 months five days earlier. But, after a disastrous start where we didn’t follow any of the instructions, we moved on to some things Emilia could sort of do (and I’m being very generous here… mostly it was mommy and daddy picking her up and and pretending she was jumping). Anyway, they had the kids run through an obstacle course type thing that even included bouncing in a bounce house and sliding down (the highlight). We moved on to trampolines and more obstacle courses and then jumping into the foam blocks. We left having mixed feelings: Eric thought it was the best thing for her and I was already dreading week #2.

In the spirit of setting a "never-give-up" example for our daughter, we returned for week #2. We're not exactly banking on a gymnastics scholarship just yet, but this week was definitely an improvement. The beginning of the class was still a joke. Each kid has her own jump rope which starts out being in a circle on the ground. The kids have to jump in and out of their jump rope, make their jump rope look like a smiley face, walk around shaking their jump rope like a snake, etc. -- disaster.

But after we moved on to a new obstacle course and jumping exercises, it got better.

Emilia doesn't know how to jump yet, so basically we were throwing her off a platform into a pit of foam blocks. I'm sure we looked like great parents as Eric tossed her off and I snapped some pictures. We've got eight more weeks of this!

A new hiding place

Last weekend, we were over the Hills’ house with the Vaughans and Nathan and Clara were playing hide-and-go-seek with Wendy (poor Wendy). Emilia didn’t really get what was going on, but later as I was spending some time in her room cycling through her next round of clothes, she managed to climb into her tall dresser to “hide.” This kept her entertained long enough for me to reorganize her dresser, so I was excited about that.