The Gymnast

Our first foray into "after-school activities" was not really all that successful. Last fall, we signed Elise up for an 8 week Saturday soccer class with her buddy Sara Jane because 1. Elise is athletically gifted and we thought she would like it 2. any excuse to spend time with her friend Sara Jane is great, especially since SJ started going to a different pre-school last fall 3. Marty and I both love soccer and thought that our child should too. Unfortunately the class was incredibly disorganized, overly crowded, fairly expensive and she learned pretty much nothing about soccer other than the fact that she doesn't really like it. If you ask her, she will say that she liked soccer, but really just she liked seeing Sara Jane and the trophy she got at the end. Other than that, she rarely participated, usually clung to me on the sidelines (especially when SJ wasn't there) and begged to play on the playground equipment with Lucas instead of playing soccer. Lesson learned.

This winter, Audrey's mom (Audrey being another best buddy of Elise) and I began investigating dance and/or gymnastics classes in the area for the girls to take together. This time I was going to go into it much more aware. We searched for lots of different options, read lots of reviews and then observed a gymnastics class before choosing one that we felt was perfect. During this process Audrey actually decided that she wasn't interested in doing gymnastics anymore but Elise was truly excited and decided to take the class by herself.

It's a beginner class with a very wide age range - the oldest girl probably being around 8 - and technically it's a year long class that started in September so Elise was joining in mid-year. Elise is one of the younger kids in the class and probably knows the least going in (because most of the other kids have been taking the class for months) but it has never once intimidated her. The class is very organized and skills focused - extremely structured and designed to teach children the skills not necessarily to have fun. But in the process of all that learning, Elise is having an absolute blast. She LOVES gymnastics. The teenagers on the competitive gymnastics team practice right after the beginner class so a ton of older and experienced girls help out in the class - giving almost one-on-one attention. She is learning so much already - straddle rolls, headstands, cartwheels, pyramid stands...at the end of soccer she still did not know what a goalie was. It has been wonderful. And of course an added bonus for her is that she gets to wear a leotard.

We are thrilled not only with how great the class has turned out to be but also how much she genuinely loves it. A Mary Lou Retton in the making?