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!